Alan was among the pastors at the Word and Spirit Conference in Tennessee (Season 1 Ep 20) where Don first led Pastors to listen in prayer who quickly adopted and adapted Don’s approach into his own church. Now years later,i Don and Jen meet up with Alan and Raylene Kraft as they share how they came to understand the role that listening in prayer can and should play in prayer and how the role of Holy Spirit and listening prayer have grown to take a more central focus in their church’s ministry.
Note: Alan Kraft is the Pastor of Christ Community Church in Greeley Colorado and the Author of More: When Just a Little of the Spirit is not Enough and Raylene Kraft is a leader of Hope Abounds Ministry.
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Raylene Kraft: I had already been on this journey of just realizing God actually speaks and that prayer is a dialogue and not just a list. I still remember the guy we prayed for the first time we kind of started this and it was this cowboy kind of manly man. And, he left the session and it was really cool, but then we cleaned up and kinda did the room and then as we were leaving, he was still out in the parking lot. Jumping and dancing around his pickup, shouting I hear from God, and I thought, yes, you do. We all do. And so that’s just been our journey of just wanting to help other people experience that.
[00:01:25] Don Love: Hello. I’m Don love the host of unquenchable, and this is my bride ministry partner and Co-host Jennifer Love.
[00:01:32] Jennifer Love: That’s Me! We’ve finished last season, talking about ministry to pastors. As we had a short prayer session, we led at a pastors conference in Tennessee. You can go back and listen to episodes 19 and 20 to hear some of the testimonies that came out of that conference.
[00:01:46] Don Love: That conference was three years ago now. And Jen and I just finished our 10 day Pray Through It tour through Colorado, where we followed up with these pastors from season one. And on this trip, helped their congregation to take the next steps by demonstrating and explaining the biblical basis for listening and inner healing prayer in their churches. In the next few episodes among other things, we’ll be discussing a bit about how the growing understanding of these pastors practice of listening in prayer is reshaping the way that they and their people minister to one another. But before we introduce our guests today, we have a few upcoming events. In March, we have a soul care retreat and a castle in Lexington, North Carolina.
[00:02:25] Jennifer Love: In April, we have a women’s retreat in Lynchburg, Virginia,
[00:02:28] Don Love: And keep an eye out for details about an in-person pray through training coming up in may.
[00:02:34] Jennifer Love: You can check out, Pray Through It.com for details. And while you’re listening, why not help us to reach others by giving us a five star view, and maybe writing a sentence or two telling others what they can expect to get from listening to the show. Last season. I mentioned that we had the privilege of staying at the house of Alan Kraft. He’s the lead pastor of Christ community church in Greeley, Colorado, and the author of More: When Just a Little of the Spirit is Not Enough. What we didn’t mention was that Alan was among the pastors that we prayed through things with at that conference in Tennessee.
[00:03:02] Don Love: At that time, I didn’t know who he was, nor that he and his wife Rayleen were well on their way to lead their church, to practice in their own approach, to listening and inner-healing prayer. What perhaps amazes me the most about Alan is how engaged he is in learning and how quickly he applies, what he’s learning in his own walk and in his church. When we first met, he watched, as I prayed through things with another pastor. And when we were done praying, he slid into the seat beside me and said, you’ve got time for one more? And so we prayed through some things with him as well, that day. And then later that same day, Alan told me, you know, I really like your approach in listening in prayer, and I’m going to implement some of these things in my church sometimes soon. What really shocked me though was later that same week, he called me with a listening and inner healing prayer that he had written and he was telling me that he was going to use that, that very Sunday in his church. And then I was shocked again, as he offered to host a training in his church the very next month. And the more that I’ve gotten to know, Alan, the more that I see there’s something in the way that he leads his congregation that exemplifies the Apostle Paul’s encouragement to follow me as I follow Christ. So today, whether you’re a pastor or just someone desiring something more in your own walk in your church. I encourage you to join us as Alan and his bride Raylene share a bit about their prayer journey and how that has rippled into their church.
[00:04:26] Jennifer Love: So, Alan, why do you think it was that when you saw Don modeling, listening and inner-healing prayer, you were able to so quickly see something and apply it right away in your church. Is that something you normally do?
[00:04:35] Alan Kraft: I don’t know. My wife is nodding. That’s probably my personality more than anything. But I think we have a huge passion for inner healing. So seeing you guys utilizing it, maybe in a little different way that yeah, I thought this would be worth, exposing our people to, and our leaders to and interacting with. And so I probably do, if I find something like that, I tend to move pretty quickly.
