Closet, Corporate, Canister, Command ~E Reiss

In the DMM cycle (Disciple Making Movement) one of the key pieces of movement worldwide is an upgrade to extraordinary prayer.

If I’m honest at all, I'm just not there yet.

But I’ve been thinking about how to get there, both personally, and in terms of influencing the movement that we sense is coming. The questions I have currently are… how does this work practically? How can we support and create environments for prayer that are useful, conducive, and grounded in ways that will inspire God’s people?

This seems to me to be the kind of thing we can’t manufacture through cleverness or the ultimate marketing scheme. God will create the burden and urgency and direction of this kind of prayer.

It also seems to me to be the kind of thing we can have if we really want it. That we see the train, get on board, and soon enough we are on the bullet trip of a lifetime. 

So, how do we get started? 

I wish I had a recipe for this that was more clear. Lord, help my unbelief. Teach me to pray. Call us to where You want us to be. Spark this work in us.

As is often the case with me, I start at the beginning inside my head… and ask God to engage as Teacher.

Father, teach me how to pray - and how to catalyze prayer in others. 

Ok, cool. So here’s what I have so far.

1. Closet

I am a huge believer in free will. That may annoy my more hardcore reformed friends, but my best understanding is that while God is clearly sovereign, we are also clearly free. Insert <mystery> token here for the deep magic of paradoxical biblical truth.

Considering prayer, it is both a problem and an elegant solution, when paired with the idea of free will.

The problem is: why pray at all? Doesn’t God already know what we really need? Doesn’t He know what I will ask for even before I ask? Doesn’t He know that I’ll ask with bad motive, or in the wrong way, or get busy and forget to ask at all?

Yes. He knows all of that.

Yet with the idea of freedom in play, He also doesn’t seem to force His character or will on me. That isn’t to say that He doesn’t protect us, or work around us, or put His Hands on the scale to redeem us from our worst moments. I believe God is active, but all of the “around the edges” pieces of Jesus dealing with His disciples point to the idea of freedom and responsibility.  He is often frustrated with their lack of progress and faith, questioning honestly why they don’t see what He is seeing, or calling them from "earnest emotional response" to "in the moment" action.

​We too are disciples, and not so very different. We too are somehow able to grow in faith, with direct participation. This expectation points to freedom, and engagement on our part. 

We get to play. And practicing in good faith results in progress, while it remains an option for the Rich Young Ruler to walk away. When Jesus expresses a direct connection regarding the level of our faith, to what we believe and what we do... When He calls us out for a lack of faith, it assumes that we could have chosen (by some means) to do better. That "better" is available.

The solution is this: prayer is a principle means by which we align our will to God's.

If our spiritual maturing is a journey, AND if God is careful not to override our free will (even for our own good)… then can we give God permission to accelerate us in prayer? Can we take a leap of faith and go all in?

I think prayer is one way of giving God our full throated assent to move us (and in us), while maintaining the mystery of our freedom.

Clearly, God can do what He wants. And that will be just and good. But if one of the things He wants is for us to be free… then prayer becomes amazing.

It gives God our direct agreement, and freedom to mess with us, to correct us, to guide us, to empower us, and with prayer charged and running, just how much more effective can we be? Could prayer can help us learn the lesson the easy way, instead of the hard way? To actively participate in what God is doing, first and foremost in the trembling of our own salvation?

This is the kind of prayer that starts with gratitude, and the hallowing of His Name. With awe and correct perspective, (think Job at the end of the book) we can step into David's heart of 1) being laser focused on problem at hand, then 2) lifting his vision UP. To see God as best as we can see Him - and doesn’t that just change everything?

It is in the Closet that we re-align, that we say with Him, “not my will but Yours be done,” and we give God complete freedom to lead us wherever He wants us to go. In the Closet we set down our grocery list and align ourselves with Him and the glory of His will on the earth.

