6

SUPER BOWL

ENGLAND • USA • SCOTLAND • INDONESIA

Miracle is just a word we use for things The Powers have deluded us into thinking that God is unable to do.

WALTER WINK, ENGAGING THE POWERS

I found Sammy in tears after church. “I’m sick of being sick,” she sobbed. The only thing anyone had asked her about that morning had been her illness. “I know they all mean well, but I hate being seen as a victim, a problem, someone to feel sorry for.”

Word was out about Sammy’s recent, unexpected return to hospital. She had developed a dangerous condition called status epilepticus in which every seizure triggers another one. Without medical intervention, she would get locked into a terrifying cycle of fits. This had been a devastating setback, but there was something deeper going on too. “I feel like I’m losing my identity to this ugly, vicious, horrible thing. It’s just so . . . boring!” She almost bellowed the word. “I used to be Sammy the singer, Sammy the leader, Sammy the mother, happy Sammy, scatty Sammy. Now it’s just ‘poor Sammy.’” She deflated into my arms with a sigh. “Pete, this is not who I am.”

Recent MRI scans had confirmed that Sammy’s greatest enemy, the brain tumour, was not growing back, and 24-7 continued to be wildly exciting. But behind closed doors we were becoming quietly desperate, wrestling with the emotional, relational, and spiritual fallout that can accompany any long-term illness. “Lord,” I whispered, “we’ve had enough. We’re trying our best here, but, well, where are you? We’ve run out of energy. We’ve run out of hope. Please, tell us what to do. Please, help us.”

It was a desperate prayer from a vulnerable place, and with it came the unruliest of thoughts. We should run away! Why did we have to send someone else to take Floyd up on his invitation? Why couldn’t we be the ones to go to America? Sammy could maybe recover her identity in another country. And we could all do with a break.

I rebuked the idea immediately. It would be impossible, impractical, disobedient, and unwise. This wasn’t a time to be jetting off to the other side of the world, when Sammy so clearly still needed her medical team on hand. Hudson had also just started at school; it would surely be irresponsible to unsettle him. On top of all this, the ministry in England was all-consuming. We could hardly just abandon our small, loyal team to cope alone while we swanned off to Tir na Nόg. We knew that our call was to Europe —arguably the toughest mission field on earth —not to the highly churched American Midwest.

In addition to all these significant objections around Sammy’s health and Hudson’s schooling and the demands of 24-7 and our own call to Europe, there was also the small matter of money. We were receiving a small stipend from the church, and one or two friends were supporting us each month, but in the United States we would presumably have to start again from scratch.

With a sigh I accepted that the American idea was a really bad one. I didn’t mention it to Sammy. It would be escapism at best and might even be a distraction from the front lines of our call. And yet a few weeks later, in an unguarded moment when I was preparing for a scheduled trip to the States, I heard myself casually, half-seriously asking Sammy if she would ever like to come too —just for a few days, only if we could sort medical insurance, and provided we could find someone to have the kids . . .

I think she started packing before I could finish the sentence.

Sammy and I were thrilled to find that the movement in America was multiplying fast. Fuelled by word of mouth and the publication of Red Moon Rising, prayer rooms were popping up everywhere, from a brewery in Missouri to the US Naval Academy in Maryland (the prayer slots were apparently particularly well regimented there).

We heard about an atheist businesswoman who stepped into a prayer space in Tulsa, Oklahoma. “I didn’t believe in Jesus or God or much of anything,” she confessed, and yet, “I was rocked to the point of no longer being able to stand on my own two feet. I sat there shaking, desperately trying to hide my tears, shocked because I’d given up on God and yet I was instantly (and to my own surprise) a believer in Jesus Christ.” We had witnessed one or two dramatic epiphanies like these at the start of the movement in Europe, but now they were beginning to occur in America too. Someone wrote from a prayer room in Tennessee to report that “our church has been changed forever . . . Dozens are coming back to Jesus, or are being saved or filled with the Holy Spirit.”