[00:05:02] Jennifer Love: Could you guys tell us a little bit more about your journey?
[00:05:05] Alan Kraft: One of the first “ahas” for us was God is speaking and the Spirit wants to speak to us. And so I feel like that just opened up this whole world for me personally, and I think for Raylene too, in terms of her journals and some of the things with our son with special needs, and really, I felt like it opened up a beautiful flood gate of intimacy that we just began to experience.
[00:05:34] Jennifer Love: Has your church always been open to listening and inner healing prayer?
[00:05:37] Alan Kraft: Well, I think because it was such a part of our own lives, what we were journeying in, I don’t really feel like it was an immediate thing. I think we just began to look for ways to help other people experience what we’re experiencing. And so we put together a listening prayer class teaching the principles of listening prayer, and then actually practicing in the class. We just began to look for ways to help people kind of learn that this is a normal part of their Christian life. And so I feel like it was more of that kind of a approach. We were experiencing it, we wanted other people to experience it as well. And so then, we would just look for other ways to do this in terms of Maybe at the end of a sermon, rather than just doing the pastoral prayer, to have people ask the Lord a question. It’s just kind of a normal part of our church, now that God speaks and we can hear his voice and grow in that. And what was for you Rayleen what was kind of the journey in terms of inner healing prayer? Cause you went to a training or something and that seemed to light a fire in your heart.
[00:06:52] Raylene Kraft: Yeah. I think I had already been on this journey of just realizing God actually speaks and that prayer is a dialogue and not just a list. I was raised Mennonite and so that was just a really weird thing to realize, I think I actually heard from the Lord. Or I, I actually felt something in my body. I think God’s communicating to me. And so that just ignited this thirst and this hunger. So yeah. Then a couple of my friends were gonna go try this prayer training and I am very quiet and introverted. I do not put myself out there and I actually asked if I could go along. Like, that was like a really unusual thing, but I just like, I want to do that. And so we went to this training and it rocked my world. I just sat there in that session like, what just happened to me? And it was awesome. It’s like, I just felt connected to the Lord in a way that I had never had, he came in, touched a memory and it was just like, I want to do more of this. So the three of us just came home and we bought the DVDs and we sat and watched them over and over and over. And we practiced on each other and just continued to grow in this ability to…to dialogue and to have the faith to expect he actually wants to answer. Yeah. But he actually has an opinion on some of these things that are heavy on my heart. And so, yeah, it’s just been a great, great journey and introducing other people to that. I still remember the guy we prayed for the first time we kind of started this, you and I were praying, and it was this cowboy kind of manly man. And, he left the session and it was really cool, but then we cleaned up and kinda did the room and then as we were leaving, he was still out in the parking lot. Jumping and dancing around his pickup, shouting I hear from God, and I thought, yes, you do. We all do. And so that’s just been our journey of just wanting to help other people experience that.
[00:09:23] Don Love: So tell me about what touching a memory means. What does it mean that God touched a memory?
[00:09:27] Raylene Kraft: For me, that means a memory that probably has a vulnerable place or a hurt attached to it. And just asking the Lord to show me where he was and to realize he was there with me and to show me the truth about that situation, because I think so many times we believe lies in those vulnerable hurt places. And we don’t know they are, but we clutch tightly to them the rest of our life and so for him to come in and bring truth and to do whatever he wants to do, and that memory. Rewrite it. Erase it. Walk me out of it. It’s always different every time. And that’s what I love about Jesus. He’s just always so gentle and so good. And just so surprising. It’s just exciting.
[00:10:27] Don Love: So do you have any other examples of any other moments that were kind of monumental in your church as these things happened?
[00:10:36] Alan Kraft: I think as you’re talking about it , yeah, it’s something that we experience. And then as a pastor, I want my people to begin to experience this. And so part of it was setting up this ministry, we call Hope Abounds and we’ve adapted it and use some inner healing kinds of things that have been helpful along the way incorporating that, and then after, , at the end of sermons inviting people to envision Jesus standing in front of them. And is there a burden you’re carrying and why don’t you hand that to the Lord? What does that burden look like? And why don’t you hand that to the Lord and what does he do with it. Trying to incorporate it in to everything we do. So we recently developed a class called experiencing intimacy with Jesus. It’s a seven week class where I teach some content and then people have homework and then they come back and they process the homework, what they experienced. I teach the practice of stillness. Being present in the moment so that we can be present to the Lord and then they practice that or teach them the Lord’s prayer, how to pray through the Lord’s prayer as a paradigm for prayer. So those are a few things. I think that over the years they have impacted us and then we’ve looked for ways to help other people begin to taste of that and experienced that as well.