2. Corporate

We’ve been talking a lot about the pronouns in the Lord’s prayer. That, interestingly, they are all plural. Our Father… give us daily bread… lead us away from evil… That even in the Closet, we are still a part of the larger Body of Christ and even our solo prayer has a Corporate element.

Even more, when we get together physically, His word says that He is right there with us. There’s something deeply held in the community of believers, especially when we pray. Jesus leads His embryonic church to the Upper Room and they start to pray, together. In one accord, and in one place. This can’t be overstated. 

The power and connection we find in this mode is one of the most incredible gifts that He gives. It unites us, and our demographic, political, economic, and ethnic tribalism all melt in these moments. Who cares what (insert attribute here) you are in the presence of Almighty God? What difference doesn’t dim and fail to matter in the extraordinary unity of His Love and His Presence? These collective experiences, draw us, encourage us, inspire us, connect us, and lead us to what’s next.

There is no better inclusion than the singularity of mission shared by the redeemed. We are saved from, and to. What other details matter in the face of that glorious purpose?

God give us the vision to pray together, in the ways that are pleasing to You.

3. Canister

There is a wonderful story making the rounds about a canister found in the ruins of a Russian prison. We found, and pulled this version from Grok AI.

​_______________________________________

The Story: The Stones of Sukhanovka

In the dark years of Stalin’s reign, when the Soviet regime sought to erase the old Russia and its faith, countless churches were torn apart. Their golden domes were toppled, their icons burned, and their stones re-purposed for the machinery of the state. One such church, a small but cherished sanctuary near Vidnoye, just south of Moscow, met this fate in the late 1930s. Its walls, built of sturdy granite and limestone, were dismantled by order of the NKVD, the Soviet secret police. The stones weren’t discarded—they were too valuable for that. Instead, they were hauled to a nearby site, a former monastery called Ekaterinskaia Pustyn’, which the NKVD had transformed into Sukhanovka, a brutal special-regime prison for “enemies of the people.”

The prisoners at Sukhanovka—political dissidents, clergy, and others deemed dangerous—were forced into grueling labor. Among their tasks was to handle these very stones, once sacred, now reduced to raw material for prison walls and utilitarian structures. But not all the prisoners accepted this desecration quietly. A small group of believers, including a few Orthodox priests who had survived arrest, saw the stones differently. To them, these were not mere rocks but fragments of a holy past, stained with the prayers of generations. In secret, they whispered among themselves, making a pact born of faith and defiance.
One night, under the dim glow of a flickering lamp in their cramped cell, they acted. A monk named Father Alexei, whose hands still bore the calluses of swinging a censer rather than a pickaxe, scratched a message onto a scrap of paper torn from a smuggled Bible page. The note read: “These stones were once a house of God, torn apart by the hands of men. We pray that the Lord, in His mercy, will one day gather them again to sing His praise.” They sealed the note inside a rusted metal canister, perhaps an old tobacco tin scavenged from a guard’s refuse, and buried it among the stones they were stacking for a new prison barracks. As they worked, they prayed silently, entrusting their hope to God amid the despair of Sukhanovka, a place Alexander Solzhenitsyn would later call “the most terrible prison the MGB had.”

Years passed, and the Soviet Union crumbled. By 1992, the tides of history shifted. The Russian Orthodox Church, battered but enduring, began reclaiming what had been stolen. Sukhanovka, no longer a prison, was returned to its monastic roots. The barracks and walls, built with those pilfered stones, stood as grim reminders of the past. That year, as monks and volunteers began the slow work of restoring the site, they decided to erect a new church on the grounds—a symbol of resurrection over ruin.

During the construction, a laborer pried loose a stone from an old prison wall and heard a faint clatter. Beneath it lay the canister, dented and corroded but intact. Inside was Father Alexei’s note, its ink faded but legible. The discovery stunned the workers. The stones they were using, they realized, were the very ones taken from the church decades before—now being returned to their sacred purpose, just as the prisoners had prayed. Word spread, and the story took on a life of its own: a testament to faith’s quiet triumph over oppression. The new church, completed with those same stones, became a place of pilgrimage, its walls whispering a tale of divine providence fulfilled.

