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By James Wilson, PrayNorthstate
“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 will forgive their sin and heal their land,” is what God says in 2 Chronicles 7:14. “My strength is made perfect in your weakness,” is what He says in 2 Corinthians 9:12. He loves to tell us that if we seek Him we cannot fail to find Him.
Fourteen months ago PrayNorthstate launched a prayer project in Shasta County called Paah-ho-ammi. The name is a Hebrew compound word meaning, “Cry alas, My People.” More than a hundred people of prayer asked God each day to reduce crime, unemployment, traffic fatalities, cancer admissions to a Redding hospital, and to protect young people from violent death. The results were spectacular.
Over the hundred days of prayer crime in some areas, traffic fatalities, and cancer admissions fell by more than twenty per cent – compared to the same quarter a year earlier. There were no fatalities throughout the region on the three most traveled holiday weekends of the year. Where sudden deaths of young people averaged about two each month in Shasta County, there was only one such death during the period of prayer.
Unemployment fell slightly at the same time it was spiking across the nation, but here is where God kept on giving – as reported in this newspaper. Timber sales are now on a par with their levels in the early 1990s. Building trades and hotel room sales – which set records in 2004 – broke their own records in 2005. Local experts are perplexed because they predicted 2004 – at least the hotel record – as fruit of the massive publicity campaign for the Sundial Bridge. But there was no such campaign in 2005 and everyone expected the trend to reverse. They did not factor in the power of consistent, concerted and focused prayer – a gift that keeps giving.
On February 1, 2006, PrayNorthstate will launch Paah-ho-ammi II at Simpson University in Modular Classroom 82. The service will begin at 7:00 PM and those who come will worship the Lord Jesus, share His supper, and join one of three prayer teams. The first will pray for a county-wide bathing of peace that will manifest in a county-wide reduction in crime and suicides. The second will pray for the coming identity of Redding as Abundant Springs that will manifest in a reduction in unemployment. The third will pray for a wave of public health blessing that will manifest in a reduction in traffic fatalities and cancer admissions to the hospital. We will conclude the project at Simpson on the evening of May 4 – the National Day of Prayer. In order to participate Christians need only covenant to pray daily for their assigned focus of prayer – monthly team meeting attendance will be optional. Those who want to participate on a team and are unable to attend the service at Simpson need only call PrayNorthstate at 530-941-3470 or e-mail us at praynorthstate@charter.net and give us their e-mail address, phone, and choice of a team on which to serve.
Sustained prayer – in concert and with focus – facilitates a healing change in the atmosphere over a community in the same way that a healthy climate facilitates the productivity of land under cultivation. Places that block God’s access because of historical patterns of sin become more accessible as a critical mass of people seek the face of God daily. Prophecy is released and prayed into being – in Redding a declaration was made in the name of Jesus that the city be re-named Abundant Springs – and that is slowly coming to pass. Most important – God gets all of the glory and His Kingdom advances. What is happening in Redding can as easily occur anywhere; it simply requires Christians to make God’s house the house of prayer for which He died and rose and will return. Paah-ho-ammi is a paving stone on this highway in the desert in which the mountains are made level and the low places raised up so that our God is provided a straight road on which to travel as He comes for His people.
How to Get Involved with the Paah-ho-ammi Project
PrayNorthstate can be reached at 530-941-3470 or at praynorthstate@charter.net
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