2/12/2019 0 Comments Prayer OutreachA few weeks ago, I went on a prayer outreach. Before that time, I had never heard of a prayer outreach. To be honest, I wasn’t that excited about it. The idea was that we would drive around a section of our city and pray over certain addresses while a second team would go do the homeless outreach that normally takes place at that time.
In my mind, I had been demoted. I wasn’t on the frontlines anymore, up where the action is. I had been sent to the minor leagues. I have never been more wrong. As we journeyed around the area praying, I noticed a subtle shift in my attitude. Each stop we made brought up concerns and revelation that I hadn’t considered before. Our prayers became bolder and more specific. The Spirit of God seemed to be traveling with us, and each stop we made brought our thoughts into sharper focus. Soon the person that I was traveling with was doing most of the praying out loud while I scribbled prayer request after prayer request in the prayer journal. I couldn’t write fast enough to keep up with the downloads. Then we came to the Scissortail bridge. This bridge spans eight lanes of I-40 in downtown Oklahoma City. It was supposed to be an interesting architectural feature for foot traffic that spanned the highway, but poor workmanship and more construction downtown have left it unusable for its original purpose, the north end of the bridge ends in buckling boards and a chain link fence that cuts off one side of the city from the other. The northside/southside divide is represented so well in that bridge. As we stood on that bridge looking down at the truckers, traffic, and travelers speeding to their destinies, I was struck with the revelation that spans our country. You can drive from North Carolina to California using this road. East to west and almost coast to coast can be traveled on this one stretch of highway. What an awesome thing to envision. While we prayed for our small dot on the map, I remembered the story of Jonah in the bible. God gave him a job to do that he wasn’t terribly excited to carry out either. He eventually decided that God’s way was better than the stench of fish belly and went to Nineveh. After three days of preaching in the city, all of Nineveh repented and turned to God. From the king to the peasants on the street, everyone wore sackcloth and ashes and decided to worship God. This event took place at a time when God’s spirit was poured out like a yoyo. It would hit one person briefly and then be jerked back up and lowered onto someone else. It wasn’t like today where the Holy Spirit resides in everyone who chooses to believe. If Jonah can unwillingly preach the truth of God a city that doesn’t have access to the Spirit like we do and still manage to convert the entirety of it, why can’t we expect and believe for something like that in our community? The prayer time on the bridge just got real. What if we throw a stone in a pond and the ripples from its impact reach the banks. That’s just a normal repercussion of that event. But what if the each ripple gets a little bigger and the energy doesn’t dissipate as the circles reach their final destination. I could see the prayers we spoke being carried by the vehicles underneath us traveling from one side of our nation to the other. In my mind, I saw a tsunami of revival swelling up in our city and washing over our state, nation, and world. And the magnitude of the dream didn’t seem as daunting as it had just moments earlier. If God can equip Jonah to save a city in the old testament, why can’t we expect the same thing in this time? We have the Spirit of God living in us. We have the power to do all the miracles that were performed in the early church living inside us today. Why can’t we have massive amounts of people coming to Christ after we proclaim his word like the apostles saw in Acts? Why can’t Oklahoma City receive a massive transformation and become a new Nineveh for this generation? The remarkable part of this vision was that the revelation of Christ isn’t going to stop at the city walls. It is going to push through to borders of this state and travel through the country. God’s power is alive and on the move. As the cars coursed under the bridge, I was undone. The compulsion to pray for God’s word to spread from the east to west along the I-40 corridor dominated my thoughts. I no longer felt like being moved to the prayer team was a demotion, it was all I wanted to do. I believe that a restoration for our city is coming and when it occurs, the state and nation will feel the reverberations. The excitement of what God is doing in our midst cannot be dismissed or discounted or, worse, attributed to human hands. Great things are coming. We need to bow to God and willingly shoulder whatever task he sets before us or get out of the way. And we need to pray. Every day, all day; until prayer becomes our heart beat, and Hope in Him our lifestyle. Lord, I pray that others join me as I pray for this city. Put the officials in place that can change the broken systems into functional ones. From the schools, to the jails, to the police department; make all things new. I pray for provision so that the things that need funding have more than enough money to function at optimal levels. I pray for businesses to open and prosper within the city limits and beyond. I pray for a lightening of the spirit in the inhabitants so all will know and understand that what they have is a gift from you. I pray for all demonic oppression to leave and never return because we know that in its place people will have welcomed Christ into their hearts. And as we embrace this revival, we turn to you with gratitude. And from this swelling of spirit filled people the overflow will be felt throughout our state and our country and the world. Amen
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AuthorI am a Christian, a wife, a mom, and a part-time basket case who wants to be a full time writer.
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