"I don't care what the devil plans to do. The Great Commission puts me on the offensive. I've got the ball. And if I carry the ball effectively, his plans won't matter." (Bill Johnson, When Heaven Invades Earth)
Jesus made an amazing promise concerning the church. He said, "the gates of hell will not prevail against it" (Matt. 16:18). I've always understood that verse to mean that, even though all the powers of hell will attack the church, in the end those attacks will fail and the church will still be standing.
I missed one important aspect of this imagery: Jesus said the gates of hell will not prevail against the church, not that the gates of the churchwould successfully stand up against the attacks of hell. It's a shift in perspective, but a necessary one. We are not on the defensive, we're on the offensive, and we've been promised that the gates of hell won't hold up under our advances. The gates are under attack - but not the gates of the church.
We pray from a position of strength.
We pray out of victory.
We pray from the high ground.
January was another "high water" month for the prayer group at Ada Pathway. Here are some highlights:
- We held our first healing prayer service of the year, and God made His presence known
- We prayed for a man with dementia who had been experiencing a lot of inconsistent "normal vs. abnormal" periods; a week after the healing prayer service, he reported that he'd had "a string of 'normals' that would make anyone shout"
- A man in the prayer group went out to visit a friend who had just had her tonsils removed; after praying for her, she reported that her throat felt a lot better
- We prayed for spiritual reconciliation for the daughter of a man in our prayer group, and he reported two weeks later that she has expressed a desire to come back home
- We prayed for a young woman with sepsis (due to kidney stones) whom the doctors said probably wouldn't live - less than a month later, she returned back to work
- A man in our prayer group told us about a friend who had been in the hospital suffering from a kidney infection, and she was unable to leave the hospital until her fever broke; he asked another woman in our prayer group who had also recently been through a kidney infection to pray, and his friend later reported that on that same day, it was if "a light switch turned on," and the fever left her
- We've been praying for reconciliation and restoration for a family in the church, and we've heard reports of progress being made
- A man in the prayer group was teaching his young daughter how to hear God's voice; she had been having pain in her thumb, but while she was practicing listening for God, she said she "saw" Him touch her thumb, and the pain left immediately
- Last, but not least, our prayer group has continued to grow this month - a strong indicator that God is continuing to strengthen our church body
All of these answers to prayer (and there are many more than I have recounted here) are fulfillments of Jesus' promise: the church is advancing the Kingdom, and the gates of hell are giving way.
A final thought: it's easy to get caught up in the "evil reports" of our time. The headlines are full of bad news, and some Christians get lulled into the mind-set that things will just continue to deteriorate until Jesus comes back. But that's not the nature of the Kingdom, and that's not the promise of Scripture. The promise of God is this: "Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end." (Is. 9:7) It's the nature of the Kingdom to always be advancing, and it is our privilege to be the agents of advancement as we pray and demonstrate the power of the Kingdom in the territory around us.
"O great and powerful God, whose name is the LORD Almighty, great are your purposes and mighty are your deeds ... You performed miraculous signs and wonders in Egypt and have continued them to this day, both in Israel and among all mankind, and have gained the renown that is still yours." (Jer. 32:18-20)
Jacob
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