What is Restoration Prayer Ministry or RPM?

Restoration Prayer Ministry is a passion to know the heart of God and His purposes for a person, knowing that the secret of healing is to do whatever our loving Father says to do. It is a compassion for people that constrains us to say "Yes" when Jesus decides to set the captive free, even if He does it in ways that we have never heard of before. It is destroying the works of the devil so that people can be filled with the Holy Spirit in every area of their life. 1 John 3:8b, Ephesians 5:18

It is not "behavior modification" or just learning to "act more like Jesus." It is coming against "religious counterfeit spirits" that have replaced their "first love" and true worship in spirit and truth, with "performance for the approval of God by works." It is receiving the righteousness that Jesus gave us as a gift (Romans 5) and believing Him when He says that we are made holy, blameless and righteous by His work on the cross. (Ephesians 1) It is demonstrating how to allow Jesus to live a holy life in our bodies. (Galatians 2:20)

It is not only intercessory prayer but actually helping to carry the burden, spending time with the rebellious, hugging the leper, letting the prostitute wash our feet, believing in the most unlikely, going into the houses of "gentiles," feeding the hungry, teaching those in prison, praising the Centurion for his faith and suffering from false accusation for being friends with the heathen.

For me, it included making the commitment to be trained up in the Elijah House School of Prayer Counseling Ministry so that I would have more of a diagnostic knowledge to balance my intuitive and prophetic insights. It was studying to show myself approved for months and becoming a healed person who could partner with God in healing people.

Sometimes, it is going into places that are against the rules, like finding that one lost sheep in a bar, skid row, a casino, a cult or across the tracks. It can be following God's call when you have not been to seminary, you are a woman, or were an addict, murderer or thief. It may look like breaking the "rules" but it is not rebellion against God. It is a holy war against "religious legalism;" a defiance against a spirit of control that says only perfect performers can be transformed into prayer ministers.

I like to introduce myself as the former woman at the well because I am smacking "religious legalism" in the face. She was a woman that was rejected by Jews on account of her race, rejected by religious leaders because of sexism, rejected by neighbors on account of her serial marriages and for being a failure at love! But the woman at the well became the first missionary, appointed by Jesus himself and she reached her town the same day! Jesus said, "If they are not against us, they are for us."

The most powerful thing Restoration Prayer Ministers do is to let someone know that God believes in them, right now, with unconditional love, before any one else has any hope for them. Restoration Prayer Ministers have to see people as God sees them and loved their slumbering spirits to life. Maybe they are captives who act like alcoholics, crack heads, adulterers or murderers today but they may be called to be raised up as missionaries tomorrow. We have to be able to say to them what no one else will say, in truth and in love.

Restoration Prayer Ministers have to lay down every talent and knowledge they think they have on the altar daily, in deference to depending on the Anointing to break every yoke. God may want to heal as they kneel, sing, dance like David danced, use mud and spit or absolute silence. I prayed for a young man to have an open vision of Jesus without him even knowing I was praying for him. He has been having open visions of Jesus ever since. Jesus is coming in unconventional ways. He even asked his disciples to lay down protocol. We have to know Him and His voice.

The secret agenda of Restoration Prayer Ministers is to bring every selfish fleshly structure to death on the cross. We, ourselves, might not have come to Jesus, if we had known that God wanted to kill our pride, wreck our schedules, take away every crutch, our self-centered ways and give us His broken heart for others instead. We have to learn to rest His opinion of us, in His ability to live His life through us and to be satisfied with Jesus as our source. As we used to say in Campus Crusade, "From the most sophisticated heathen to the most ignorant college professor, everyone is hungry for Jesus."