Lafayette Prayer Room Podcast
Join us as we discuss growing in God through prayer, worship and the word in the context of a prayer room.
Lafayette Prayer Room Podcast
Dallas Prayer Room Director, Brad Stroup, Pt 2, Ep 10
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Director of The Prayer Room in Dallas, Texas, with over 20 years of leading a prayer room, Brad Stroup talks about his extensive knowledge of prayer rooms across America.
So let me ask you this question. How would you encourage people who are drawn to the prayer room or they just want to grow in the Lord, um, but they are hesitant to commit to any kind of one set solidly? How would you encourage them to take a first step?
SPEAKER_01I'd actually use one of a hundred analogies to try to help them realize the faultiness of their thinking. And so just imagine not committing to a diet. I'm on a diet. Okay, what does that look like? Well, I'm not committed to it. That's not gonna work. Like, you're you're not gonna lose money. So the thought process of committing to weekly prayer meeting, it's the only way to make sure it really happens. We've got too many things going on in life. We're too busy, we've got too many things fighting for our attention, we've got too much weakness in our own flesh. Like, commitment is good. And we've grown up in a culture that's afraid of commitment, that's scared of commitment. I think it's a real hindrance to the body of Christ. Like we need to make commitments and then do our best to keep them. And when we mess up, don't beat yourself up and just like dust off and get back up and go for it again. Commitments are beautiful, commitments are gifts. Commitments keep us strong. I mean, your alarm clock goes off every day about the same time, and you've got a commitment to respond to it and get up. Well, if you didn't set your alarm clock, your day would be all jacked up. Like, we put things in our rhythms. Daily rhythms, weekly rhythms. We put things in our rhythms in order to keep us steadfast. And you take a shower about the same time every day. You go to church at the same time every week. This is how you make sure you go to church. Is it church doesn't happen at 9 a.m. one week and then it's 10 45 the next week and then it's six o'clock the next week. It's like it happens at the same time. That's a gift, so that we can build our schedules around it. So I would say, look, if you think you want to grow in a life of prayer, if you see the value of the prayer room, if you've been advertised to someone said and it transforms my life, take the plunge. Dive in and take a step. Don't be hesitant. Make the commitment, there'll be grace for you, you know, in the process, but like say yes and then try to do yes and grow in that because honestly, self-control is one of the fruit of the spectrum. And it's something that us Americans are really not great at. We've got so many things in our culture that are telling us the exact adverse. Have no self-control. Do whatever you want. You do you. Like, that is not godly. It is good to build into our lives rhythms of self-control where you get up and you go to that thing you said you'd go to. And then when you're in that room, that prayer room, you actually try to encounter the Lord. And then you come back again and do it again next week. So I would say like I think that it's some self-preservation that has been ingrained in us in a way that is not good. It's not healthy, that's got us to the point where we say, I value prayer. I think the house of prayer is a good thing, but I'm unwilling to commit to a weekly prayer meeting. I don't I don't think that's good.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I find a lot of people, I know through the years, 10-15 years, oh I feel called to prayer, or I know the Lord told me to start coming. And then it's followed by the statement, I'm gonna come when it works out. I'm gonna see them I'm gonna see them more, but I know that means I'm not gonna see them hardly at all, because that gets stolen in a second. The enemy will make sure it never works out. Now, let's swing to the other side of this spectrum because we're talking to someone who's who's maybe interested in coming or feels like they should. Now let's talk about those who are called to it, maybe some who have been with it for a while, or some who are wanting to grow in their commitment. How in a prayer room context do we develop the rhythms in life where it was just an interesting idea to be in the prayer room at first, but now we're looking at it more as I want to integrate this into my schedule in a real way, which, like you said, it means rhythm. So over and over and over, it has a consistency, a cohesiveness through your week. How would you encourage the ones who are wanting to develop that?
