Implementing the Five-Fold Ministry: Essential Life of Prayer

Everyone has been looking at the right strategy for church growth and development for centuries, but God will not just hand us a formula. With everything He designed, He built-in a necessary place for communication with Him. Prayer is absolutely essential to every part of life. God wants to have relationship with His people.

We can look at church structure, study the Scriptures, and come to the conclusion of how everything is supposed to work, but it will fall flat without the essential life of prayer. Every aspect of God’s design for life is for the development of relationship with God. He will even allow friction and strife into a situation to cause His people to turn to Him in prayer. God will allow suffering and hardship so that His people turn to Him as the only hope.

God will give us wisdom in leadership when we pray. He will also give us wisdom in direction. I heard Reinhardt Bonnke speak one time about how he seeks direction from God. He said, “I go into my room and I push all my thoughts aside. I don’t ask God should I do this or should I do that…I lay it all aside. Then, God will speak to me something that I never would have thought of before. It is usually something so far-fetched that I think it is impossible, but when I step out in faith, it turns out to be way better than I could possibly imagine…”

God’s wisdom is so contrary to our human wisdom, but He will lead us when we are in constant communication with Him. Not only that, but He will also change circumstances and situations through our prayers.

For the five-fold ministry to be truly implemented in a body of believers, prayer is absolutely vital. When we pray, our hearts are conformed to God’s will and desires rather than our own. This is the only way for a group of people to function together as a body that loves each other better than themselves. Prayer will break down walls in our hearts and in relationships with each other.

There is so much strife and division in the church, causing the body to fight with each other. In the human body, a response of the body fighting against itself is called an “auto-immune disease.” Unfortunately, there are rampant cases of auto-immune diseases with the body of Christ. Unless people become filled with the love of Christ and learn to care for one another, there will never be enough unity of direction to properly restore the five-fold ministry and see the church walk in the fullness of its destiny in Christ.

However, Jesus has promised that His Bride will be made ready. She will be pure and spotless before His return. She will walk in her inheritance as the child of God and she will move in the fullness of His power. God will bring it to pass, and we must partner with His plans. Prayer on both an individual and corporate level will bring us into unity with His purposes for His Bride.