For the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him.
2 Chronicles 16:9
The sanctuary wasn’t very full for the 6 a.m. open prayer time. The lights were low, and the event organizers played quiet background music, setting the atmosphere for prayer. We planned to pray for an hour or so, grab breakfast together, and be back for the opening morning sessions. Our church staff had traveled together from Texas to Missouri to participate in our fellowship’s Call to Prayer conference. Prayer had long been a focus of our church and my own life. I saw the event as a good opportunity for both me and our staff to continue growing in prayer. That morning, I did what I do most mornings: I quieted my heart and reminded myself of the command to approach the throne of grace with boldness (see Hebrews 4:16). I dropped to my knees at a pew near the back of the sanctuary.
Morning prayer had long been my routine, whether at home, in my study, or traveling; however, my experience of prayer that morning was anything but typical. As quickly as my knees hit the floor, I was caught up into something far bigger than I had anticipated. The way I prayed would never be the same. I was about to experience the most transformative moment of prayer I had ever had.
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My original career plans were for business. I grew up in a pastor’s home, but I wasn’t prepared or interested in serving as a pastor myself. As hard as I worked, God’s blessing never seemed to be on my list of business goals. Nothing I did quite worked. So, with some reluctance, I finally submitted to God’s calling and took a job as a youth pastor. I quickly realized I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. I didn’t know how to be a pastor. I didn’t know how to lead anyone. And I didn’t know where to turn for help.
I found a small room at the far end of the church I served that was tucked back behind the choir room, and I began to pray. It was a moment of absolute honesty before the Lord. I admitted to God I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know what to do next. I didn’t want this just to be a profession. I had been around too many pastors who seemed to be faking it. I wanted to do it with power—power that I didn’t have and didn’t know how to get. I was twenty-four years old, and I prayed that if God had really called me to be a pastor, would He help me do it.
That day, tucked away in a back room of a country church, God didn’t pour out the power of His Spirit in any remarkable way, but He did give me a hunger. He gave me a hunger to grow and find a way forward through prayer. That prayer of youthful desperation became a habit of daily prayer, a habit of seeking a new word from God each day, and a habit of recognizing my daily need for His power.
Things did begin to change. Youth began responding. Miracles started happening. God’s hand was more and more evident. It wasn’t hard for me to connect those dots. When I prayed, God moved. When I attempted the work in my own power, it failed. Even at a young age, I developed a deep conviction that real ministry is about prayer.
As God moved me into various positions and seasons of ministry, the one constant was my commitment to pray. All I really knew how to do was pray. I watched as God answered those prayers in remarkable ways. We witnessed so many miracles during one season that a local newspaper journalist visited our church and published our story. We witnessed new revivals and watched the church grow. I preached the Gospel and witnessed the miraculous. Prayer was the only explanation for any of it. I knew from the beginning it was not me.
It is important to remember that prayer is not a static practice. We grow in prayer. I understood it more with each passing day, and I increasingly recognized my dependence on it for accomplishing anything meaningful. Prayer is something we learn to do and something we continue to grow into. To this day, I still want to understand prayer more.
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I can take you back to the very place I bowed to pray that morning at 6 a.m. As my knees hit the floor and my eyes closed, I found myself suddenly someplace else. I knew I was still kneeling at that pew, but by the Spirit, I was taken into a higher place. I knew immediately, instinctively, where I was. I was experiencing the throne room of heaven.
I had never experienced anything like it before. It wasn’t so much a vision as it was a moment of realization, an insight into so many of the images and descriptions I had encountered throughout Scripture. Suddenly, by God’s grace and the power of the Holy Spirit, the pieces of those passages locked into place before my eyes. In that moment, what men like John, Isaiah, and Ezekiel had long described was mine as well. I was given an experience of the throne room above.
I have nothing to add to Scripture. What I experienced that morning was not a new revelation or some secret prayer with which I was entrusted. Far from it. What I experienced was a deeper understanding of what we all have, what Scripture has long offered each of us. But the things of Scripture are so easily neglected. We often fail to take advantage of the fullness they offer us.