We were moved by the story of a man with an AIDS-related illness who was admitted to a hospice in Brooklyn, New York. Preparing to die, he requested pens and paper, explaining that this was how he’d learned to pray in his local prayer room. Reports like these from the length and breadth of the States left us shaking our heads in amazement. Broken people were learning to pray in Brooklyn, non-Christians were encountering Christ in Tulsa, soldiers were learning spiritual warfare in Maryland, and entire churches were being revived in places like Tennessee. The movement was clearly flourishing in fertile soil four thousand miles from home.

A pastor called Gary Schmitz heard that I was in Kansas City and asked to see me. We arranged to meet in a coffee shop. You can spot a traditional Midwestern pastor a mile off. Smart hair, plaid shirt, tank top, and chinos. Standard issue at all traditional seminaries. We shook hands and he thanked me for my book. He told me that his church was doing 24-7 prayer. “How’s it going?” I asked casually.

“Pete,” he said, staring at me intently and beginning to weep, “we are being undone.”

After years pursuing a programme-driven approach to ministry in a traditional denomination, Gary had been close to burnout, on the verge of quitting. In desperation he announced plans for a week of 24-7 prayer at his church in Missouri, secretly assuming that he would have to fill most of the hours himself. But the time slots filled up so fast that Gary didn’t even get to use the room. They decided to add a second week of prayer. So many people began to encounter God in that room that they soon added a third week. They couldn’t quite believe it when they passed the one-month mark.

Gary showed me an email he’d received from a member of the congregation. “My husband says that his antennae tune in better in the prayer room,” it said. “People can’t get enough of the place. The most common remark is ‘one hour is not enough.’” Gary’s church continued praying night and day for three months, a quarter of the year and twelve times longer than they originally thought possible. It was a time of deep renewal for the entire church, and especially for its re-energised pastor.

Through the simple act of making a little space for God, and with minimal human interference, remarkable things were taking place in the community of Deerbrook, in many similar prayer rooms around America, and in countries across the globe. These wonderful stories had nothing to do with our brand or model. It’s God who shows up in prayer rooms, God who mobilises prayer, and God who answers those prayers too.

The Big “If”

It had taken 150,000 men at least seven years to construct the temple in Jerusalem according to plans drawn up by Solomon’s father, King David. But having completed this vast project, Solomon must have been acutely aware that all this effort and expense were going to be wasted unless God now deigned to come and inhabit the work of their hands. And so, on the eve of its opening, the king spent the night in the temple begging the Lord to show up. Eventually, God appeared to Solomon with a wonderful reassurance: “I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself.” You can imagine the relief in Solomon’s heart! Then God added an extraordinary promise which has echoed down the years ever since:

When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

2 CHRONICLES 7:13-14

The most important words in this famous promise are some of the smallest and easiest to miss: when, if, and then.

First, God says when —not if —things go wrong. In an agrarian culture, a drought or a plague of locusts could be a cataclysmic national, social, and economic disaster, equivalent to a banking crisis or a recession today. God does not promise to eliminate such crises from the lives of his people or to make us immune from the disasters that afflict the wider culture. In fact Jesus assures his disciples, “In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33). We tend not to turn that particular promise into a range of greeting cards.

Second, God says that when such troubles come, he will hear us if —not when —we turn to him for help. Sadly, it is neither inevitable nor automatic that we will respond to the problems of life with the humility of prayer. God knows, and history shows, that our human instinct in the face of any crisis tends to be independence rather than intercession. We are self-help addicts. God tends to be our last resort when all else fails, and rarely our first port of call. In the UK there are at least three major denominations on the verge of extinction as I write. Two of these organisations are currently trying to rebrand and restructure their way out of their terminal decline, which of course isn’t working. But the Salvation Army received a prophetic word that if they would “turn to God and seek him in prayer, he would hear from heaven and send the rain.” In response to this simple, biblical exhortation, they gave themselves to a year of 24-7 prayer. During those twelve months the tide began to turn, many Salvation Army churches started to grow again, and the rains of renewal fell upon the ranks of William Booth’s army. Again and again we see that there really is a big, fat, screaming “if” hanging over the people of God in every generation: Will we, or will we not, turn to God in prayer when the inevitable troubles come?

