Last Night I Prayed Some Passionate Prayers
Last night at Living Streams we gathered for some soup and some prayer, following a day of fasting. Now, the point of fasting is to connect with God. The way it works is, as we deny our flesh, our flesh cries out in hunger. When it cries out in hunger we do not feed our flesh, but instead, we feed our spirit. So, yesterday, each time my flesh cried out in hunger I used it as a call to prayer.
It was very encouraging to show up at church last night to see hundreds of other people who had spent the day fasting and were ready to pray together. As I sat in the sanctuary we were guided by the pastoral team into three different times of prayer.
Even though I’ve been at this Christian game for quite a few years now, it still surprises me when I sense the Spirit of God stirring in my soul and mingling His thoughts with my thoughts. As He does this, He leads me to a new perspective or understanding, or a message that He has for me. I like that.
Here’s what I ended up with last night:
One of the pastors spoke about the need to pray for conviction sometimes. He said that conviction of sin is one of the gifts that the Holy Spirit gives us.
I’ve never really thought of conviction as a gift, but it really is. Just as it would be a gift for someone to warn you that you're about to go over a cliff—so it is with the conviction of the Holy Spirit.
With a deeper understanding of conviction, I was stirred with a passion to pray for God to convict America of her sin.
I prayed He would visit our leaders with dreams in the night—or even sores on their body—whatever it takes for them to humble themselves before God and lead us into His mercy. (God worked this way In the case of Abimelech, Pharaoh, and Nebuchadnezzer.)
Another pastor spoke about how prayer can tear down strongholds in our lives and in our nation. He spoke about a time in his life where God instantaneously removed the stronghold of drug addiction from him. He also spoke with humility about how God did not instantaneously deliver Him from a pornography addiction. He said his delivery from pornography took years of wrestling and surrender. He then asked us to pray that God would tear down the strongholds in our nation.
So, with that in mind:
I prayed God would tear down the stronghold of pride in our nation.
I prayed against the pride expressed when there's no acknowledgement of God, no fear of God, no humility before God in our society and our leaders.
I prayed for God to grant us humility instead of our intense secular humanism masked in the wordprogressivism.
At the end of the night, as I went to platform to start the closing prayer, I felt the Spirit of God stirring in me again. He was convicting me about how passive I, and our church family, can be about prayer. So:
I asked God to forgive us for being passive while the world around us is hemorrhaging from its self-reliance.
I asked God to forgive us for leaving the powerful weapon of prayer on the shelf to collect dust as society heaves under the oppression of a spiritual war they are blind to.
I asked God to fill us with His zeal.
I asked Him to cause His passion to ignite our prayer lives.
I asked that He break our hearts for what breaks His.
And I asked that He would never let us find rest or peace until we’ve labored in prayer in a way that honors Him and brings His kingdom in.
David