It was immediately clear to me that I was not there for spectacle or simply to be impressed. I was given this insight to change the way I prayed. I was given this experience so that I might realize the real power of prayer and what takes place when we approach His throne room with boldness. I was being stretched and formed into a deeper way of praying. I was being taught to appreciate and to improve upon what I had long been doing.
I want to offer you what I saw and how it has transformed the way I pray. My hope is that these descriptions will move us to search Scripture again. I hope it will move us to recognize the grace we have been given, this remarkable gift of access to the throne room of God. May we never again pray casually or with indifference. May God give all of us a special insight into His heart and to the unique attention He gives to the words of our prayers.
May we realize that we do not enter His throne room symbolically—when we bow our heads to pray, we are there.
The first thing that drew my eye was His throne. It was to my left. With my peripheral vision, I could only see its base, but I knew what it was. I knew who it was. There was an overwhelming sense of His presence and a sense of its immense significance to everything around it. It is still the most difficult part for me to describe. I am sure, however, that you have also sensed the presence of God in ways that are difficult to articulate.
I knew I was in the presence of God. I knew I was before His throne, and I knew I was in His throne room. He was seated in power over everything else I experienced. I couldn’t bring myself to look at Him. I knew I wasn’t supposed to. To simply be before Him in His presence was enough. I was there by His grace.
My sense was like that so often described in Scripture and experienced in prayer: His presence humbled me. We realize His holiness and our true position of humble reverence. There was no sense of fear, not the kind that would cause you to run. There was, instead, a sense of awe that leaves you quiet and still. It was right that He was being worshiped; He was rightfully seated at the center of all things.
I also recognized that there was a place beside God on His great throne, but no one was seated in it. I knew who it belonged to—Jesus Christ. He shared completely in the power, authority, and holiness of God. It would soon be clear to me why His seat was empty.
As I began to look around, I realized that I was encircled by even more thrones—twenty-four of them. The first was placed to the left of God’s throne, and the rest formed an enormous circle that eventually connected back to God’s right. I remembered John’s description of these thrones in the book of Revelation (see Revelation 4:2–4). These were the seats of the twenty-four elders: twelve for the apostles, and twelve for the tribes of Israel.
Above these thrones, the four cherubim were flying and singing their praise, “Holy, holy, holy” (verse 8). It was echoed by those who sat on the circle of thrones.
In Isaiah’s vision of the throne room, it struck me that he didn’t mention these thrones. They are central to John’s vision in the New Testament. Perhaps in Isaiah’s day, these thrones had yet to be fully seated. The throne room was being shaped by the work of Jesus and His apostles. What happened on earth was being reflected in the expanding worship of the throne room itself.
It was also obvious to me that the layout of these thrones was significant. They were intentionally arranged in the shape of a circle. This circle is often alluded to in Scripture as the “circle of the earth” (Isaiah 40:22). Those words suddenly took on new significance.
One of the details I remember most clearly is what Scripture calls the sea of glass (see Revelation 4:6; 15:2). Within the ring of thrones was a massive surface that appeared like clear crystal. As I looked closer, however, beneath the glass was the earth stretched in such a way as to be entirely visible at once.
We know that the earth is round. It rotates on an axis giving us light and shadow, and it circles the sun in a sweeping annual orbit. In this heavenly reality, though, all of it was visible and present at once. The whole earth was laid out before the throne of God, encircled by the thrones of the elders. All of heaven peered down through this glass floor, the earth always before them.
This was not a physical description but a witness to the ever-present attention of God. The whole earth is always before Him. When He looks down from His throne, He simultaneously sees every island, every nation, every city, every person. It is all before Him. His feet rested on this sea of glass, this image of all creation.
Immediately, I remembered the words spoken to Isaiah, “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool” (Isaiah 66:1). I finally understood it. All creation was there, always before Him, unfolded across the floor of His throne. He ruled over it all.