[00:11:53] Don Love: Yeah. So one of the questions that comes up, every meeting that we go to is how do I know the difference between my thoughts and God’s speaking to me. Sometimes the enemy is very clear because there’s something different about the enemy speaking, but how do I know if I’m listing. That I’m truly hearing the Lord and not myself and my own imagination? How do I know that?
[00:12:16] Alan Kraft: I’ve kind of been intrigued by this idea that God actually uses our thoughts cause for a long time, I kind of had this feeling like it’ll be a whisper from the Lord. I don’t know how to describe this. This may sound a little weird, but it will sound like my thoughts and that’s okay. Right. It’s probably gonna sound like the way I would say something. It’s not going to sound like Billy Graham. The language he would use, no, it’s going to sound like Alan Craft. Now it’s really hard to hear the Lord when it’s a decision about one of our children and someone they’re dating or whatever. We have so much invested and so much emotion there, it’s really hard. But what I think, what we’re talking about is just cultivating intimacy with Jesus. And when we’re doing. Let’s just explore that and not be afraid of it , and just be discerning, making sure there’s nothing we’re hearing that violates anything in scripture. But what would you say Raylene?
[00:13:18] Raylene Kraft: Yeah, I think that’s all good. I think sometimes you do just have this sense of your heart’s pounding or there’s ah, I’m just breaking out and heat, , it was just, there is just this feel. You can just feel that the holy spirit is on you and you just know without a shadow of a doubt or. sometimes I have to look up a word in the dictionary. It’s like that couldn’t have come from no, that word. Exactly. I’m not even sure. This is a thing, so I’m pretty sure this is legit. So, yeah, there’s just, it is, it’s just a practice and a journey of knowing how he speaks to you and how that feels. And then, yeah, there are times where, like, I don’t know, it doesn’t go against scripture, so I’m just going to kind of walk in obedience and test it. I’m going to test it and I’m going to weigh it.
[00:14:21] Don Love: I think one thing to keep in mind is even though we might be just now, ourselves, intentionally trying to listen to the Lord, it doesn’t mean that he hasn’t already been speaking. And so there’s already a familiarity there that we might think of as our own thoughts, but it’s intertwined because we’re already in a conversation with the Lord and with the enemy, even with inner dialogue. So when you think about that inner dialogue, we think it’s all us, but it’s not just all us, we’re already in an inner dialogue, whether we’re aware of that or not. So some of that’s that reason for that familiarity that you’re talking about, but I think Raylene, you bring in the other side of it, where something hits you and you’re like, but wait a minute, that couldn’t have been me. That was so foreign in one sense, but yet in another sense, it sounds very much like me having a conversation with myself. But then something beyond the conversation comes into it. And so I think there’s a good combination with both of what you two are working through. And this is an example too, of Alan, you saying I’m sharing as I’m learning that. Right? We don’t quite have words for this, but we all have a little bit of this and as we bring it together, I think there’s some more clarity as the body comes together and discusses these kinds of things.
[00:15:26] Alan Kraft: Yeah, it’s a lifelong journey and there are different ways the Lord speaks and there’s something very cool about that because it is so personal and so intimate.
[00:15:34] Don Love: So I’m wondering, one of the things that we’re doing is we’re working with pastors who are all over the map, as far as where their dominations are as far as where their congregations are. And I just want to see what advice would you have for them as they’re trying to explore for themselves and then have their congregation follow them as they follow Christ, what would you say to them?
[00:15:56] Alan Kraft: That’s a great question. I think it’s got to start with them. As we live it out, we begin to look for ways naturally to invite other people, to experience that. And it could start small. Maybe just with our elder board or a small group, but letting the Lord lead in that. I mean, sometimes when I get into trouble and I do this often probably where I start speaking out of something, maybe I’ve read, but I haven’t necessarily experienced it. Yeah. And so then I realize I’m kind of on a limb here because I haven’t really lived this. I’m basing it on someone else’s journey. Yeah. And so, learning from your podcast and other resources, just about some of these areas of listening to the Lord and, and beginning to practice that. That’s, I think we’re at where it has to begin, because then we’re ministering out of something God is doing in our own hearts.
