THE EMBERS COVENANT

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Many years ago four couples gathered together to see if we could come into agreement with one another around the life and teachings of Jesus that we were learning. We didn't know where to begin in our relationship, so we brainstormed the primary things we felt we could agree upon.

In our day of praying, eating, studying and enjoying our fellowship together we determined there were, at least, six agreements we could make together. As we discussed these agreements, we decided the best way to experience these agreements as commitments was to covenant to pray them back to God and see what happens. In a sense, we were asking God to respond to the prayers of our hearts and lead out. We were ready and willing to follow wherever Jesus might lead.

As I began to unpack the six agreements of the covenant, they seemed to naturally and easily unfold into an acrostic. I admit that I have always used acrostics and other memory devices to teach and to remember important things. So, in this case the six agreements seemed to emerge into the acrostic, E-M-B-E-R-S. Here they are as we have been discussing over the past six days:

· E-Embrace the life and teachings of Jesus as a lifestyle. · M-Mentor and encourage one another. · B-Believe that God raises up leaders. · E-Encourage the youth of our world. · R-Restore those God brings your way. · S-Serve everyone, everywhere.

We began to call it the Embers Covenant. It was a collection of agreements that we could hold as true and viable. These agreements weren't magical or super-spiritual, but they were very powerful and satisfying to each of us. We wanted to not only enter into these six agreements; we wanted to make these agreements covenants-promises to one another. Since those early days together nearly eight years ago, these are the fellowship agreements that have kept us together and moving.

We began praying these six agreements of the Embers Covenant back to God. We committed to pray for certain periods of time together. Our first few times to pray the Embers Covenant we decided to pray for a period of 45 days. We called it the 45 Day Prayer Covenant and things began to happen.

As we prayed these agreements we communicated with one another each day to report what was happening. Wow! Every day someone reported what we called a "Jesus sighting" and we were all encouraged and empowered by the experience. We were each praying that we would have the wisdom and courage to embrace the life and teachings of Jesus as a lifestyle, to mentor and encourage one another, to believe God raises up leaders, to encourage the youth of our world, to restore those God brought our way and to serve everyone, everywhere.

We each had a very real sense of following Jesus and encouraging others to do the same. What was most surprising to us was that as we prayed for God to bring hurting people our way for us to help-the addicted, abused, broken and the poor-people began to show up nearly every day! This became so exciting to us and strangely enough, this was the beginning of what we experienced as the Jesus movement in our midst.

This motivated us not to promote Jesus and what we were learning about following Him, but we determined to pray and allow Jesus to attract people to us. It was amazing who showed up and asked us for help or who showed up and asked what we were doing together. We were truly operating under the principle of attraction, not promotion. This was the most refreshing experience to me, since I had spent my entire life being a promoter of ideas, books, tapes, seminar/workshops, buying property and building buildings. Now, to pray together with a few who were in agreement in the name of Jesus and wait on Jesus to lead out with orders and opportunities; this was the thrill of my life!

We then found out how to mold the 45 Day Prayer Covenant into a more flexible way of doing life together with others. When someone brought us a problem, we quickly suggested two things. First-We don't have the answer to your problem; Jesus does. Second-Since Jesus has the answers, then we invited that person to enter into a 15 Day or 30 Day Prayer Covenant with us. The result every time was that Jesus showed up in a powerful way and the answers were clear! It was just further proof to me that prayer doesn't need proof; it needs practice!

Try it out. Gather a few followers of Jesus together with you and enter into the Embers Covenant with one another. Then, fill in the details of your requests in each agreement area and pray them together with your little group. Prayer is simply about being in agreement together about whatever you are requesting in the name of Jesus. Jesus promises to show up when two or three gather in the name of Jesus. Now, if you knew Jesus was going to show up somewhere, wouldn't you go there as quickly as possible? Gather a little group of two or three or more and make these agreements together; enjoy the presence and power of Jesus in your life ASAP.