A CONCERT OF PRAYER LEADING TO A CULTURE OF LIFE

By James Wilson, Coordinator

PrayNorthstate

We live in a wonderful state – this golden land called California. Our origins are steeped in God’s plan to live amongst His people; they are reflected in our mission heritage, and in the fact that nearly every great revival of the last century has begun right here. Our economy is the sixth largest in the world; we are home to technological marvels that touch the stars and the arts and entertainment industries that produce stars of another kind. Every variation of climate, geography, resource and opportunity are available in abundance – the very name shared by our capitol and principal river speaks of God’s intention to bless us and make of us a blessing as we live on this land. But there is a dark side to our history that speaks just as dramatically – and through the very air in which we live and move and have our being.

One quarter of the abortions performed in the United States occur in California. We will soon be hosting almost all of the embryonic stem cell research for the nation in the wake of passage of Proposition 71 in last Fall’s elections – this despite the fact that every medical advance attributable to stem cells comes from adult cells that do not require the death of a human embryo before research can begin. We produce more than eighty per cent of the nation’s pornography – despite hundreds of studies showing that sustained exposure to this material drains personal compassion as it grabs an addictive hold on the user. We lead the nation in suicides by lengths completely disproportionate to our population. In my own county – an area of relatively low crime overall – young people die violently at an average pace of two each month. The truth is that in California we play host to a culture of death.

In Shasta County we recently went to war in the Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ with one hundred days of focused prayer. Our purpose was to displace the culture of death with the culture of abundant life we have in Jesus – recognizing that the weapons of our warfare cited in 2 Corinthians 10 are the unlimited authority we have as Christians to bless, forgive, and worship our way into communion with our God and with one another in His Name.

Specifically worshipped God – including the Lord’s Supper each time we met – and divided ourselves into three teams for prayer on a daily basis. There were about one hundred and thirty of us praying for God’s intervention in crime (Team 1), the economy (Team 2), and public health (Team 3) with each team seeking a particular kind of sign to act as guidepost for our prayer work. We stressed prayer for blessing – no anathemas thrown out in our meetings – and sincere repentance on our part in identification with the people of God and with those who do not know Him yet. We remembered that when God calls His people to humble themselves and pray and seek His face in 2 Chronicles 7:14 he calls His own people to this process, not those we might identify as the evildoers. We cooperated with civil authorities in the collection of data – before and after – on crime rates, unemployment, traffic fatalities and cancer admissions to the local hospitals. All of the teams begged God’s intervention to protect young people from violent death.

The results of prayer were striking. Most spectacular was the fact that during the last one hundred days of 2004 the rate of youth deaths was reduced from two per month to a total of one over the whole three-plus months that we covered. There were no serious sports injuries during the Fall high school sports season.

Violent crime in those areas patrolled by the county sheriff fell by twenty-two per cent while admissions to the cooperating hospital for all kinds of cancer fell by twenty-one per cent. Traffic fatalities fell by about eighteen per cent overall and there were no fatalities on the roads – not just in the county but in the entire Northstate region – during the three most traveled holiday weekends of the year, all of which come in the middle of the one hundred days of prayer. Unemployment fell slightly when compared to a year earlier, but indications show us standing on the brink of a major economic renaissance in the region. All of this was achieved as the gift of God alone – in response to the prayers of His people – and we believe that with a broader base of church support the results of the next phase will be even more wonderful.

Yet there is a tragic dimension to even this glory story. Since the end of the period of concerted prayer the rate of youth deaths has already returned to where it was – about two a month – before we began to pray. The culture of death that we host in California has been too long building. Like the demon the disciples were unable to cast out in Mark 9:14-29 this displacement can only be accomplished by long term sustained prayer. In PrayNorthstate we plan to launch Phase II of the regional project we call Paah-ho-ammi – Cry alas, My People when translated from the Hebrew – later in the Spring. But there is a whole state to be blessed and much more to be done over the length and breadth of her.

Pray California has called for a yearlong concert of prayer using the same strategies and tactics as Paah-ho-ammi. Coordinators have been identified in the various counties of the state and each of those fifty-eight counties have been asked to focus their prayer efforts during at least one week of the year and sometimes more. (For example, some of the northern counties have been asked to cover the state for one week each in both February and October.) Intercessors who are willing to commit will pray daily for the culture of abundant life in Christ to flood the state during their week. They will pray the lifting of veils and bondages across the state from within their constituent county, but mostly and most importantly they will repent of sins both current and historical and beg God to bring in such a hunger for Him and for His plans and purposes that legislators, community leaders, and people who do not know themselves to be leaders, will begin to seek His face and model their behavior after His revelation. Accompanying this macro effort at successive local levels will be a micro thrust – teams of Pray California leadership will make periodic visits to the state capitol to praise God and share His own supper with each other from across the denominational lines they represent.

There will be no picketing, no litigating and no lobbying. There will be relation building and prayer with repentance. There will be activation of 2 Chronicles 7:14. There will be exercise of that authority Jesus delegates to His Church to bless, to forgive, and to share the communion of His Body, His Blood, and His Name.

Who can participate in this effort? Any Christians who are intercessors are called to march and to war. But who are the intercessors? The Bible does not identify intercession – prayer for others – as a spiritual gift. All of us are commanded to pray without ceasing, to watch and pray, to make a straight highway in the desert for our God. But what a promise – even as Jesus wonders aloud (in Luke 18) if He will find faith on earth like that of the widow consistently confronting the unjust judge He also promises His friends (in John 14) that they will do even greater things than they have seen Him achieve when they act in His Name following His return to the Father.

A few weeks ago I was invited to pray on some private property that had been the scene of satanic ritual activity in defiance of the rights of the owners. The witch people had even erected an altar to their master and performed their rites within site of the rightful owners’ home. A team was assembled and we prayed and blessed God – and repented for the sins committed on that land at any time. We celebrated the Supper of the Lord on the very altar erected in defiance and mockery of the King of all Kings. The satanic activities stopped with the sudden-ness of darkness overcome by the ignition of light, and they have not returned. What God did on that small piece of land He means to do in the state of California. He showed His hand on a small enough scale to teach us how to reclaim His land – all of it still within sight of the Rightful Owner’s Home.

California belongs to the Lord our God. Any willing to participate in reclaiming it for the Kingdom may contact us at PrayNorthstate or go to the Pray California web site at www.praycal.org and click on concert of prayer for California.

PrayNorthstate can be reached at 530-941-3470, or at praynorthstate@charter.net