SPEAKER_01One of the encouragements that I get are leaders, but I also give to those that are that have busy lives that aren't that have a lot going on in their life. Um, I tell people prioritize in your schedule the things that matter to you, and allocate the amount of time that is needed for those things to be healthy. So, how much time do you need for your marriage, for your marriage to be healthy in a week? When are those times? Oh, gosh, I never thought about it. Well, you should. How much time do you need with your kids for you to be a good mom or good dad? Well, I don't know, I just give them all my time. That's a bad answer. God should have all your time. So, how much time do your kids need, not to get by, to have a healthy mom or dad relationship? How much time do you need to be spending at work? Okay? How many hours? Figure all that out. And then instead of and how much time do you need for fun? How much time do you need allocated to just watch a show? Just go, you know, on a walk? Yeah, how much time do you need for you to just whatever? Figure out the answers to these questions and then say, God, all the other remaining hours are yours. We do it the opposite. We go, God, I'll give you an hour a week, and then the rest of my week is mine. And I just think we're squandering our time. And that we're gonna stand before the Lord, and he's gonna go, uh, I told you to think on things above and not on earthly things. I told you you were gonna be rewarded according to what you did, how you spent your time in your life, and you squandered it on yourself. So I'm not saying cheat your family, cheat your social life, cheat your sleep life. I'm saying, how many hours of sleep do you need? Don't do more. How many hours does your family need? Give them that. How many hours does your work assignment need? Commit to that. And then how many hours are left over? Well, you actually have a good amount of time now. And go, okay, well, Lord, I'm gonna spend a lot of time with you. So now you could actually pretend you could probably slate being at the prayer room an hour a day, seven days a week, or five days a week. Like you could actually do it because you you went the opposite direction. We always say, I don't have enough time for this, I don't have enough time for this. Well, the problem is we didn't schedule our time, so it all got squandered. It all got lost in scrolling, in on our way to this appointment, but we had so much uh wiggle time between this appointment and that appointment. Um, it's just it's just squandered time, and you can redeem it. And so I just look at my life in the season of like, I'm the busiest I've ever been in my life. But I'm also probably the most uh careful or the most allocated. My time is allocated in ways it's like, well, I value this, so it gets some time, and I value this, and it gets some time. Value being with my kids and doing this, and and every as so long as you can reassess every few months, because life changes, the kids needs increase or change the relationship with my spouse. Like, sometimes we need more time than others, figure it out, retool it, but don't just throw caution to the wind and like, I don't know, my week just looks like my week. Whatever happens, happens. That's a wasteful way to live. So I would say you can absolutely build in daily rhythms into the prayer room. I've been doing it for 20 years, and for two of those years, I was working full-time uh in real estate, uh, and I had 14 prayer meetings a week. I was committed to 14 one-hour prayer meetings a week, and I had a full hour, a full-time job that was an hour drive each way to work in bed. You can find a way to do a daily prayer meeting in your busy life and schedule. Yes, you can. You just got to choose to do it. And so, whether you're talking about somebody that's got a full-time job or their full-time school or they're a full-time homeschool mom, and you're talking about trying to figure out how to get more rhythm of prayer into that lifestyle, or you're trying to figure out how to get the rhythms into the lifestyle of someone that's joining staff with you, and what does that look like? I think the conversation of build into your schedule the amount of hours every week that is good, that is healthy for each of the things in your life, and then stop thinking of all the rest of the time as whatever happens, happens. Instead, be intentional with it and redeem it and use it for Jesus.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I agree. Um, something that helped us, we did this several years ago, and now we do it every year. It's a chart where your time is broken down in 15-minute increments of a week. And we all took that and filled it out, honestly, not what we wish it was, and we were all shocked at all the little pockets of time that we wasted that could have been used either to do that list that you said, you know, family, your husband, your wife, your kids, your job. We thought I have to do the things I have to do, and there's nothing left over, but we realized with filling that out, there is all kind of time left over that I'm just kind of wasting away on nothing. It adds up to nothing, you know, not recreation. That's something you should have on that chart that needs to be there. It's a lot of other things that just it's nothing, but I find we we do what we really want to do. Even when we don't have any time, we somehow manage to do what we really want to do, and so when that hunger for the Lord or that urgency hits, it's like it's not okay anymore that I'm not answering this call. There is something for me on the other side of this call that I don't get if I don't respond and come through this thing the Lord's calling me into. Uh, so I know for us, we were all just shocked at how much time we waste. Thought we were all so busy, but not until we wrote it down in those small increments that we see I have more time than I think. I have more time than I have claimed to have. And to stop, we've heard the we all heard the phrase to stop living by the tyranny of the urgent. Because something's always gonna demand you. It's what you choose to do with you because we have limited time, it's what I choose to do at my time. So I love how you put that and how to develop those rhythms. It's possible, I guess is what we want to say. In 2026, in America, it's possible. It does require some rearranging, but it is possible.
