Pray the Word

A quick update for you from Zambia: Pastors John and Richard, accompanied by Bob are having a truly awesome time at the Solwesi Conference in the northern Copper Belt area. In a recent text, Pastor John said that they were having a "phenomenal time" and working under a "powerful anointing of the Holy Spirit"; at one point he had to stop as worship began to break out in the middle of the preach. Fresh revelation is pouring out of Pastor John and into the conference delegates and they are being truly blessed. Wow! Pastor Richard also commented that he has not seen Pastor John preach so powerfully for a long time and everyone is so receptive. What great news! We continue to pray and cover them with God's goodness.

As always, our Wednesday morning prayer meetings continue from 6am-7am and prove to be extremely fruitful. This week was no exception. Something which I am finding to be more and more effective in my own times of prayer is using the Word of God as prayers to God. On Wednesday morning we adopted this exact strategy as we dipped into Psalm 91 and allowed the Holy Spirit to highlight key words, phrases and concepts. We then deployed these Biblical truths into expressions of prayer to the Lord and the spiritual atmosphere really began to change; Holy Spirit loves God's Word and His attention is always drawn to those people linking up with the Word in this way.

One of the reasons for this is that the Word of God is powerful, active and a potent agent for change in the spiritual realms (Hebrews 4:12, Ephesians 6:17, 2 Timothy 3:16). Moreover, the Scriptures recalibrates our focus onto the Lord Jesus (Hebrews 12:2) and I find that whenever I focus on Jesus and not on myself, my prayer life improves! That is not to say that bringing our own needs and requests to God is not Biblical; it is (1 Peter 5:7) but we should not stay there but move forward into a deeper communion with the Lord that supercedes our own earthly focus and human existence.

Learning to 'pray the Word' takes time and practice but, if we persevere and stick at it, letting Holy Spirit lead, guide and teach us how to pray (Luke 11:1, John 14:26) we will reap unprecedented spiritual dividends. I will be going into more detail about this at the Prayer Meeting tomorrow morning (Saturday 17 October) from 7.30am. If you want to 'get ahead' then have a read through Psalm 18 as this will form the basis of our discussion.

Otherwise have a great weekend and see you on Sunday morning for another encounter time with God. God Bless! xx