May this never become just a routine...

A reminder that tomorrow, Tuesday, we will be having our weekly meeting in the City Light Cafe, downstairs, at 7 pm for worship and intercession. We are excited about what God is doing, and expecting great things to come in Binghamton!! May this never become a routine prayer meeting, but a place of life and energy in the Word and the Holy Spirit where we can see with eyes of faith and know by experience the Love of God for ourselves and others. Thank the Lord for the grace and mercy He gives to partner with the desires of His heart, that those lost would be found and brought to His love. May we see His Glory and victory become a reality in our everyday lives and in the lives of those around us. May God release a move of His love and his power that brings Luke 9:43 to life among us... "And they were all amazed at the greatness of God." Continue to pray for us as we seek the Lord for his building plans for the House of Prayer and His direction. Hope you can join us tomorrow!
Desiree

Ignite

Wow, I can't believe this semester is almost over! Clearly, blogging is not a strength of mine! But I am excited that now is the time to get the word out about our college internship again. So if you, or anyone you know, is interested in doing the Ignite Internship, please see below for more information and for the application.

Applications for the Spring 2011 semester will be due Tuesday, 2/1/11.

IGNITE College Internship

Hi everyone!
Information about our Ignite College Internship is now available here. We are offering this Internship to college students on all the campuses in the Binghamton area and also high school seniors. Applications for this Fall Semester are due by 9/28/10. I am so excited to meet more young people who are passionate about seeking after God and are willing to commit a semester to going after the deeper things of Him. I love how God always honors our efforts to seek after more of Him! I can't wait to see how the Lord will encounter the hearts of these interns and to see how He ignites a flame of passion in their lives. If you know of anyone who might be interested in this internship please direct them to this website!
Blessings,
Deanna

BHOP Ignite Internship

Information for Ignite coming soon! If you are a college student or high school senior interested, please check back in a few days or email us at bhopny@gmail.com.

Great is the Need...

Hi everyone! I was talking with someone at work about the condition of so many of the people we see and it reminded me of an email I sent out to the BHOP contacts a while ago. So I thought I would post it here:

I'm really looking forward to our meeting tomorrow night. I'm especially looking forward to lifting up our city to the Lord. I am a nurse at a local ER and every day I am confronted with desperate people doing desperate and unthinkable things to themselves and others. At times I have felt like it is such a challenge to go from our glorious prayer meetings and then drive into work to see all the darkness and evil working to keep these people in their prisons. But I know that I am there for many reasons, one of which is to have the continual reminder that this city and its people desperately need us to be interceding on their behalf. I know that many of us can get caught up in our own lives and forget the very real struggles that are happening all around us. The enemy is prowling around looking for those that he can devour and many of the people here are right in his grip. But praise the Lord we have a God that is able to deliver! Lets come together tomorrow night and declare his victory over our city and take ground for His Kingdom!

"The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me,
because the LORD has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners..." Isa 61

See you at the City Light Cafe, Tuesdays, from 7 to 9pm.
Blessings,
Deanna

Hi everyone! I know its been way too long since I've updated this blog - apparently blogging is not one of my strengths! But I am excited to post this update:
I am so encouraged by what God has been doing among us as we have gathered on Tuesday nights. Last week at the end of our meeting Lori gave a testimony of how the Lord has taken away her back pain after she was prayed for a few weeks ago. It was so amazing to hear her talk about it and to realize afresh the faithfulness of our Lord. He is our healer and He is sovereign over every circumstance in our lives. He is the one who places us in the fire to refine us. And He is the one who decides when it is time for us to come out! And thankfully His intentions are never to leave the gold in the fire, but He always takes it out! One of the things we are hoping the House of Prayer will bring to this community is a restoration of hope. And hearing Lori's testimony was like a fresh infusion of it!! So as we pray on Tuesday for hope to be renewed in our city, my prayer is that if any of you are feeling hopeless or discouraged that you would come to our meeting at 7pm in the City Light Cafe and be encouraged and allow us to pray for you! And remember that God has not placed any of us in the fire to leave us there, but He is working all things out for our good!
Blessings,
Deanna

Hi everyone!
Tomorrow, Saturday, we are having our first extended meeting! We will be meeting at the City Light Cafe from 3pm until at least 9pm. We will have time to worship the Lord, soak in His presence, pray for one another, pray for our communities, cities, nation and anything else that is on your heart to pray for! We are really excited to be able to offer to the Lord this extended time of seeking Him and partnering with Him to touch our hearts and the hearts of those around us. So come and join us with high expectations to encounter more of the presence of the Lord! And as always, please feel free to come for any portion of the meeting and leave when you want to!
Blessings,
Deanna

Unity

Hi Everyone! Hope you're enjoying the beautiful Holiday! Last week was such a wonderful time of worship and prayer. We could really sense the hunger of everyone in the room for more of God. And everyone seemed to press into His presence to worship Him and really intercede on behalf of our city. Its wonderful how the Lord can partner up people through prayer and worship. I am still getting to know many of the people who have been coming to our meetings, but last week it was so easy to feel how we are all united with the same Spirit! And I thought it was so fitting that we spent some time last week praying for the unity of the Body in Binghamton. We are believing that the Lord is going to use this House of Prayer, and all the prayers lifted up all over the city, to bless the churches here with an increase of unity among them. We know that God's heart is that as His people we would "be brought to complete unity." Let it be so Lord!
See you all tomorrow at 7pm at the City Light Cafe.
Blessings!
Deanna

Contending for Intimacy

This post is from Lindsey...
Hey everyone!
Just a reminder, inviting everyone out for two hours of worship and intercession tomorrow, 5/18/10, at 7pm at the City Light Cafe, across from First Assembly and next to the Forum.