SPEAKER_01It's so much for fun because we were made to live wholehearted, and we actually feel like we're not doing what we were made for when we're not giving our all, when there is so much squandered time. So uh great point.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so you really have your ear to the ground on the prayer movement within actually, you have some global um experience, but for America, I know you've seen many different expressions of prayer, whether it's prayer rooms or praying churches. Uh, just give a quick synopsis of what the landscape looks like right now in the realm of prayer.
SPEAKER_01So uh I think it might be helpful to give a little bit of backstory on that. We've been tracking houses of prayer and to the best that we can, praying churches uh for the past 15 years uh in America. And uh there was a season of time where in America uh there were about 850 houses of prayer that we knew of that had a website, had a Facebook page, something, you know? Um, and that was in the heyday, uh back in like 2013, 2014. That's when things were really uh going. But then the whole prayer movement experienced a pruning, just a challenge and a difficulty. And I think a lot of Houses of Prayer just realized we started this because we thought it was gonna be fun and cool. This is really hard. And that number probably went down, you know, more somewhere around like it dropped to like maybe 300 or so, which was just like, oh my gosh, we just lost a ton of houses of prayer across the nation. But over the last five, six, seven years, that number has been growing again. And so we're back up somewhere, I would guess, about 500 um houses of prayer and and praying churches in America. I hear monthly, maybe more, about a new one that I was like, oh, I didn't know they were there. Oh, yeah, and they've been there for years. And so there is a trend of this growing. And here's one of the fun things uh that I just think is a bit of a trend that the Lord wants us to pay attention to. Um, in 2013, when I said there were about 850, only a handful of those were praying churches. Most of them were parachurch organizations, like we are, uh like you guys. Um but over the last number of years, the trend has greatly shifted. And I would say now it's probably more like 60% or maybe even more are praying churches and the others are parachurch. So I just look at that and I go, I think it was always essential that churches started to see we need a prayer room in our church. And so I don't think the Lord is in any way done with folks like you and me that are doing parachurch organization. I just think that it's inevitable and essential and such a good thing that churches are starting to take hold of this and say, we need to put a church in the middle, or we need to put a prayer room in the middle of our church. Um, I just think that that is such a win for the body of Christ and is a significant pivoting trend.
SPEAKER_00So on this subject, while we're here, let's throw out that you guys have a leadership summit that you offer. Uh, you and your co-op of prayer rooms, prayer room leaders, put this on. We've been to two so far and can't wait to go to our third one. They've been at your prayer room the last few, and this year in September, it's actually in Pasadena. So we're all excited to go there and experience that. Why don't you give a little spiel of what that offers? It's the best thing ever.
SPEAKER_01You gotta come. There are very few resources and very few events that are created specifically for House of Prayer leaders. I mean, that is a very niche, small little group. That's what this event is for. It is for those that are leading houses of prayer or praying churches. And there's three kind of main objectives to encourage, because my gosh, it's hard. You know, like it's it's tough. We're in the trenches. So there's gonna be encouragement. You will walk away encouraged. I can say that confidently after being a part of three of these. And Tristan's like, hey man, yeah. Um equipped. We want to equip. We don't want it to just be kumbaya fun. We want to give some equipping. So there'll be some pieces that you'll walk away with going, I learned some things, I got some tools in my belt that I didn't have coming into this uh conference. And then also to connect. Uh one of the funnest things, and you've been touching on it, Trista, is that House of Prayer leaders getting to connect with other House of Prayer leaders from across the country that are doing the same thing in a different city with a little bit different flavor, but it's the same thing. And to just meet each other so that all the islands come together uh to form an archipelago instead of just individual islands. It's like we're an island nation, a nation of islands, you know. It's so fun to be together, and this summit that we're gonna do in September, looking at the date, September 25th, I'm sorry, 23rd through 26th, will be in Pasadena at the International House of Prayer, Pasadena Pie Hop. Um, and that's the information ought to be on their website probably by the time this podcast comes out. Um, any any day now, I would think. That summit is gonna be highly