[00:16:53] Don Love: Right. The other thing that I’ve noticed too is, you might experience it yourself. But yeah, you don’t yet have the language to share it yet. And I think it’s really important as a pastor, not to just share a testimony in a way that the language is so confusing, that it could confuse more than bring clarity. Sometimes we have to get that language down so we can be able to explain, this is what’s happened to me, biblically. This is how I support this with scripture. To be able to share it with your congregation, because I’ve seen people where they’ll have something happen in their life, and then they try to explain it. And especially in things of the spirit, that seemed to be a little bit different. People get triggered very quickly by the wrong words. And so I know for me, I try to think through like, does that, does that word kind of trigger me? And if it makes me feel uncomfortable, maybe I shouldn’t share that word yet until I have the words to say it that’s going to be received.
[00:17:44] Alan Kraft: Yeah, that’s a great point. And I think I have been trying to be careful. I know the culture of our church and evangelical free and not Pentecostal, charismatic, or whatever. And so I think there is an appropriate intuitive translating that I’m doing when I’m talking about listening to God. Right. We’ll use listening, prayer. We don’t typically, sometimes we use prophetic language, but often we just talk about listening prayer. I think of another example, Don, you and I have chatted about. but this was recent for me in the last two years, but this whole area of, of biblical using our imaginations in a biblical way. The word visualization will just freak people out, right? Because new age uses visualization all this stuff. And so then I think, but this is, God gave us this part of our brain, the right side of our brain for a purpose. And so much of our discipleship is left brained. So how could we find language to invite someone, to actually use their imagination? And scripture to experience a truth more significantly. And so that got fun for me because then I created my own language for that for our church, did a little sermon series on it. But I avoided words that I knew would be trigger words, but invited people into what is a biblical experience of using our whole brain to experience truth. And so I called it biblical imaging. And I think you and I had some conversations about imaging versus imagination and right. And so those kinds of things I think are helpful. It’s a great point where that’s where we do have to own not only the experience, but the language that we use and use language that would help our congregation be open to it and not put up a bunch of walls immediately.
[00:19:31] Don Love: Yeah. Well, Jen, is there any questions that you have?
[00:19:35] Jennifer Love: Well, I was wondering, you said that you went to the thing with three friends. So how did you come back and then kind of get other people on board with that, or kind of introduce that to the church?
[00:19:43] Raylene Kraft: Yeah, so we went to the training and then we came back and just among ourselves, we kept learning and praying for each other. And then we asked the pastor if he would let us start praying for other people. And so we just, we just started and it was so scary, but yeah, we just jumped in and we started very small and it was kind of just word of mouth or, or we would tackle somebody and say, would you let us try this on you? And we just started small and it’s just grown and taken off.
[00:20:21] Jennifer Love: Well, would you tell us a bit more about Hope Abounds? Like if people look for help from that, what would be the process or what do you guys offer people here?
[00:20:29] Raylene Kraft: Yeah, it it’s just a healing ministry that goes after the wounds and lies and stuff that life does to us that kind of makes us feel like God is distant or affects our relationships with others or even affects how we think of ourselves. And so it’s just a time where we invite Jesus into those places and see what he wants to do.
[00:20:57] Alan Kraft: And the cool thing about a ministry like that is that it is so training oriented that you have the person that’s leading the session, but then you always want to have a second chair and even a third chair, possibly. And so these people are watching and then you can gradually hand it over to them. And so Raylene’s in a great job of modeling it initially, and then the next session, maybe this person is going to take part of it and then she might get, might step in again at some point. But that ministry is really designed for that kind of hands-on like yours. I’m sure, you watch, you guys do it and then other people can begin training in that. So that’s been really cool, and so that’s the way the process. And then it’s kind of similar to your kind of situation where it’s probably an hour and a half to, I think we allow for two hours, but it’s usually, in that ballpark and hour and a half to two hours where it’s just inviting the holy spirit to lead. And, and there are a few tools that we have learned and that we utilize to get people to this place of describing where they’re stuck and how we can invite and Jesus’ presence and his truth into those places.
[00:22:02] Don Love: Well, Alan and Raylene, we appreciate you guys taking the time to let us interview you and talk with you guys.
[00:22:07] Alan Kraft: That was great. This is fun. Thank you.
[00:22:11] Don Love: Well, that wraps up this episode. Join us next week. As we follow up with pastor Jeff Foote, one of the pastors from season one, episode 20 and discuss how his listening and inner healing prayer session with us three years ago and his growing understanding of the biblical role of the holy spirit is changing the face of how they minister in their biblically grounded, conservative congregation.
