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For many years my wife Jaqueline Lodos has been attracted to the presence of God in a very intense way, and for a long time no one around her understood what was happening, what God was doing. From this place the Lord spoke to her intensely about the urgency of this hour, the judgement that was to come over the earth and the need of the church to enter into profound intimacy with Him in order to not be deceived in this hour.
At the end of 2005, the Lord started a work in my life which impacted and restored me. I was brought into a place where Jackie and I began to walk in alignment, for I finally began to be taken out of a superficial relationship with God and brought to a place of knowing Him more deeply. It was at this time that the Lord clearly told us to watch because our lives were prophetic; that is, we would not only speak prophetically, but our actions as a family would be prophetic.
In January 2006, the Lord took us supernaturally to Toronto where we attended the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship conference. We were extremely blessed there. The Lord also gave us the opportunity to visit the Niagara Falls, even at a temperature of -40ºC.
From there we went straight on to Brazil, and two special things happened. The first was that, with no prior plans, we visited the Iguaçu Falls. The second was that the Lord took us to stop by at the House of David Ministry in Londrina.
In this visit, the Lord spoke a lot to us through Mike Shea and his team, but he also gave me a prophetic picture: in the same proportion as the Iguaçu Falls are bigger than the Niagara Falls, so would be the revival that the Lord is bringing. This new revival would be proportionately bigger than the Toronto revival.
Mike Shea and his team were immensely impacted because the prophetic picture confirmed exact words that the Lord had spoken to them before our visit, also related to the Niagara and Iguaçu Falls. Mike said that the Iguaçu Falls are 12 times bigger than the Niagara Falls.
At the time, I thought that the Lord had done all this to confirm to the House of David Ministry what He had already spoken to them prophetically before our visit. After meditating on this recently, however, the Lord made me understand that there is much more to this prophetic picture than what I had previously seen.
The House of David ministry is the first recent ministry in Brazil to have a vision for 24-hour prayer that goes on for seven days a week. For this reason, I believe that the Lord was not only speaking of the House of David Ministry, but rather of the 24/7 house of prayer movement.
What God showed us was that in the same proportion as the Iguaçu Falls were larger than the Niagara Falls (about 12 times bigger), so would be the revival that came from the movement of day and night prayer. The Toronto revival touched and awakened the hearts of over 5 million people across the world.
In November of 2006, the Lord led us to fast as a family for 21 days. Jackie and I, and our two children, entered into this period of fasting in our household. From this point on the Lord did amazing things in our family (we discovered the power of fasting as a family) and our home was never the same.
At the end of this fast, the Lord took us to Israel for 15 days. We understood this as a prophetic sign that we were entering into our destiny.
During the first day of my fast, the Lord instructed me to study the book of Daniel and the Song of Songs. I thought it quite strange to study the prophetic book of Daniel together with the romantic book of the Song of Songs. I did not understand what the Lord wanted, but I obeyed.
For all of those 21 days I was driven to meditate everyday on Daniel and the Song of Songs. On one day I would feel led to study and meditate on the prophecies of Daniel, then on the other, the poems of the Song of Songs. Sometimes I would stay on one book for two or three days, but I would always be taken back to the other.
As I meditated on these two books the Lord began to speak to me about the need of having passion for Him, like the love described in the Song of Songs, in order to be prepared for the last days (Daniel). I started to understand that the movement of God in awakening the church to her identity as the passionate Bride of Christ was not something isolated or temporary, but rather a strategy to prepare us for the difficult times that are ahead.
We understand now that the Bridal Paradigm and The End Times message are foundational for what God is doing through the prayer movement.
In January of 2007 God began to do something new in our community (Anointing and Life Church, London). The messages preached carried a new weight of a calling to a new level of relationship with God. The most amazing thing, however, was not what was preached, but the fact that God began to manifest Himself in our midst. We started to experience the manifest presence of the Lord in an intense way. Lives were radically transformed by these encounters with the Lord. Passionate people began to arise among us.
People who lived in problems for years and had tried everything (counselling, prayer for deliverance, etc…) were radically changed in one encounter with the manifest presence of the Lord.
In March 2007 we felt that the Lord wanted us to draw closer to IHOP-KC. We felt that we should transmit the live web-stream of the “Passion for Jesus” conference to our church. It was incredible, because everything we heard in that conference was practically all that the lord had been speaking to us, and even with the same emphasis. We were impacted by this, and the Lord led us to understand that He was the one doing this and that He had a purpose.
I felt that the Lord wanted us to go to Kansas City and visit IHOP there. In a miraculous way, He took us there in April and Jackie and I spent a week there. We were very much impacted, but what amazed us most, and I believe that this is the reason why the Lord took us there, was that what the Lord had been doing and speaking to us in the past years was exactly in line with the vision that God had given and revealed to IHOP-KC. Even specific verses that Jackie received in the secret place of prayer were confirmed.
We came back with the conviction that God had a specific purpose with this connection. It became clear that God was not doing something isolated with us, but that it was all part of a process of alignment in the church for this new season in God’s plan to fulfil all of his prophetic counsel that was already determined in the Word.
Back in London, we felt the Lord challenge us to do twelve consecutive hours of worship and intercession. After this, the Lord told us to do 24 hours, establishing the Harp and Bowl model as the model we would use. We trained worshipers and intercessors (in Harp and Bowl, Rev 5:8 ) and we had our first 24 consecutive hours of worship and intercession on 7/7/07. In this prophetic date, we felt that the Lord was initiating a new cycle; for it was the end of a 40-year period and the beginning of a new generation in the Lord.
The Lord spoke prophetically to us about his purpose of establishing a 24/7 house of prayer in London that would remain open until the Lord’s return. We also felt the Lord telling us that the next stage would be 48 hours of consecutive worship and intercession. On the 24th of August we started the 48 hours and only stopped on Sunday the 26th.
After this, we did many more intensives culminating in 100 consecutive hours of worship and intercession during the last four days of the year. A large part of the community practically camped in our small space, praying and singing in two-hour sets. It was during these days that the Lord told us that 2008 would be an extremely strategic year for the continuity of His plans to establish a centre of day and night worship and intercession in London.
During 2008, we continued to train “potential intercessory missionaries”. We did 32 consecutive hours every month and various two-hour sets during the week.
The Lord has also given us a vision to structure various formats of training. IHOP-London is already a reality, and is growing to be a centre of worship and intercession and a mission’s base for training.
Elcio A. Lodos
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Elcio and Jackie Lodos have worked together in full time ministry for more then 20 years. They have established and pastored churches for many years in Brazil and in the last 11 years have worked as leaders of Anointing and Life a ministry that reaches out to Portuguese speaking as well as English speaking people in the North West of London, and is part of The London City Church network.