NOTES
ON PRAYER
BY
REVEREND JACKSON SENYONGA
Week One: Sunday & Midweek
Topic: What is
transformation? How does it look? What will our city and church look like if
transformation comes? Do we need it?
Suggestions: Show the
“Transformations II” video on Uganda’s story for 10-15 minutes. The video displays the fact that
transformation comes from desperate prayer that is united.
Key Principle:
Transformation comes from either desperation or devastation.
Desperation is the desire that grips your
heart with insatiable passion for God’s presence that His purposes will be
revealed and experienced in your personal life and city. It’s desperation for His Kingdom come and
His will be done that His reign and expectations from nations be
fulfilled. It’s a passion that cries
for the nations as Jesus cried, “…give me the
nations for my inheritance.”
Devastation is when you see a heap of
ruin everywhere with despair or affliction until you cry out to God for help.
The Choice is ours: God is
calling us to respond to His call. How
do we want our transformation…desperation or devastation? Obviously, we need to choose desperation…to
cry out to God to come and revive us because we cannot live without His
presence among us…we are desperate without Him.
What is it and how does it look? “Community transformation is a condition of dramatic, social, and
political renewal that results from God’s people entering into a corporate
vision, corporate repentance and corporate prayer until God’s Kingdom pervades
virtually every institution of human endeavor.” (George Otis, Jr.)
Transformation alters the landscape of every community
or city in tangible ways. Consider what
has happened in Uganda:
§
Prayer
has been instituted in these areas of society:
churches, market places, and government offices including the state
house, parliament and banks.
§
Crime
rate and corruption have dropped significantly in so many cities.
If we don’t experience the above each day across the
city, then we have a reason to become desperate for God to move again in our
land.
Note: Remember as a
pastor that vision is one of the deficits our people have. Spend the time inspiring hope, faith and
vision in your people so they can see that “transformation” is possible in
their communities.
A Question to Ponder: Do you believe God can transform your family, church, city and
clean up your streets, touch the infrastructure, fumigate our society with His
presence until the police have little to do?
This is a question that you need to help your people
answer on the first week. Let them know
that this must be settled! Get rid of
uncertainty…rest assured in God’s promises (Isaiah 44:3, 2 Chronicles 7:14,
Psalm 2:8)
What is our responsibility? Community or city transformation is not an expectation that God
has only for the leaders but for all of the concerned citizens of heaven. We are all concerned about the morals of our
city, the violence, the lack of spirituality – what ever is happening in
Orlando is happening in your Father’s Kingdom and your Father has asked His
people to pray for the increase of His Kingdom.
One of the few ways we express our concern and love
for God to change our city is through prayer.
Principle Statement – God does not respond to need, He
responds to prayer: As you read the Bible, you will
realize God says in so many ways, give Me enough prayer and I will give you
revival (2 Chronicles 7:14, Jonah 3:5-6, Hebrews 5:7, Luke 18:6, 7). The Bible could be summarized as: God loves man. Man messes up. Man cries
to God. God answers and that is the end
of the book. The same thing happens
throughout every book from Genesis to Revelation. The importance of prayer and a steadfast commitment to the city
brings about God’s presence.
The deficit of America is not technology,
communication, resources or strategy.
The deficit is that deep fervent prayer from the hearts of His own that
cry not only for our needs but also for the knowledge of the glory of the Lord
to cover the nations of the earth as waters cover the sea. (Habakkuk 2:14)
Three Types of Prayers:
1.
Casual
Prayer: Short daily devotions, at
bedtime, generalized.
2.
Crisis
Prayer: When we are troubled or going
through hard times or our loved ones – these are seasonal.
3.
Committed
Intercession: Daily deep prayers driven
by God’s own purposes for the transformation of our communities.
What kind of prayer do you pray?
Community/City Transformation is each individual’s
responsibility. Many people excuse
themselves from prayer by saying, “I am not a passionate person or a vocal
person. I don’t have the gift of
prayer.” Though some people will be
more passionate than others, I Peter 2:9, teaches that ALL believers are called
out to be a chosen generation – a royal priesthood. Some of the priest’s duty is to plead to God for himself and
others – to stand between God and man – to offer sacrifices for him and
others. That is the work of
intercessory prayer. It is our
responsibility to bring our city to God in prayer. We need to pray without ceasing that God will harvest our
communities into His Kingdom. Only then will He alter the spiritual atmosphere
of our place of dwelling and give us safe streets to walk on, good laws in the
land for His glory and change the spiritual climate so that every citizen is a
potential candidate for heaven.
This calling is not to be left to the few church
intercessors or prayer warriors. They
will sink trying to carry the whole load.
It is time to join in and make prayer strong in our church for His
purposes to be revealed. This requires
a united church body within the city seeking the process of inviting God into
our region. This is much more exciting
than one church having an even breakthrough or a good project. Let us go for the city together.