Finally, God makes an incredible promise to Solomon which echoes down the millennia. When the crises come, if we will turn to him in prayer, then he promises three far-reaching blessings:

• To hear our prayers —a promise of miraculous intervention
• To forgive our sins —a promise of salvation for the lost and sanctification for the church
• To heal our land —a promise of reconciliation, restoration and deep social transformation

God offers a big, holistic promise of salvation for individuals, societies, economies, and the environment. Whenever God’s people restore the proper ecology of creation by returning humbly to dependency upon their Creator in prayer, his life begins to overpower sin’s destructive influence at every level. The new creation begins to bud and bloom in every sphere of society. Wounded nations are made whole, poisoned creation is renewed, broken economies are repaired, dying cultures are revived, fractured relationships are reconciled.

When we hear stories about revival in places like the Outer Hebrides, it’s natural to long for a similar awakening today. But if the focus of all our prayers is such a revival, then we are praying way too small. God’s purposes may begin with a revived church moving in supernatural power, proclaiming the gospel as we should, and baptising the crowds. But that is not the endgame; revival is just the start. Once the church is back to normal, pulsing with life, God’s great project is to see creation remade. He is busy building a new heaven and a new earth, which inevitably begins with a renewed church. From there the project extends to change the world and “heal the land.”

Whenever we stop saying “no” to God’s plans and start saying “yes,” his kingdom comes. It’s as simple and sensible as that. Economics, politics, the arts, education, and enterprise may well be the tools God uses to heal the land, but the impetus is repentant integrity. Humility is the heavenly algorithm for social transformation. The rusty hinge of human history turns out to be the bended knee.

Indonesian Revival

In our time, one of the most remarkable demonstrations of the power of this promise to transform an entire nation has arisen in Indonesia. In 1998 this fourth-largest nation on earth was devastated by the Asian economic crisis, alongside violent ethnic rioting on the streets, with a death toll running into thousands, widespread student demonstrations, and ultimately the resignation of their President Suharto after thirty years in power. As the nation teetered on the brink of anarchy, Indonesian church leaders took hold of God’s promise in 2 Chronicles 7:14 and began to establish 24-7 prayer watches, mainly on the top floor of office blocks because they were forbidden from constructing church buildings.

They prayed with extraordinary tenacity and faith, repenting and seeking God humbly, claiming his promise of healing for the land. Gradually, as they prayed, the volatile situation in their nation began to stabilise. The rioting died down, the economy rallied, and a new optimism dawned. What’s more, the Indonesian church began to experience a powerful revival. They had turned to the Lord in prayer, claiming God’s ancient promise to Solomon, and he had heard their prayers, forgiven their sins, and brought remarkable levels of healing to their troubled land.

One night, several years after those first prayer rooms were launched in Indonesia, I saw the results firsthand in Jakarta’s Gelora Bung Karno Stadium, where I had the enormous privilege of joining 80,000 others for a day of prayer and fasting. The vast crowd that night was connected by satellite with other similar gatherings around Indonesia, so that an estimated 3 million people joined in that prayer meeting —surely one of the biggest in world history. These numbers would be amazing anywhere in the world (almost unthinkable in the complacent West). I had to keep reminding myself that it was taking place in the world’s largest Muslim nation.

I was asked to say a few words and invited the crowd in the stadium simply to raise their phones, glowing in the night. It was a breathtaking sight: a vast glittering galaxy of stars shining, as the apostle Paul says, in the darkness of “a warped and crooked generation” (Philippians 2:15). It was the biggest crowd I’d ever addressed —a very long way from my solitary encounters with God in that first prayer room.

As I held my phone aloft, it began to buzz. Friends who were watching online or on the live television broadcast began messaging me, just to see if I’d been stupid enough to leave my phone signal on. We are a generation that is connected as never before, and this surely gives us unprecedented opportunities to work together and pray together for God’s kingdom to come on earth.

The next day I flew to North Sumatra, to visit a church in the city of Medan. It had started with 119 people in 1993 and had grown to more than 40,000 members in less than twenty years. Today it plants a new congregation every twelve days, has translated the Bible into the dialects of five unreached people groups, and runs a medical clinic caring for thousands of sick people. The pastor explained that the tipping point in this explosive growth could be traced back precisely to the moment they had joined with other churches around the nation in establishing their own 24-7 prayer watch.