It's been so awesome to see what God has been doing at each and every meeting. They are all so unique! Last week, God did something really different through the meeting. To be perfectly honest, (well, on my end of things) it was hard. It was hard to sing. It was hard to rejoice. It was hard to pray. And many of us felt some intense spiritual warfare going on in the room, which was pretty sobering. But I love how God uses the warfare. It brought me, personally, back to the basics of asking the question, "why do we do what we do? What is the purpose of BHOP?" This is not a performance, or an event, or a concert. This is more than just a prayer meeting. This is a steady movement of intimacy. It's a place of receiving a greater revelation of His deep love for us, and learning to live extravagantly devoted to Him. It's the Mary of Bethany spirit, of seeing His worth, and freely giving everything we have and laying it down at His feet for the sake of having and knowing Him. And with that comes great opposition. A good friend reminded me a couple weeks ago, that it's in the realm of intimacy that the attacks from the enemy are the greatest, because out of that place, healing, restoration, power, life, deliverance, unspeakable joy, solidification in boldness and courage are brought forth. Once you begin to have even a teeny-tiny understanding of how much you are treasured by the King, a contagious transformation into freedom begins. It's in the fiery, dangerous grounds of deep intimacy where we want to be found day after day, week after week. Will you join us?
Lindsey

Intimacy first...

We had a wonderful opening night last week and we hope many of you will join us for worship and intercession tomorrow night! We will be meeting every week from 7-9pm on Tuesdays at the City Light Café, across the street from First Assembly. Come, join us and invite anyone who might be interested! I think as I try to update this blog weekly about what is going on at BHOP-NY, I am going to take some time to explain a little bit about what we are doing, why we are doing it, and to describe our vision in a little more depth. So in this posting I want to describe one aspect of our prayer meetings that is so important to our vision. We use two prayer formats during our prayer meetings that are part of the Harp and Bowl model. The first one we do is Worship with the Word. During that set we pray and sing through a portion of scripture. It is a time for people to worship the Lord, dig deeper into a scripture by singing it and praying it back to Him, and a time for intimate communion with Jesus. The second prayer set we do is Intercession. During this set we pray for our city, our churches, and our nation. We also try to have times of small group prayer and prayer ministry for anyone in the room. At this time we are only having one prayer meeting a week and we split the time evenly between the two prayer sets. Our hope is that one day we will have many more prayer meetings going on so that much more prayer is being lifted up to the Lord. Sometimes after our prayer meetings it feels like the time has flown by and our prayers can seem so insignificant. And to some it might seem like a waste of time to spend half of the meeting praying and singing through a Scripture (Worship with the Word). But the reason we do it that way is that we are establishing something here. We are building a foundation that the Lord can build upon. I believe that if we are faithful in establishing intimacy first, keeping worship, praise and communion with Jesus in first place, then the Lord will grow the intercession into what He desires it to be so that we are partnering with Him to move in our land. One key aspect of our vision is to restore the First Commandment to first place in our lives. We want our intercession to come from a place of faith and our prayers to come from an overflow in our hearts. The only way to have an overflow of faith and love in our hearts is to encounter His heart as we commune with Him. And that is one reason why we start every prayer meeting with Worship with the Word! So our hope is that as more people come and catch the vision, more will begin serving with us, and we will be able to hold more meetings. But until that time, we will be faithful with the vision the Lord has given us, and though our prayers may feel small and weak, we are lifting them up to a Mighty God!

Welcome to the website for BHOP-NY!

Welcome to the website for the Binghamton House of Prayer (BHOP-NY)! We believe God is beginning to awaken the Church to His love, intimacy, power and victory. As we pray and worship, spending time before the Lord, we believe He will work in our own hearts, and in the world around us. We believe this House of Prayer is one way the Lord will move in the hearts of His people and prepare us for the coming shaking and the promised outpouring of His Spirit. We are learning the Harp and Bowl model of worship and prayer, used by IHOP-KC, which is structured around scripture. Please take a minute to check out our Vision for BHOP-NY and the About Us page. We are excited to share what the Lord has been doing in our hearts. We know God will bring many more with a passion for intercession and worship to join us in this ministry to the Lord. As the Lord continues to grow support and draw people to this prayer and worship movement, we believe we will eventually see a House of Prayer in Binghamton that can sustain 24/7 worship and intercession. We will be meeting Tuesday nights, starting April 27th from 7-9pm at the City Light Café across from First Assembly of God in Binghamton, next to the Forum. Come and see what it’s all about!