Four Reflections:
1.
Pray
that God will give you a heart for a deeper walk with Him and a bigger appetite
for His presence.
2.
Pray
that God will baptize you with a deeper love and commitment for your city. You are a part of this community for a
reason and God covenants with us as we pray to bring about His eternal
purposes. See the city differently,
love her and her people.
3.
Pray
that God will anoint your eyes to read His lips and understand what He says
about you and the city. Pray for
Kingdom eyes so you can see the city as God sees it.
4.
Pray
that you may understand the vision of transformation so it’s real in your heart
and mind.
Weeks Two
& Three: What Does Transformation
Prayer Look Like?
Intro: Now that we
understand what transformation looks like, do we need it and what is our
responsibility? We can move on to ask
and learn, “What does transformation prayer look like?”
Suggestions: Show the next
10-15 minutes of the Transformations II video about Uganda.
Key Principle Reminder: God does not respond to need but to prayer…it cannot happen until
we pray!
1.
Transformation Prayers are Repentant Prayers: The reason we are not experiencing transformation is because His
presence (manifested presence) has been withheld in our cities – and the reason
is because He has withdrawn His presence due to a breached relationship which
has grieved His Spirit. It means the
community has fallen away from the Lord to a point that our acts and minds and
attitudes do not create an atmosphere in which God can reside. God is offended by our continual backsliding
and His Spirit will not strive with man (sin is a choice).
So the first order
of business is for us to attract His presence once again and this is achieved
through a renewed commitment to love, prayer, humility, repentance, holiness
and unity. In all the revivals in the
Bible and history, God’s people had to come back to this place of repentance, confessing
sins of offense committed by the community.
(Judges 10:6 & 15; Daniel 9:9; Jonah 3:5-6)
2.
Intentional Prayers: These are prayers
that not only look for a few changes in the community but for God Himself to
come and rearrange the entire landscape, not to bring one breakthrough but to
redirect the city/nation to the God given purposes for that specific community.
Every city/nation
has been called by God for a specific role to play towards the fulfillment of
His Son’s prayer, “Give me the nations for My
inheritance.” So each city must arrive at its God given purpose,
timing and strength to contribute to the overall purpose of God for the
nation. (Acts 17:26-28) Nations are called to seek God and find Him
(as a nation) and His purposes for them as to why He has created them and given
them the specific boundaries of their dwellings. So we pray intentionally for God’s intentions to be birthed and
carried forth in the political arena, market place, church world, etc.
As we discuss
intentional prayers, there are so many things we normally do with a “get by”
attitude. We do them today because we
feel good; we have time today, etc. But
transformation prayer in the Bible depicts people who knew what was needed –
God – and what needed to be done – prayer – and what prayer will produce –
transformation – so they set themselves to begin the process. Asa set himself to seek the Lord (2
Chronicles 15: 1-15), David says, “I will not give sleep to my eyes nor slumber
to my eyelids until I find a place for God…” (Psalms 132:4-5)
As a city, we want
to begin the process of whatever it takes to see our city transformed. We are doing it intentionally. The whole city is seeking God; every pastor
is teaching and calling God’s people to a time of prayer. Then we will see a corporate conquering
across the city.
3.
United Prayers: In Uganda, we
discovered every one as a church or denomination was being affected by what is
going on in the country: crime rate,
spiritual low, bad laws in the land, ungodly leaders and dictators. When we saw that we were suffering with the
same things, we agreed to double up and take prayer to the next level until God
comes again to restore our land.
To accomplish this, the prayer of Jesus must be answered (John 17:11, 20-21), before we see transformation – UNITY. It is the united fervent prayer that God will ride to bring about the needed changes. We need to understand that we would die trying if we tried to do it all by ourselves. We need God and we need one another to accumulate enough prayers to pierce through the dark places of the prince of this world.
4.
Sustained Prayers: A commitment to
transformation prayer is not an event but a life style. Prayer is not something we do, it is
something we are. It is not part of the
routine of Christianity, it is part of our lives. Luke 18 discusses ongoing prayers, day and night. God’s people began to become so hungry for
His presence in their lives and community that their creature comforts became
meaningless without revival and God’s presence.
5.
Desperate Prayers: (Exodus 2:23-25,
3:7-10) It was the crying, the groaning that God acknowledged – that’s
desperation. (Psalms 132:3-5, 84:1-12,
63:1-9) Look at Jesus’ instructions in
Luke 18:7. Note who was crying to Him
and then see His example in Hebrew 5:7.
Even Apostles had undivided hearts towards prayer (Acts 6:4).