“We started 24-7 prayer in November 1999,” said the pastor. “That was when everything took off. That was when the revival really began.”

Hearing the date, I was momentarily lost for words. Slowly I explained that we had also begun our 24-7 prayer watch in 1999, just eight weeks earlier. So had Mike Bickle in America.

Grinning widely, the pastor offered to show me and my friends their place of 24-7 prayer. Tucked away on the top floor of a Medan shopping centre, we found two women sitting in the middle of a sparse, simple prayer room, one playing guitar while the other prayed, rocking back and forth like a head-banger at a silent disco or a Hasidic Jew at the Western Wall. It was an unimpressive room, hospital-green and empty, but the presence of God was tangible. In fact, one member of our team stepped across the threshold and fell face down to the ground, apparently knocked off her feet, overpowered by the manifest presence of God. We all knew in that moment that the pastor was right. The revival of the Indonesian church and the transformation of Indonesian society was being fuelled by an invisible network of unimpressive powerhouses like these, a hidden circuit board across the land, quietly conducting God’s power and light.

The revival in Indonesia was inspiring, but we were about to witness one of the most extraordinary, brain-frying answers to intercessory prayer much closer to home.

In the US state of Arizona an accountant called Deb Welch made a momentous decision to leave her well-paid job and coordinate a year of 24-7 prayer throughout the Grand Canyon state.[35] Just thirty-four days into this initiative, the Super Bowl was due to touch down in Arizona’s University of Phoenix Stadium. One of the newly mobilised intercessors received a terrible premonition about the event: In a dream she saw the stadium filled with blood. Taking the nightmare seriously, Deb dispatched a small team of prayer warriors to the stadium to pray pre-emptively against disaster.

On the day of the game, Deb joined almost 100 million viewers watching the biggest sporting event in America, but her nerves had little to do with the fate of either the New York Giants or the New England Patriots. The contest passed uneventfully, Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers performed at half time, the Giants surprised everyone by defeating the Patriots, and Deb breathed a sigh of relief. In fact, she felt a little foolish for having needlessly dispatched that well-meaning team of intercessors to pray at the stadium.

But then came the news.

Media outlets began reporting that, behind the scenes at the Super Bowl, a bloody massacre had been averted. A disturbed thirty-five-year-old named Kurt William Havelock, furious at having been denied permission for a Halloween-themed horror bar in nearby Tempe, had mailed a series of rambling threats to media outlets the day before the game. The Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Phoenix New Times, and Associated Press had all received chilling missives from Havelock pledging “swift and bloody” revenge and even vowing to “slay your children.”

On the Day of the Super Bowl

Havelock drove himself to the University of Phoenix Stadium, armed with an AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifle and 200 rounds of ammunition. He had retained one final note on his person: “Do Not Resuscitate.”

Havelock had no way of knowing that he was parking his car that day in the exact location where a random group of Christians had gathered to pray against bloodshed. Armed to the teeth and intending to kill as many people as possible, the would-be mass murderer unexpectedly experienced something that he would later describe in court as “a change of heart.” He broke down in tears and phoned his father. “He was sobbing hysterically,” his dad recalled. “He said, ‘I’ve done something terribly, terribly wrong.’” Havelock ultimately handed himself in to the police without a shot being fired.

Somehow Deb’s sensitivity to the Spirit and the intercessions of her little prayer team seemed to have helped disarm a potential killer, almost certainly saving many lives and averting an atrocity that would have been witnessed by almost 100 million people in real time, billions more online, and on the front page of every newspaper around the world the next day.

