I'm so glad I'm a child of God and a part of his big, world-wide family. God does ridiculous things just to tell us he loves us! Just a few days ago he did one of those things again... On Monday of this week, our Break Through Team at the Urban Abbey was meeting because we were having some internal struggles. We had spent about an hour chatting in our Team Room. During that discussion we felt powerfully led by the Spirit to understand that the struggles we were having included a battle with spiritual forces. We moved as a team into the sanctuary to stand and kneel beneath the cross to pray. In our crying out to God we said these words, "we don't know what to do, God, we know that spiritual warfare is necessary, but we just don't know how to do spiritual warfare very well, we are not sure what to do or even how to proceed and we need your help, please have mercy upon us, Jesus..." After the prayer time in the sanctuary, we also spent time talking with God in the site that is the construction zone right now for our future prayer tower (which we hope to begin constructing in just four or five weeks). After touring other spaces in our building and praying, we returned to our Team Room and closed in prayer. On the long table in our Team Room we have a computer monitor that we use to read power points and other shared material at our meetings. On the screen was our gmail inbox and in the inbox was a message waiting from David Larlee - he is a member of the leadership of the American counterpart to the mission society of which we are a part, The Anglican Mission in Canada. That message came during the very hour that we were under the cross praying for mercy and an answer about spiritual warfare. Here is the text of the message he sent us: "I had a dream the other night which may be of the Lord that I wanted to share with you.
I was in a tower that was on an Alp-like mountain. As I ascended the tower i was guided by a person who was telling me that the tower had been built to restore the foundation of culture. As a result the prayer tower was built as a place of devotion to the Lord. In an off-hand comment the guide said that spiritual warfare wasn’t a pressing concern since they displaced the plans of the enemy by praying and releasing the things on God’s Heart over the city.
You are the only people I know of who are building a prayer tower so I thought I’d pass it on. The bit regarding spiritual warfare did jump out at me and when I woke up i had a real conviction to pass this on…"
We had never discussed this issue with David. We had never discussed it with anyone outside of our team! That morning as we were crying out to God for help and mercy, he already had help on the way. He had sent David a dream a number of days previous with the answer to the question that would be troubling our heart and soul on Monday. It reminds me of Daniel's prayer request and the answer God gave to him.
“O Daniel, I have now come out to give you insight and understanding. At the beginning of your pleas for mercy a word went out, and I have come to tell it to you, for you are greatly loved. Therefore consider the word and understand the vision" (Daniel 9:22,23).
The love of God is beyond understanding. Before a word is on your mouth, he knows it completely (Ps 139:4), and whenever we are in distress - he has already prepared the answer! Your love is amazing, O God!!!
Now we as a team have heard a word from the Lord and ours is simply to obey. The answer to our struggle is simply to fulfill the plans God has placed on our heart to have 24/7 prayer go out from our tower - for the whole city. To pray God's heart for the city, for our neighbors, for our team, for ourselves and for anyone else the Lord chooses to ask us to pray for. As we pray the plans of the enemy are displaced and God is glorified!