Desperation is the
missing ingredient in the West's Christian life. We are a generation that is at ease with convenience and
comfort. We need to understand that God
cannot work with us and through us when we are in our comfort zone. But in every revival, generations
inconvenienced their convenience, became uncomfortable with their comfort and stirred
themselves to take hold of God (Isaiah 64:7; Jeremiah 9:1; Joel 2:12-17).
Desperate
prayer is a prayer that I pray in a way that I cannot recite. It flows from my heart, coming from the grip
of the need for God to move and bring change.
My soul shakes within me. I
cannot find words to express my feelings, my lips rumble and murmur, my eyes
are wet because I know that I need it but cannot get it by my own means. Only God can, so I will beg Him for mercy if
I need to. When I see the desperate
needs in my streets, on the news, etc., I cannot hold back but cry to the Living
God to come and alter my society…that His glory will be seen…that He will make
heaven bigger and hell smaller.
This prayer is
driven by the revelation of the Lord in your heart and the revelation of the
needs in your city. It is a heart
driven prayer, not a mind driven prayer.
You are not preoccupied about what words you will use but how you will
express your heartfelt desperation to God with everything inside of you.
When you pray this
kind of prayer, it is very hard to ponder it, or think it out. You just say it. However, sometimes we cannot say it. In Luke 11:2, Jesus says to His disciples, "...when you pray, say, ‘Our Father in
Heaven....’” In Gethsemane, in one of His intense, desperate
prayers, we know when He prayed, God heard and attended to His need. May God touch our hearts and lips as He
revives prayer in our lives.
Reflections and Prayer Directions:
1.
Pray
that God will give you a broken heart to pray prayers of repentance for
yourself, your family and for the sins of your city.
2.
Pray
for faith and trust in your heart to begin intentional intercession.
3.
Pray
for other churches and believers for unity and united prayer in your city.
4.
Pray
for a disciplined prayer life.
5.
Pray
that the Lord will help you get desperate for His presence.
Week
Four: How Do You Begin the Process?
1.
Make a commitment to begin with personal transformation. “The journey to transformation does not begin as a mass
movement. It begins as a series of
solitary decisions.” (George Otis, Jr.)
As we sought the Lord in Uganda, the Lord impressed upon our hearts that if we gave the Lord six levels of prayer, He would teach us what it means to harvest our nation to Himself.
As we develop a strong prayer
movement on the Six Levels in your city, each believer should pray that God
will find him a faithful transformation agent.
“If it is to be, it is up to you and me.” The reason why some people do not attend weekly church prayer
meetings is because they do not already have daily prayer established at home
in their personal lives.
The six levels of prayer God
told us He wanted us to have are homes of prayer, churches of prayer,
communities of prayer, cities of prayer, and a nation of prayer, culminating
with prayer for the nations of the earth.
The first level involves you. It is called personal transformation. This is where you make a commitment to build an altar of prayer in your home as an individual and family. You take the initiative and go into God’s presence until you are enveloped by Him. You make a commitment to live a separated life asking God to use your time of prayer to bring about change in your city.
In Matthew 26:40, Jesus said
to His disciples after finding them asleep, “What! Could you not watch with me one hour?” While it is not legalistic it seems it
really takes that much time to unload every other thing off you and concentrate
on God’s heart in fervent intercession towards transformation. We have encouraged our people to try to
achieve that. Many over shoot it by 4-6
times. While you need to start
somewhere, we encourage you to always aim for a stronger life each week. Even ten minutes or less is a good starting
point. As you go before the Lord with
repented, intentional, united, and sustained and desperate prayers, your hour
will pass before you even know it.
2.
Change your motive for soliciting His presence: The motive we have for doing this is no motive of our self
agenda. Most of the time, we seek the
Lord for the wrong motives. This time
we will seek His face because we want Him to come and grant us His
presence. We want to live in His
presence. Of course, He will do more
when He gets here but that is a bonus.
We long for His relationship with us and our city to be restored once
again.
3.
Give Prayer Away! This process begins
with you but doesn’t end with you. You
have to pray with a big picture in mind, with Kingdom eyes, go for the city
region. It is wonderful to mention your
needs and your church needs in prayer because God cares for every single detail
but don’t stop there. Do not be
distracted by small victories. Bring
the entire city, the government, market place, the whole body of Christ before
the throne, every single day. Don’t
pray for a single church growth program but ask for a citywide harvest. Don’t settle for a good news article in the Orlando
Sentinel, pray until the laws of the city will be rewritten to favor God’s
principles. Pray that the body of
Christ will be matured in a way that leaders and pastors will refuse to be
offended because of their differences so they can enter relational partnership
until coordinated strategic intercession covers the entire city as a blanket.
4.
Understand the Power of Sacrifice: In the Old
Testament, fire only fell on sacrifices and without one, God would not show
up. We need to sacrificially pay the
price for our city’s destiny. No single
revival came easy. The price of our
tears and time matter so much to God.