Militant Prayer

More than a thousand years ago Origen pointed out that “the critics of Christianity do not see in how many people . . . the flood of evil is restrained, and in how many wild habits are tamed by reason of the gospel.”[36] It’s easy to forget that the vast majority of miracles that take place in our daily lives are invisible: secret daily breakthroughs that protect our children, enlighten our politicians, or change the hearts of men like Kurt William Havelock. Jesus tells us explicitly to pray for deliverance “from evil,” presumably because we are not automatically safe. Deliverance from evil will occasionally be dramatic and obvious —a healing, a miraculous escape —but mostly it will mean merely that the truck driver applied his brakes just before you came round the corner yesterday, or an antibody was quietly activated to defend your health last night, or an unkind comment was drowned out by a police siren this morning. Life brims over with such mundane miracles, mostly taken for granted although they constitute the majority of God’s blessings in our lives. This is why it is vital not just that we pray with gratitude but that we pray regularly and with vigilance, remembering that our intercessions “restrain the flood of evil” at least as much as they activate evident blessing. Many terrible things happen in our world. This is undeniably true. But Origen reminds us that things could be infinitely worse were it not for the myriad of daily interventions by the people of God and the bulwark of Christian intercession at work behind the scenes. Far more of our prayers are being answered than we will ever realise. We are congenitally blind to the goodness of God all around. Our eyes can only be opened to see the world as it truly, objectively is by nurturing a daily attitude of gratitude.

In God’s promise to Solomon, and stories like those from Arizona and Indonesia, we see that intercessory prayer is a form of partnership with God. The Bible teaches that the power of this human-divine partnership is integrated into the design of creation. Adam and Eve’s willpower was able to defy the will of God. Thousands of years later, when Jesus stood in another garden and prayed, “Not my will but yours be done,” the darkness and death of that first garden was repelled, banished by God’s light and life. Whenever prayer is reduced to a clumsy technique for getting God to mutter a reluctant “Amen” to our selfish desires, it is merely wishful thinking in a religious disguise. But when prayer is an “Amen” to God’s desires, it is profoundly Christian and powerful beyond measure. As Jesus says, “I will do whatever you ask in my name” (John 14:13, emphasis added).

The Swiss theologian Karl Barth illustrates the power of this partnership of wills in the strongest possible terms, saying that we actually “participate in the reign of Christ” through prayer: “In him . . . we then find ourselves at the very seat of government, at the very heart of the mystery and purpose of all occurrence.”[37] Imagine that the president or prime minister calls your mobile phone tomorrow. As you recover from the shock, he calmly explains that, in the interests of greater democracy, the government has decided to include the opinions of an ordinary, representative citizen in certain important decisions relating to national security. A powerful computer has chosen your name at random from a list of the entire electorate. He therefore asks if you would be willing to come and sit with his executive to share your unique thoughts, insights, and opinions on behalf of the people. I’m pretty sure that although you might be nervous, you would find the time, in fact you would cancel anything, to attend. It would be one of the greatest honours of your life.

As a Christian you have received an even greater invitation. The King of Kings requests your presence “at the very seat of government.” He offers you a place on his executive so that you can influence his actions on behalf of the people. It is an unspeakable honour, and yet we are often too busy, or too disbelieving, to accept the invitation. The Bible is clear that our opinions and choices really can shape history, that our prayers really do make a difference in the world. For example, Abraham successfully negotiated with God to spare the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18:16-33). King Hezekiah was told by the prophet Isaiah that his death was imminent, but his prayers seem to have persuaded God to change his mind and grant another fifteen years (2 Kings 20:6). Moses stood on a rocky hill overlooking a battle between Joshua and the Amalekites, and whenever he held his hands aloft in prayer, the Israelites advanced. But whenever Moses dropped his hands exhausted, the Amalekites began to triumph (Exodus 17:8-13). Jesus assures his disciples, “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 18:18). The apostle Paul says that we are seated with Christ “in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 2:6). Behind every battle on earth, it seems, there is a parallel conflict waged “against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12).

The Highland Warrior

These heavenly priorities were powerfully illustrated in the life of a little-known Scottish prayer warrior called James Matheson. He lived in a tiny Highland village called Clashnagrave, five miles north of Dornoch, in the years 1805–1875. During the Crimean War he would intercede every night, sometimes all night, for the local soldiers, members of the 93rd Highlanders, away fighting for their lives on the front lines. It is said that James Matheson always prayed in a particular place beside the river that ran past his house, and for many years after his death you could still see the hollows worn away by his knees in the ground by that stream.