Across this glassy image of the earth, Jesus was walking. He walked across this sea of glass as He had walked across the waters of Galilee. As Jesus walked, the image of the earth beneath Him began to move. With each step He took, the world shifted. Cities and nations began to burst into light. Perhaps it was what John described when he saw Jesus walking amongst the candlesticks (see Revelation 2:1). I had the distinct impression that Jesus was still doing the same, walking now amongst the churches spread over all the globe, each church burning brightly on the earth.
There was a striking interactivity between Jesus and the earth below Him. Not only did the earth shift beneath His feet, but it zoomed in, focusing on cities, streets, and individual homes. The movements weren’t random; something was happening, some purpose with each shift.
I then heard Jesus praying. As He walked and as the earth moved, He was interceding. With each place He stood, Jesus turned to face the throne of God and prayed for those whose lives were beneath Him. Again, those prayers were not random. The lights glowing and building across the map seemed to intensify as Jesus took up their prayers. The prayers of earth were rising up to Jesus, and He was amplifying them before God. The interactivity was not just geographical; it was spiritual. Jesus was connected to these places on earth by His intercessory prayer. The prayers of earth were taking on new momentum as they were prayed in Jesus’ name.
How many times had I prayed “in Jesus’ name” and not fully realized in what I was participating? It had long been the way I had concluded my prayers; however, now I understand the real power of what I had been saying. It is not just a formality, a concluding phrase similar to signing a letter with “sincerely.” When we pray in the name of Jesus, we are offering our prayers up into the throne room to the One who intensifies them in the unique privilege of His relationship with God. When we pray in Jesus’ name, our prayers are magnified and released with a greater authority.
John was right when he described Jesus’ voice as the sound of many waters. Jesus’ prayers are not like ours, limited to these single tongues and thoughts. His prayers are filled with the prayers of believers all over the world. The prayers upon His lips were like rivers, rivers of prayers streaming from the earth, through Him, and into the throne room of God.
Your prayers are not in some heavenly queue, some line they wait in to come before God. No, Jesus prays them all as they rise to Him. Never have I spoken a prayer in Jesus’ name the same way again.
As I watched these prayers rise from the earth, filling the throne room by Jesus’ voice, I began to notice the scale of the room. I had been focused on what was below me, but now I began to see the immensity of the space above. Circling the throne room was a great balcony, a mezzanine filled with saints peering down and watching all this movement and action below. From their vantage point, they could witness how the activity of heaven was directly connected with the activity on earth. They saw through the throne room and down into creation.
They were witnesses to the prayers of earth and the divine responsiveness. I began to understand the power of their witness in ways I hadn’t before. They were not only witnesses to the work God had done in their own lives, but by their position in the heavens, they were witnesses to the work of God across all time and creation.
I watched as saints were individually called forward by name to the front of the balcony. They were being invited to witness something unique to them. I realized that these saints had died with prayers that had not been fulfilled in their lifetime. But those prayers remained in heaven. Their prayers existed in the throne room even after they had passed on earth. Now, these men and women were being welcomed to watch as those prayers they had long prayed were answered on earth below. They were being called forward to see their prayers answered, the fulfillment of hours spent petitioning heaven. No prayer had been ignored. No prayer had been lost. No prayer had been forgotten. Their prayers waited in the throne room until their sovereign moment, and they, by God’s calling, were now able to watch them being fulfilled below.
Grandparents were witnessing the grandchildren they prayed for until they died finally receive salvation. They were witnessing the marriages of their children finally restored. Saints were witnessing fresh revivals poured out on the churches they had long served and for which they had long prayed. Nations were being transformed before the eyes of those who had given their lives for those places. Having not seen the fruit of their prayers while alive, they now witnessed it from this heavenly vantage point.
Not only were they witnessing it, but by being called forward, all of heaven was acknowledging their participation in these great movements of God. As they witnessed it, they worshiped. They declared the goodness and faithfulness of God.
More of these saints were being called forward from the earth itself, ascending from earth and through the sea of glass to take their place amongst the saints. It was as Stephen had seen it at his martyrdom. The book of Acts records, “But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God” (7:55).
From his vantage point on earth, Stephen saw up through the sea of glass and into the throne room above. Soon he would be brought up into it himself. How Stephen must have rejoiced as he took his own place among those saints and witnessed the answer to his own prayers, the spread of the Gospel across Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth.
