Tuesday, January 28, 2014

A call to prayer for our cities!!!


In this next year, I will be helping lead and host 3-4 days of prayer.  These days of prayer are in combo partnership with TUMI and our Christ the Victor (CTV) church planting movement that we are launching soon here in Wichita.  This is the intro letter I wrote for our first day of prayer that happened two weeks ago.

Our next day of prayer will be March 1st, and we would love to invite anybody in the Wichita areas to join us from 7-4 on our campus as we pray for God to move powerfully in our cities.   

 

Greetings Fellow Prayer Warriors,
Welcome to our first CTV/TUMI day of prayer!  I am confident and expecting God to meet us in a powerful way as we seek His face and offer petitions on behalf of the city in the strong name of Christ our Victor.
Our World Impact ministry is over the 40-year mark now.  No doubt we have seen God do some dramatic things in our midst.  Yet, the prevailing feeling from our leaders and our new president Efrem Smith is that our greatest days are ahead.  As we look at the way God has moved, renewed and realigned our ministry in the past year, it is clear that we are positioned to see God launch a big movement in the city.
Yet we are very aware that we will need God to arise in our midst.  Our efforts and strategies won’t be enough.  We need God to show up in power and defeat the enemies that are in the way. What are those enemies?  If you have spent any time in the city, it is very clear that there are intense strongholds of Satan that have held people captive for generations.  We know that people are trapped and enslaved by the devil (John 10.10; Hebrews 2.14-15).
Praise God, that through the triumph of Jesus Christ, we are assured victory!  Jesus has conquered sin and death.  It is now up to us to engage this battle and lay hold of the victory that is in Christ.  How do we do this?
It starts with prayer. Paul Billheimer, in his book Destined For The Throne, says, “Prayer is not begging God to do something that He is loathe to do. It is not overcoming reluctance in God. It is enforcing Christ’s victory over Satan. It is implementing upon earth heaven’s decisions concerning the affairs of men. Calvary legally destroyed Satan and canceled all of his claims. God placed the enforcement of Calvary’s victory in the hands of the Church (Matthew 18.18 and Luke 10.17-19).”
This gets to the heart of why we are here to pray.  Christ has given us the victory. We are going to enforce that victory in plac es of darkness where the devil has temporary reign.
In September of 1999, God birthed multiple prayer movements all over the world.  Four months later in 2000, Rev. Dr. Don Davis was given a vision to start a prayer movement in the spirit of Jonathan Edwards and the great Awakenings called Let God Arise.  This would be a movement to see God arise in the inner cities of America and in the darkest places of our world.
For 14 years, TUMI and many on our staff have faithfully been praying for the urban poor.  No doubt where we are today is a direct result of those prayers. 
Now as Christ the Victor is launching a church-planting movement among the poor, we firmly believe that this movement will advance through the fire of God’s presence that we seek in fervent prayer.  CTV Fire is the prayer and revival initiative of the CTV church-planting movement.  Together, let’s be intentional to pray, seek the Lord and believe that our church-planting movement and a prayer movement will spread all across our nation among the urban poor. 
I want to personally thank Dr. Davis and all of the TUMI staff for their partnership in our days of prayer.  We are glad to join together to “enforce Christ’s victory over Satan.”
May this be a new season where we see God arise in the cities.