As James Matheson prayed relentlessly in Scotland, far away in Crimea there were occasional reports of a ghostly figure moving about the trenches at night. These apparitions were, no doubt, dismissed by all but the most superstitious as a mere figment of their terrified and exhausted minds. But then at the end of the war, the 93rd Highlanders returned to Scotland and attended a special communion service in the village of Creich. When James Matheson entered the church, those war-worn soldiers turned and gasped. Here before them stood the man they had seen in those distant trenches, night after night, a ghostly figure bringing strange comfort amidst the horrors of war. Somehow James Matheson, interceding so earnestly in Scotland, had appeared amongst the very people for whom he had been battling so fiercely.

It is a mysterious tale, yet not an entirely unfamiliar one. Jesus himself was initially mistaken for a ghost upon the water. Moses and Elijah somehow appeared by his side on the Mount of Transfiguration. Peter walked through locked doors. Philip was transported by the Spirit from the desert road to Gaza and reappeared in Azotus preaching the gospel (Acts 8:40). People like James Matheson in Scotland, Deb Welch in Arizona, Susanna Rychiger in Switzerland, Donald McPhail in the Hebridean awakening, and the church in Indonesia have learned how to pray with a perseverance and passion that alters material reality.

One of the marks common to such intercessors is that they don’t just say polite prayers submissively. They tend to wrestle against God with an audacity that brings breakthrough. Their prayer times often seem to move beyond the recitation of liturgy, the quiet absorption of Scripture, and the enjoyment of worship music —valuable as such things can be —to actively laying hold of the purposes of God with a violent insistence. They have learned to enter his throne room expectantly, to make their requests forcefully, to insist upon an answer with a tenacity easily mistaken for defiance. In his classic book The Soul of Prayer, P. T. Forsyth endorses the importance of this kind of prayer: “Lose the habit of wrestling and the hope of prevailing with God, make it mere walking with God in friendly talk; and, precious as that is, yet you tend to lose the reality of prayer at last.”[38]

Travailing in Prayer

We know that Jesus sometimes chose to pray “in a loud voice” (e.g., John 11:43; Luke 23:46). We are also told that the early church interceded with such power that the room in which they were meeting physically shook after they had “raised their voices together in prayer to God” (Acts 4:24). Every part of the world in which revival is being experienced prays together in this way. In Nigeria, in China, in Indonesia, from South Korea to South America, Christians raise their voices together and pray simultaneously and aloud. Perhaps this is not merely a cultural preference but a biblical norm. If we are to pray like Jesus and the early church, we will undoubtedly sometimes pray quietly, we will sometimes use set prayers, and we will sometimes pray alone. But we will also at other times pray, with raised voices, freely and with others in unison.

Many of Donald McPhail’s fellow intercessors during the Hebridean awakening were women who truly knew how to prevail in prayer with authority. One of them described how “the breath of the Spirit would come and it was like being in childbirth . . . We would fill up and fill up and fill up with the breath of God, and we would be in agony, and suddenly there would be relief as the new soul was born. Then the weight would come again and we would fill up again and again and others would be born into the kingdom.”[39] Those Hebridean prayer meetings were clearly neither reserved nor respectable, and yet they had power to usher in breakthrough as men and women were born again through the preaching of Duncan Campbell and the travailing prayers of these spiritual midwives.

Perhaps such models of prayer sound overemotional or weird. But the apostle Paul describes the Holy Spirit praying for us “in wordless groans” (Romans 8:26), creation “groaning as in the pains of childbirth” (Romans 8:22), and “we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:23). There is, it seems, a lot of prayerful groaning going on in heaven and on earth!

I remember running the youth programme at a large Christian festival where a meeting had just finished. Young people were rushing around, skateboarding and chatting. Someone came to me very concerned about two girls who were sobbing uncontrollably, almost screaming, in the corner. I asked a responsible woman to sort it out, but when she walked over to the girls she too broke down in tears and began crying! Nonplussed and slightly annoyed at such immaturity, I walked towards the group. But when I got close enough to discern their words, I stopped in my tracks. These girls were not hysterical; they were crying out to God for a friend who didn’t know Jesus. Their hearts were breaking before God with a compassion that challenged me profoundly.