relational. You will meet other house of prayer leaders. It's so encouraging to meet other some of my best friends on the planet are House of Prayer leaders that I met at an event like this one 15 or 16 years ago. And it's actually because of those relationships that we started the co-op. And some of those folks are in the co-op and I've got to be buddies with for this long, that I met in an environment in a context like the one I'm describing. It's there's nothing like it. And so uh it's like four days of cutting loose, you know, you don't have to have your guard up, lots of times of sweet worship, intimate times of worship with worship teams that have been doing it, you know, for a long time. Uh getting to sit under teaching of leaders that have been living this lifestyle for 20 years, and some of them 25 years. It's just it's rich. And so that's what I would say the conference is. But let me turn that back around on you. Why did you like it? What did you experience? Fill in the gaps.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the information, the practical information, the inspirational information given out by those who were in the same race at the same pace, basically, is hugely beneficial because there's a ton of good stuff out there in the Christian world, of stuff you can hear, of tools, of there's just so much now available. But the the window for a prayer room leader, prayer room team, those who lead with you, that's that's real small in terms of resources of organizations giving that out. So this is like a wrapped-up gift with a pretty bow. It is the you know, the the relational fun and stuff, but it's also you open it and there's a wealth of treasure inside of it that really it inspires you, it refreshes you. Every time we have come away from those, we just cannot stop talking about it for weeks after, and we go back to the archives and we're listening to each of the sessions or the ones we missed because we were in another one. Uh, they are so good, and they come back and really spur us on, and we always come back and make these little tweaks that we learn there, like, oh, this is gonna work really well for this with our group, and the meeting others who are in the trenches, and you said this earlier, uh, but hearing someone say, We've been in a prayer room for like 10 years, there's been four of us, and I'm just like, wow, I am so impressed with just the faithfulness, and so it encourages us another small prayer room that may seem small, you know, like or insignificant, or what's the impact, and to see others who have gone ahead and who have stayed faithful, that's hugely encouraging.
SPEAKER_01So I cannot say enough about how good these are until you come and experience it, you just cannot feel the measure of the impact it will be.
SPEAKER_00Give some practical tips of how to make the most of your time in a prayer room. Uh, maybe, maybe you're thinking, I couldn't even do an hour, let alone four. You know, how do I feel that time? How do I not get bored? Uh, what do I do with that time?
SPEAKER_01I've done this a few times. So, yes, uh, you know, for our prayer meetings are two hours long, but I'll go with the one-hour prayer meeting concept because maybe somebody's like, even if the prayer meeting's two hours long, I'm only gonna commit to one hour right now. Okay, let's go with an hour. Um come in with a plan. If you don't have a plan, of course you get bored. But I mean, you might get bored at the mall if you just went aimlessly were at the mall. But if you're like, no, I gotta go to this store, I'm gonna get lunch at the food court, I'm gonna do this, and then I gotta be out of there by you know three o'clock. Have a plan. Maybe your plan is sing the known worship songs portion of the prayer meeting. And when they're doing worship songs, I'm gonna sing the worship songs, and I myself am gonna try to touch Jesus in worship just like I would Sunday morning at a church. Like I'm gonna not just be in the worship moment, I'm gonna try to worship. Great idea. You just took up half the prayer meeting, just that way, you know, or some amount of prayer meeting time. Come in with some things that you want to talk to the Lord about. Um a test of your prayer life is if you don't have enough things you want to talk to the Lord about to be able to have 20 minutes of conversation with the Lord every day, you probably want to stretch that muscle because you can talk to the Lord about everything. I don't mean ask him for stuff. I mean, Lord, how do you feel about my marriage right now? What do you what do you want from my marriage? Speak to me. That's a 20 minute conversation. The next day, Lord, how do you feel about me at my work? I really don't love my job. What do you want me to do there? Lord, how do you feel about my spot at church right now? Am I am I doing at church what I should be? Should I be given more of my time, volunteering more? Should I You know, Lord, my overall prayer life is kinda like not great. Can you what what do you want to do? What would you want to inject? Come with a plan. What are some things you could talk to him about? Slate some time in every prayer meeting