__________________________________


Thinking about the Canister, it seems to me that this kind of prayer is sublime and too often left for the moment of extremis, when it should be more intentional and purposive for us. This is a prayer for redemption in the face of injustice. A selfless prayer note, Canister filled time bomb for God to unleash His will and work in future context. A heavenly pay-it-forward blessing to the next generation.

In this case, it blesses the Christians who found the Canister, with it’s heartfelt prayer and prophetic purpose. It also blesses us, when we hear about it and are moved to know that God has a greater purpose than we see.

This is the prayer of Moses in the desert.

It is the prayer of Jeremiah in the burned stones of the ruined city.

It is Daniel, and later John, filling up Canisters with inspired scrolls, to us in hope, about chapters yet to come.

And it is the prayer of Jesus in the upper room. In John 17, our Savior was asking for an outpouring, and unity that He didn’t get to see, until He was on the other side of the Cross.

This isn’t denial or wishful thinking. It is not a stubborn refusing to acknowledge reality while hoping beyond hope that the heavenly pie in the sky is real in some metaphorical attempt to make ourselves feel better.

No.

This is the evidence of things unseen. The participation of God’s work in the earth, speaking in such a way as to draw our will into His, while trusting His timing, even when that outshining is not yet.

The question is this: what does God want in broken circumstances? What is His will that is beyond us or our ability to do it? What does He want for the next chapter, or perhaps even the next generation? What prayer should we pray, or what book should we write… to bless the ones to come?

Even in a state of hunger, sometimes we can selflessly meal prep in unbelievable ways. 

There is something deeply true and good about this idea of prayer. So set your heart… and prayer put a note into a Canister of faith.

4. Command

Sometimes prayer takes on something of an extraordinary voice.

Your sins are forgiven.

Hey you! Yes, you. Get up and walk.

God, I'm doing my utmost to obey your instructions. Please send fire from heaven... now.

Peace, be still (to the storms of nature itself).


Sometimes prayer is less like a feckless pleading, and more like Alexander deploying generals into the fray. 


Now, don’t misread my intent here. I’m not a name it claim it, blab it grab it, health, wealth, and ease, theologian.

But I do think that Father talks to us very directly in His word about a gospel divorced from heavenly power (and says with conviction to avoid this). If Jesus isn't just our Savior, but is also our Model for life and ministry, then this has some interesting possibilities attached. If, when He said, “even greater things will you do…” He wasn’t just speaking metaphorically, then we should ask what that looks like, and how to get there.

James tells us to call for elders, to pray over the sick, and then to pray in faith. There’s a longer story here (as James points us to Elijah as to how all of this works), but I think the short version is that this order matters. We pray “over” to align and ask what God is doing.

If through agreement and discernment, or through a supernatural outpouring of faith, we find that God is shining out in power, then we pray in faith, with boldness. That word for prayer in “prayer of faith” could be translated “vow.”

The vow of faith.

We see this when Jesus, or the prophets, or the disciples, or Paul, speak out in miraculous power - and then it happens - literally, physically, in the material world. The Red Sea parts, the child comes back to life, the blind eyes are opened and start to see. Obviously we can’t manufacture that, it is 100% dependent on the Holy Spirit and God moving. But God does lead us here sometimes, and miracles (both biblically and in the stories we hear today) come through His people and prayer.

This kind of prayer should be engaged in with care, and often with counsel. This isn’t witchcraft, or us "manifesting" what we want, but rather aligning our hearts and voices with the manifestation of God… to hear, then to bind on earth and trust in God to bind. Or release on earth, and with God, participate in that releasing in the mystery of His will.

Ask God what He wants to do here. Ask Him to build up your level of trust and faith to pray these kinds of “big prayers.” Then buckle your seat belt and get ready for the ride of your life.

Closet.

Corporate.

Canister.

Command.

​Let's go!