How little we know about travailing and prevailing with God in prayer until “one becomes actually aware of receiving, by firmest anticipation, and in advance of the event, the thing for which one asks.”[40] I suspect that many of our prayer meetings today are less effective than they could be because we merely ask but we don’t expect. The great English poet John Donne, who was Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in the early seventeenth century, described such prayer in shocking terms:

Earnest prayer hath the nature of Importunity; we presse, we importune God . . . Prayer hath the nature of impudency; we threaten God in prayer . . . And God suffers this impudency, and more. Prayer hath the nature of violence; in the public prayers of the congregation, we besiege God, says Tertullian; and we take God prisoner, and bring God to our conditions; and God is glad to be straitened by us in that siege.[41]

Jesus seems to describe a similar attitude in his parable of the persistent widow. She received an answer to her prayers because she refused to accept “no” for an answer. Elsewhere he advocates an attitude of expectancy bordering upon presumption before God: “Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours” (Mark 11:24).

In a world such as ours, torn and bleeding as it is, there must surely be times when we too “wreak violence on heaven.”[42] Dark spiritual forces have been loosed on the earth which must be disarmed if we are to free captives from their tyranny. We believe, of course, in the kind of quiet prayer that changes us, but we also believe in the violence of prayer that can change the world. Endless hours listening to worship music or meditating on the Bible may be delightful and even worthwhile, but won’t ultimately in themselves advance the kingdom, save the lost, or destroy global evils such as human trafficking.

Jesus models a mystical militancy: wrestling with the devil in the wilderness, rejoicing as he sees Satan fall from heaven, shouting his rebuke to the storm, casting demonic spirits into the abyss. He might well be viewed as a little extreme by many of his churches today. Contemplative prayer and quiet conversation with God may not always be enough. If we truly want to see the kingdom of God return to this enemy-occupied world, we cannot avoid a certain aggression in prayer any more than a soldier can avoid his gun, or a boxer his fists, or a theologian great tracts of his Bible.

Duncan Campbell, the preacher who had been deployed so powerfully by God in the Hebridean awakening, was later also used in a similar revival across the water on the Isle of Skye. On one occasion he locked himself away in the local minister’s study to pray. This was in a part of Skye that hadn’t yet been touched by the movement. Suddenly the minister, out in the field, heard a startling cry. It was Campbell bounding towards him across the moor. “It’s coming! It’s coming! We’ve got through at last! We are over the top!” Sure enough, the revival broke through in that community that night.

It was through this type of prevailing prayer that a Super Bowl disaster had been averted in Phoenix, that James Matheson had interceded for the lives of Scottish soldiers in Crimea, that churches in Indonesia had turned the tide in their nation, that our son had been delivered from a drug overdose, and that Susanna in Switzerland had laid hold of God’s miraculous provision.

On our visit to America, Sammy and I heard so many extraordinary testimonies emanating from US prayer rooms. There was clearly a pressing need for an American office. But, in spite of Floyd’s kind invitation, we remained a little unsure about Kansas City as the best location. In fact, various American friends raised their eyebrows when we mentioned it as a possible base, feeling that 24-7 Prayer would be more suited to somewhere edgy and influential, like New York City or Los Angeles. Others remarked that since Mike Bickle’s International House of Prayer (affectionately known as IHOP) was already in town, Kansas City could, they said, be the single most confusing place in the entire continent for us to set up shop.

I could see their point. Without Floyd’s invitation to the city and the dramatic spiritual warfare around that first meeting with him, we wouldn’t have been considering Kansas City for a single second.

With such doubts bouncing around my jet-lagged mind, I woke that first morning in Kansas City and grabbed the devotional book by our bed. Whispering my usual prayer for God to speak, I looked across at Sammy still sleeping next to me. “Lord, is this crazy, or is this you? Is Kansas City really the right place to be based? And why can’t I shake this insane idea that we should be the ones to come? Are you really calling us here for a season when Sammy is still so unwell?” It was one of those moments when I had my finger to the wind wondering what God was doing, asking where he was heading, not wanting to get it wrong.