that you could just talk to him. Also, read the Bible. But don't read it to get through chapters so that you can be the chapter hero. Read it and go slow enough you can talk to him about it. Like when something catches your eye, let me just give you an encouragement. For the most part, if you're reading and something catches your spirit, don't keep reading. Stop. Camp out. There might be a gold mine right there that the Lord wants to speak to you about. He wants to dig a well in your heart. Like read that way. Where you're reading slow enough with enough of a non-agenda that you can stop and let the Lord minister to you. You can ask him questions. How did you say that? How does this impact my life? Oh Jesus, this made me think of my friend. God touch my friend. That you can actually slow down. Um I really like to pace in prayer meetings. Um, and sometimes I'll pace with I'm gonna talk to the Lord about something. Sometimes I'll just pace and go, oh God, I love you. Help me love you. Lord, I love you, help me to love you, please help me. All these years, I just want to love you, help me love you. And I'll just pray back and forth and just pace. Um have a plan. Like an hour is no time at all if you've broken that hour up into well, I'm gonna do this for about 20 minutes, I'm gonna do this for about 15, do this for 20 minutes. I mean, you won't have enough time to get the thing done if you want to do. Great problem to have. Now you can go back to it again tomorrow. Um, but I would say if you come into prayer meetings consistently without a plan, no wonder you're bored.
SPEAKER_00Agree. Okay, so last question, and this is a fun one. Tell me what is your most funny or unholy moment in the prayer room. Um, because we all imagine, you know, we're in there just connecting with the Lord all the time. But we if you when once you get a little bit of time under your belt, you have some moments that are the most unholy moments imaginable.
SPEAKER_02So give us one of those for you.
SPEAKER_01I'll give you four. I'll just give you a couple of them, and I'll cover a wide variety of things. Uh, there was one prayer meeting where one of our leaders, he was so tired, he had just adopted two kids, and he already had uh no, no, he adopted four kids. I'm sorry, two pairs of sisters. And two of them, the two, the youngest were infants, and he wasn't sleeping at all. It was so normal for him to fall asleep in the prayer room. So normal. Okay, so one day in the prayer meeting, he fell asleep, and rather than wake him up, we all went around the prayer room, and we were in a big uh room at that time. We probably had 20 Kleenex boxes that were spread out all across the room. We went and got all 20 Kleenex boxes and we put them on him while he was sleeping. So he was covered in Kleenex boxes, and then we took pictures of him, and then we removed all the Kleenex boxes. So then when he woke up, we texted the thread, the picture.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_01So unholy, I know. I I'm I'm a shameful person. Okay, here's another one. It was Christmas Day, and I don't remember what year it was. You could probably go back and check the weather forecast of when did it snow in Dallas on Christmas. Well, Christmas Day and Christmas Eve are always a ghost house out here. And I always love to do my sets on Christmas Day and Christmas Eve because it's just the sweetest, like it's normally just two or three of us. I mean, it's just it's really sweet. All right, so one of our leaders, Caslin, uh now Fred and Berg, at the time she was Caslin Smith. Uh Castlin was leading worship. And it starts snowing outside. It's Christmas. Okay, it's just me and her, and there's one other person out in the lobby. And so we're it's a ghost house. And you know, it's Christmas Day, and like we're not with our family doing Christmas right now because we're at the prayer room serving Jesus and it starts snowing. And I am so excited. I go out and I make a snowball and I come in and I pelt it at her while she's leading worship, and she can't do anything.
SPEAKER_02She's just she just looks at me and kind of gives me this growl look because she's still fucking leading worship, and I just pelted her with a snowball. It was the greatest thing ever. I just laughed and I videotaped her response, and I was like, this is just great, man. You just this is so fun.
SPEAKER_01Um uh another time uh we had some interns, and something happened that was so exciting. I don't remember what it was, but I was so excited, and there was like maybe five or six of us in the room, so it was a big prayer meeting, you know, like five or six of us. And something happened that was so exciting, we were just excited, we're like, Jesus, this is great. And I don't know why, but for some reason, we all picked up chairs off the ground and put them on our head backwards and started running around the room in a conga line with chairs on our heads. We're just so excited, we're so thankful.
SPEAKER_02And it made such a memory for those those interns. They were just like, Man, you remember that time we'd all dance with the prayer with the chairs on our head? I mean, I've got a million.
