Bowls of prayer
Over New Years a few years ago there was a LARGE gathering of mostly youth that came together to pray for the United States, in Kansas City, U.S.A.
One young man, a 12-year old, shared a vision he had in prayer several days earlier, in which the Lord showed to him that on Dec 31 God was going to “pour out all the bowls and let them run over”. Then yesterday, on Dec 31, the front-page headline of USA Today, speaking of the football “bowl” games, declared “The Bowls Runneth Over”. Here was a regular newspaper saying what this young boy had sensed in prayer.
In 1996 while praying for reconciliation between people groups and regions in Canada, a nine-year-old girl had a picture of “a huge bowl filled with rainbow colored liquid that was about to be poured out, over a dry area.” 
This was at the beginning of an outreach to Mexico and on that outreach a pastor at one of the venues we were at mentioned. “Ever since you have been here there have been rainbows in the sky every night! This really reassures us that God has not forgotten us!” In the following years we were involved in numerous other reconciliation events and VERY often there would be a double rainbow either at the start or end of the mission.
Now these prayer pictures are they scriptural?
Well, check out. Numbers 16: 41-50. Here is a story of a time that the Israelites sinned, and God punished them. Moses instructs Aaron to take a censor (or bowl) and fill it with incense and fire and run into the midst of the dying people holding the bowl up as a symbol of prayer, and as Aaron stood between the living and the dead the Plague stopped!
And again Revelation 5:8 …
the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and was holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints….
When it speaks of the bowls being poured out it means that God is answering the prayers of those praying.
Last year a lady Jan Aijahn showed me a picture of a huge Metal sculpture that she had made. It was called “the prayers of the saints”. I thought this would be a good picture to have to remind us of the importance of filling up these bowls in prayer. The next while we will be posting a number of prayer initiatives, such as the Global Day Of Prayer, Children at Risk and the Ears 2 Hear prayer alert. So as you join in think of these bowls that are being filled up in heaven in response to your prayers. 