I found the Bible reading for that day. It was the story about Peter walking on the water. Here was my namesake, being asked by Jesus to get out of the boat and take significant steps of faith. It seemed relevant. But the accompanying commentary was a home run —a direct word from God: “When the Lord calls you to come across the water,” it said, “step out with confidence and joy. And never glance away from Him for even a moment.”[43]

“That sounds like a big, fat green light,” said Sammy a little later, sitting up in bed beside me and sipping a cup of tea. “Maybe the Lord really is calling us to come across the water, Pete!” There was an excitement in her eyes I hadn’t seen in a long time. “Let’s not worry about my health, or about who’ll look after 24-7 in Europe, or about money, or the kids.” It all sounded completely irresponsible and fun. “Let’s just focus on Jesus like Peter getting out of the boat. Surely he will make everything OK!”

USA Today

We had invited various friends to come together later that day to talk and pray about establishing 24-7USA. It turned out to be a very strange group indeed. There were Adam, Nate, David, and Travis, the young men who had accompanied Floyd on his fateful trip to England. But there was also a New York City DJ, a Hollywood sound engineer, a narcotics cop, and a female firefighter from California. There was a big-fisted building contractor we’d first met in Spain, an Oklahoma film-maker in shades and a Stetson, a well-known Kansas City prophet, and a worship pastor from a Florida megachurch who had wept so much reading Red Moon Rising that he’d actually climbed under the desk in his office to hide.

I scanned the room’s maverick assortment of personalities. Was this really, I wondered, the best team God could muster for establishing a movement of prayer, mission, and justice in the world’s most powerful nation? I caught Sammy’s eye, and she flashed an uncertain smile back at me. Maybe we were getting it wrong. Perhaps we were setting ourselves up for failure, attempting to make waves in America when we should be home surfing them in Europe instead.

My thoughts were interrupted by a man noisily entering the room, waving a newspaper and beaming from ear to ear. “You guys seen USA Today?” he asked. “Check out the cover photo in the Life supplement.” He held it aloft, and we gasped to see a large picture of a 24-7 prayer room in Florida. “I don’t know how it happened,” he laughed, “but 1.8 million Americans just found out about us. We’re front-page news, baby!”

I laughed —we all did —and raised my hands in surrender. It was the final confirmation I’d needed. The Holy Spirit seemed to be preparing a way for us after all. This really was his invitation, his timing, and yes, even his team. There had been just too many coincidences. Small things like my Bible reading that morning. Big coincidences like the way we’d returned to Cape St. Vincent at the precise moment Al Qaeda had attacked this country. And massive coincidences like the way Hudson and Misha had both been struck down and miraculously delivered when Floyd first asked us to come. And now, on the day we had gathered in response to all these promptings to consider the spread of prayer rooms in the USA, God had somehow put us onto the cover of the nation’s second-largest newspaper. Never before. Never since. Only then, on that particular day.

I looked around the room again at that random mix of people, all shaking their heads in amazement and passing the newspaper from hand to hand. The vision of that global army replayed in my head, and faith began to rise.

We didn’t have money. We didn’t have a strategy. We were a weird bunch of people. But we did, it seemed, have the favour of God. Hadn’t he always hand-picked nobodies like us?

Sammy was looking at me, grinning. Slowly she shrugged in good-natured resignation and nodded her head. We were going to need a place to live, a school for the kids, a visa for America, a bunch of money, a gifted team to support Phil Togwell back home in England, a new team here in the States —and the significant matter of medical insurance for an uninsurable condition. Humanly it seemed almost impossible. Yet we now knew for sure that God really was “calling us to come across the water.” And with that certainty came a deep assurance that he would defy all odds. He had been one move ahead of us all along; he could surely be trusted to protect Sammy’s health and to provide for all our other needs as well.

SELAH

“The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”

2 PETER 3:9

Think of someone known to you who is “perishing” without Jesus. Now pray for them to “come to repentance,” remembering that you are not so much pleading with God, or fighting against him, but standing with him against enemy powers. Is there a particular biblical promise you could “claim”? If possible stand, move around, raise your voice. Dare to pray specific, measurable prayers.

Once you have a sense that your prayers have been heard, begin to thank God for his answers as if they have already happened, with faith and expectancy.

“For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ. And so through him the ‘Amen’ is spoken by us to the glory of God.”

2 CORINTHIANS 1:20