While Christ has given the ultimate sacrifice for our salvation, God
expects us to take the responsibility for our sins and stand in the gap as His
priests to cry to Him for forgiveness, just like Jesus cried for Jerusalem
(Matthew 23:37-39). As we close this
thought of sacrifice, do you think there has been enough sacrifice invested in
our city (coordinated, strategic, deep groaning, fervent prayers) that gives us
the right to ask for God’s fire of revival to sweep through town? Do you think pastors across denominations,
leaders, intercessors and God’s church have outcried the sin of our city to
date? It all begins with you and your
commitment counts!
5.
How Do You Cover an Hour in Prayer? Through
experience, I have learned that understanding the leading of the Lord in my
heart is very vital for effective prayer.
As I have matured in prayer, it is very easy to follow His heart. But at the same time, people need to start
somewhere.
Sometimes the reason people
cannot pray that long is because after spending 10 minutes in prayer, they feel
that they are repeating themselves and they give up.
In Summary: It is helpful
to divide your hour of intercession into portions each having its own
direction. Each portion would take, for
example, 10 minutes. When I come to
the Lord, I begin with:
1.
Worship: Everything starts with Him. I want to gaze upon His beauty. I want to be filled with the awareness of
His presence.
2.
The
more God you see the more unworthy you feel.
The more you see “high and lifted up”, the more you see where you
belong. That causes me to see areas in
my life that I need to surrender to Him:
attitudes, lack of trust, disobedience, etc. I begin a time of personal repentance/cleansing.
3.
Just
like Isaiah, as I get upward vision and inward vision, I get outward
vision. I begin to see His people, His
church, His city and bring them into intercession, mentioning the name of the
church or the city and ask Him to specifically forgive us as a people. Real intercession is taking the
responsibility of the sin of the city as you would your personal sins – asking
God to forgive, not to forgive them but us.
4.
I
ask Him if there is a resistance of evil powers and for His will to come and
overpower them by His name and power. I
will mention those strongholds that I know to be real in the city and ask that
God’s kingdom will come and crush all other kingdoms.
5.
I
then begin to make specific requests and petitions for my family, church, city
and nation, claiming every territory for the Lamb’s domain. I ask Him to release His presence to come
and permeate our city. I ask Him to
come and inhabit our land once again. I
ask Him to make the land harvestable. I
mention names of people, pastors or churches that God will transform, bless and
increase them. It tears down
strongholds when you begin to ask for blessings for people or denominations
that do not do things like you do. Even
those who you do not get along with.
God will baptize you with special love for them and will bless you as
you bless them in prayer.
6.
I
close my prayer with thanksgiving not in a summarized way but by making a
declaration of thanks to the Living God.
This is also one of the ways that I express to the Lord that I believe
He is able to do what I have asked Him for.
I will also close with prayer for specific needs or specific people that
I mention to the Lord. In such a
self-consumed world, as a Christian, I guard my mind and discipline myself by
praying for my personal needs last.
As you give the instructions in a motivational way,
prepare to passionately share the commitment card with your people. They should either bring their cards to the
altar so they can receive a prayer for their commitment or the ushers should
collect the cards. It is not
motivational to let them take the
cards home and think about it or return them at their
convenience. Remember, commitment is
everything. If you cannot help them at
this stage, you have probably missed a great opportunity.
Remember to encourage and challenge them to attend the
citywide prayer rally on February 4 so they can catch prayer. It is better caught than taught. Also begin to support prayer meetings as a
pastor by your physical presence.
To
oversee the progressive prayer life of the church by:
A.
Managing
the data on all people committed to prayer and seeing how to expand this number. The goal should be getting 80% of the
congregation committed to intercessory prayer (at least).
B.
Emailing
prayer directions for the city and church as he hears them from other prayer
leaders in the city, the pastor as pastors hear from each other, etc.
C.
Evaluating,
coordinating and helping to implement an in-house seminar on prayer or training
should he feel it is a need.
D.
Working
with all other church prayer leaders to inform his/her pastor of upcoming
prayer meetings and objectives as we begin to move to the third level of
prayer, which is community needs.
He/she will be responsible in reminding pastors to rally the church for
these kinds of events.
E.
Meeting
weekly or biweekly with the pastors.
This is needed.
F.
Attending
a monthly prayer meeting with all prayer leaders in his community.
G.
Praying
with the church intercessors and submitting to the pastors what God is putting
on the hearts of the people as they pray.
If the pastor feels it is of great importance, he will share it with his
fellow pastors as they meet weekly or monthly for a time of prayer and
fellowship. In this way, each feels the
burdens and privilege at the same time to share in the process of city
transformation without confusion.
H.
Coordinating,
mobilizing and facilitating prayer in his/her area with other leaders as the
needs arise.
I.
Assuming
any other responsibility, related to the city, that might be brought to his/her
attention.