SPEAKER_01Like, we are just a wild group. And, you know, it's not unusual at all that the worship leader will sneeze and the three or four of us in the room will all go, bless you. And it gets it's on the web stream. You can hear it. Like, you can hear three or four, bless you. You know what I mean? Just like we're just we're just in the room together, and it's not it's not so holy that it's only God in the room. It's holy because he's in the room, but we're in the room together, and we recognize there's that human dynamic, the human relationship dynamic, and he loves his kids enjoying him. And so the key is to not let it be a distracting moment that goes on for 20 minutes, you know. But but then to get back to it, and and I just think those moments are precious, and and Caslan, by the way, totally got me back while I was preaching a few years ago. It was snowing outside while I was preaching, and she went, she got the snowball, and she hit me in front of the whole room, and the whole room is like, what is she doing? And I was like, touche, yeah. I had that coming, just and everybody's like, What? Oh my gosh! I was like, no, no, it's fine. It's this was right, this was a good thing. So that got recorded on the teaching, you know.
SPEAKER_00Um, so we're just we're just us. I love that, and I love that you give y'all permission to do it because I think just in those moments we've had a few in our prayer room. I just think, God, you're laughing with this. Like he has such a great sense of humor. We're made like him to get, you know, just tickled over something, and we can't stop laughing, or something hijacks it for a second. And you know, God never lets that happen in the middle of a weighty moment. It's just his kindness that he lets those little windows of open, and it it was it didn't interrupt anything, not really. You know, we all we all had the moment, we all laughed, and then we recovered and went back.
SPEAKER_01I got one more because this just this just makes me laugh. One of our worship leaders, again, we do the early morning prayer meetings, so it's there's a chance that you're really tired when you show up for a 5 a.m. set the worship leader in the middle of singing, fell asleep while they were singing. And you know how when you're like in that in-between state, sometimes you say things that are not super coherent. They say they said it on the mic, and we all in the room realized what had happened, and we turned it into a chorus, and it was unintelligible. It wasn't-I don't remember what we sang, but it wasn't-it was only partial words, and they weren't words that went together, and we made it a chorus, and we all started singing.
SPEAKER_02The way we woke him up was he heard us singing his chorus, and he didn't realize he mothered out in his sleep, and we all just laughed. Just it was the funniest moment. So, yeah, learn to laugh at yourself. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Be real people in the prayer room. You're just real people, you know. We have real moments. So, no, I love it. So glad you asked that question. Nobody ever asked me that. That's great. So, one little announcement uh Brad will be with us in the Lafayette prayer room on August 29th. Uh, we're gonna have them the whole day. Uh, so we get you back to to pour into us and ask you a bunch of questions and just spend time with us. Uh, my group is very much looking forward to having you back in the prayer room. So, anybody in the Lafayette area, come join us. We'll be announcing it. It'll be on all the social media stuff uh coming up in August. So we're super excited to have you back, Brad.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. Can't wait to be with you.
SPEAKER_00So thankful that you made time. I know you have a very busy schedule. So thank you so much for taking time out to be with us. You've poured into us anytime I've asked, you've always poured into us. Uh, but thank you for this. We will definitely have you on at a future date to talk some more with us because we really scratched the surface on a lot of things we could have gone into. Uh, but thank you so much, and we will release you back to TPR World.
SPEAKER_01Well, what a blessing. Thanks for having me today. What a joy, Trista. You're killing it, keep going for it. Love that you're doing these podcasts. And uh, just as a point of encouragement, even to this day, there are so few that are uh that are in the room when I teach or that are on a zoom call when I do the zoom call, but uh in the moment. But the fact that a resource is created that can be accessed by others later, you just never know who's gonna be impacted by it. And I've seen that be super powerfully impacting again and again uh in the future. So thank you for your faithfulness and uh keep going for it.
SPEAKER_00Thank you for the kind words, Brad. So we'll talk to you later. We're so glad you guys chose to spend time with us today. We hope the episode was encouraging and strengthening wherever you are in your walk with the Lord or with your prayer group. You can find us on all the podcast hubs on Facebook, Instagram, or our website, thelatheatperroom.org. So until next time, bye guys.