As this balcony of saints grew in worship, it was echoed still louder by an ascending arena of the angels above. A great stadium of heavenly hosts—row after row rising above the throne room—surrounded the room. John counted them as ten thousand times ten thousand (see Revelation 5:11). They were too numerous to count. These angels were falling on their faces and echoing the words of the passing cherubim, “Holy, holy, holy!”
Suddenly the whole stadium and the throne room below were filled with the sounds of worship, glorifying God. And as Jesus prayed, specific angels were being commissioned from that arena down into the earth. At times it was a single angel, while at other times it was armies of them, thousands of angels descending into the earth.
I couldn’t see where they were going or the work they were doing. As they descended, they disappeared into the details below. But I understood that they were commissioned specifically by God into those places. Prayer had necessitated their arrival, and God had ordered their direction.
All of these images combined into a clear sense of the enormous movement and energy of heaven. I stood gazing at the spectacular energy of the heavens and the earth below. It was alive with the activity of prayer: intercession, worship, declarations, heartfelt petitions, and the movement of saints and angels. Heaven was constantly in motion, responding and moving in coordination with the prayers of earth. There were no missing pieces, no thrones still empty. Everything was active and responsive to prayer. Everything was coordinated—never chaotic—but orchestrated in constant motion. All of it was a culmination of prayer.
By the power of the name of Jesus, we had access to it all. Our prayers rose into this throne room and moved it, stirred it. Heaven and earth moved by the prayers we prayed in Jesus’ name.
And just as quickly as it came, it was over. I found myself still kneeling at that same pew in the back of a mostly empty sanctuary. I wasn’t quite sure what to do. Then, I sensed as clearly as I had the vision of the throne room a question from the Holy Spirit: What did you learn?
This had not been for my own amusement or some spiritual affirmation or encouragement. The Spirit wanted me to learn something about all the prayers I had been praying for so long.
I also knew by the power of the Spirit what I was meant to have learned. I live in the throne room. It is not some separate place. It is not up there, somewhere off in the distance. It isn’t some abstract theological concept. The whole earth is there in the middle of it. All our days are there before Him. There is nothing He does not see. We live and pray in the midst of His throne room.
Heaven and earth are one. I finally understood why God said He would one day destroy the heavens and the earth, and why He would form new ones. He cannot destroy one without the other, no more than we can live in one and not the other. The heavens are His throne, and the earth is His footstool. They are joined by prayer.
You are there right now. You are in His throne room. When we pray, we take our proper place in that throne room. When we pray, we acknowledge that we are in it. We have access to everything in heaven. By your prayers, you move heaven. By your prayers, Jesus moves and prays, angels descend, saints bear witness, and God acts.
We cannot forget why God calls us to approach His throne room boldly. By grace, He has given us access to all of it. God’s heart is that you would realize what you have. You have a place in that throne room. You have it now. By prayer, you are already a participant in the heavens above. In the name of Jesus, your prayer is spoken by the Savior Himself.
We have made too little of prayer. Sure, we have made it a discipline, a personal practice, a matter of habit, but we have not fully realized how much prayer changes things. So much depends on prayer. So much has been given to us through prayer.
God is probably not asking you for something new. You probably already pray. But He is asking you to recognize and take advantage of everything He has already given you through prayer. Prayer is our way forward into all things.
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For a long time, I kept this experience to myself. I knew I needed to grow into it. I needed to work this reality into my own life. Finally, a time came when I attempted to humbly share it with my congregation. I watched as it changed my church in the same ways it had changed me. I watched as people began to pray in new ways, and as they, too, moved their lives into the reality of His throne room.
That was years ago. I had always understood that moment before His throne as a gift to the church I led and to me. But a couple of years ago, I felt the Spirit again prompt me. God is about to do something new in the world. Prayer is the key, the beginning, the way forward. It is time we take full advantage of what we have by prayer.
I want to humbly offer you what I have received. I want to be a part of whatever God is preparing to do. I want to participate fully in everything happening in the throne room above. I want you and your church in on it, too.