7:14 City Wide 40 Days of Prayer and Fasting(Update)

sweetly broken

Well I promised and update. As the forty days of our city wide prayer and fast is coming to an end this weekend, I thought it was time to share what has and is taking place in our city.

In my first post I shared that our city with 30 plus pastors had come together for a season of prayer and fasting based on the scripture 2Ch 7:14

If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

By the third meeting, we had an estimated 900 people and 30 pastors coming to pray on a Friday night. The service and time of prayer was very cool, but what happened at the end of this meeting began to take center stage in the whole season of fasting and prayer. We had a word from God, shared out of Ez. 8 that was a strong serious call to the body of Christ. If we were serious with God, then the first order of business was to the house of God. It was time to clean the temple, both corporately and personally. The call to repentance from God sat heavily on many across the city the following week. My biggest prayer was that the pastors would know that this was just the beginning really. A time to let the Holy Spirit search all our hearts and respond to Him, was what was being called for. What happened next was more then I could have imagined. As we met for our fourth week at the mega church in town, with approximately 1000 in attendance, the pastors hit the mark. The whole entire meeting was focused on repentance. I was so blessed to know these men of God were not fooling around. They were taking God and His word to us, very seriously. What happened next, felt like a surge hope released into the body of Christ in our city that night. Like a bomb of hope going off in our midst. The pastors went to the altar (all 30 plus) fell on their knees; some lay prostrate and began to repent to us and God as shepherds. They had met and decided on the points of repentance that they needed to acknowledge, they passed the mike from pastor to pastor, as each offered repentance on a point that God impressed on them personally. After that momentous moment the pastor that was hosting this evening turned to the church and asked us to repent not only for ourselves but also on behalf of our city and nation. He shared with us a righteous mans example of repentance on behalf of a nation that took place in the book of Daniel. On the overhead were many areas of transgression and sin that we could use to help us begin to pray as Daniel did. Quietly many dropped to their knees and began to repent and weep before God. But that was not all. The final and third part of the meeting was a public repentance to a representative of our local Hispanic church community and the white Anglo pastor of this large mega church. They both began to repent on specific points of sin and judgment towards each people group. The Hispanic pastor ended on a note saying that we needed to start building a bridge of unity that needs to start on both sides of the river to meet in the middle. You see our city is divided by the Colombia River and the white community predominately lives on one side, while the Hispanic community lives on the other. It was such a powerful moment. Truly only something our God has done. Remember this is not just one type of church; this is a broad spectrum of many Christian brothers and sisters from across our city.

Last week we met again, and this time was still marked by serious repentance. The emphasis was now on the body of Christ making judgments against each other. There was another prophetic word shared from some intercessors about a vision one lady had that week. She saw a bride who had fallen down, and got herself all muddy and dirty. When she fell she had injured herself and had a big gash in her arm that was full of dirt and gravel. The interpretation for the vision was that we had been throwing stones and rocks at each other in the form of gossip. That basically, and this is putting it in rather blunt terms (sorry) that we had trashed our pastors and leaders, and each other with our tongues. At the end of this time of repentance we did a really cool thing. We were asked to go find people from other churches then pray for the individual and for their church in a blessing type prayer. Praying blessing, instead of cursing, the opposite spirit of our sin. One man I got to pray with was a recovering alcoholic, who told me he was here with a Catholic priest, and that through out the week was attending not one, not two, but seven different churches including his faith based recovery program. His prayers for me were the most heartfelt and powerful I received that evening.

Our last meeting is this Sunday. It is to be held in our convention center at 7:14pm. They are expecting 2000 people. I must mention, that at the last meeting it was shared that the pastors are so overwhelmed by what is going on. They all recognize this as the hand of God. They are meeting weekly and are seeking God as to how to proceed. They stated that this was just the beginning, and I couldn't agree more. I feel that we have only touched the tip of the iceberg in the area of repentance and coming together in unity. We need to really come clean as people, as the church of the Tri Cities, as Washingtonians, as Americans. God have mercy on us; break up the fallow ground of our hearts.