Praying for a City
Consider the following as you pray for the city of Casper (from Dutch Sheets' book on Intercessory Prayer)
 Cities were addressed or prophesied to: Jonah 1:2; Nahum 3:1; Micah 6:9;
Revelation 2
and 3.
Cities and nations were judged: Ninevah, Sodom, Gomorrah, Tyre, Sidon, Bethsaida, Capernaum, Jericho, Jerusalem and others. The nation Israel was judged as a whole on many occasions in Scripture, as were other nations.
Cities and nations were forgiven or spared judgment: Nineveh; Sodom could have been, had there been enough righteous people; the nation Israel was forgiven as a whole, as were others.
Cities and nations had divine purposes or callings: Israel, Jerusalem, the seven cities of refuge, and many others.
Cities were spoken of as being kept or preserved by God:
(Psalm 127:1)
Cities have a corporate peace or welfare. (Jer. 29:7)
Cities can have revival: Nineveh, (Jonah 3:5-10)
Cities can miss revival: Jerusalem, (Luke 19:41-44)
Crafted Prayer
The following are excerpts from the journal Crafted Prayer: The joy of always getting your prayers answered by Graham Cooke. The book can be purchased at www.grahamcooke.com
...Prayer, in the initial stage, is not about speaking. It’s about listening and reading. It’s about thanking God because, of the billions of people who walk the earth, Christians are supposed to be the most relaxed and the most grateful. We are called to be the Disneyland of faiths- the happiest people on earth. Even on the toughest days, the joy of the Lord is a force of strength for us. If we are filled with the fullness of God, we behave in ways unlike the world around us. There is no place for worry or panic in a Christian’s life. Faith and anxiety cannot exist in the same space at the same time. One of them has to go, and you have the power to choose which...
We must come before God with thanksgiving...what we are thanking God for is the reality of His presence. “I will never leave you or forsake you,” God promised...
....Before we pray, we need to meditate. Prayer, in its simplest form, is finding out what God wants to do and then asking Him to do it. One of the best ways to get a fix on God’s heart for us is to read His scripture. John wrote in 1 John 5:14-15 “Now this is the confidence we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him.”
...To see your prayers answered, enter God’s presence with thanksgiving and worship. Then rest in your secret place, and meditate on His scripture and words to you. Ask the Lord this question: “What is it that You want to do in these circumstances?” then listen and wait until the Lord answers and directs you how to pray...
...For too long, we have been satisfied to use prayer to try and find God. That is not what prayer is for. Prayer is asking God to do the very thing He’s telling you He wants to do. It comes with a confidence in our heart that because we’ve heard the will of God, we know we’re praying what He wants, and that He will answer...
...Prayer is not meant to be used like a fisherman’s net to trawl for the will of God. Instead, we use prayer to pray the will of God, and that brings us into a place of faith and proclamation. We grow in confidence in the will of God, as our prayers change us to be more like Him...
....It’s time to use prayer to turn the tables on the enemy. We can make the devil tired, weary, depressed, discouraged, exhausted, and in need of psychiatric care. In fact, we can wear him out exactly as he has worn out the Church....
...We are too used to mediocrity, to thinking in small things, but we are called to more than that. We have met Jesus, a Man who is incredibly powerful, deeply intentional, and overwhelmingly confident. Nothing fazes Him, nothing worries Him. He is so full of joy that He even sings over His people....
...This is very important: there is one thing to pray- and one thing only. What happens with most of us is that we start off praying in our fear and panic and we give God so many choices that the situation overwhelms us. We end up losing heart and quit praying at all....
...Often the reason for the wait regarding the answer is because we are learning to wait on Him. We are learning how much the Father is for us, according to Romans 8:31. What are the things that the Father wants to freely give us? There may be more for us to inherit in this present crisis than we realize. Crisis now becomes an even greater opportunity to see the majesty of God...
... We must combine our supplication, our need to know how to pray for a specific situation, with thanksgiving. When we don’t know how to pray, we should enter God’s presence with thanksgiving, and then ask Him questions.... “So, what are You up to?” “ What’s happening here?” “ What do You want to do?”....
Today, my supplication looks like this: “Father, I praise You for this situation. I know You have a plan and a purpose for me. I give You thanks that You are with me and that You are for me. I ask You to show me Your ways, teach me Your paths, show me Your will, oh Lord, that I may become conformed to the image of Jesus in this situation. Show me Your will that I may confidently and joyfully cooperate with You. “
And then I am simply still. And I listen. And I meditate on God, waiting for Him to speak. He will give you key words and phrases and a sense of His objective. Then He might supplement that with scripture or pictures. Write everything down, as it comes to you. As you do, a peace will fall on you, and a confidence will begin to rise in your spirit....
...What is an effective prayer? Very simply, it’s a prayer that God gives you permission to pray, prayed fervently, full of passion and power...
...Prayer done correctly, will stir up a spirit of boldness in our lives. Before we know it, we’ll have slipped into proclaiming the greatness and wisdom of God..... This spirit of proclamation is part of our DNA as a Christian. When we know God’s will, we enter into a certainty of the outcome. The confidence of the Holy Spirit fills us, and we become God’s voice in a specific situation....
Wonderfully, we’re not praying to get an answer, we’re praying with the answer. Because we know what God wants to do, we are free to follow the process God has ordained for us in the circumstances that He has allowed...
...Our prayer lives can be the most richly rewarding part of our walk with God if we just take the time to enter His presence with thanksgiving and to still ourselves until we can rest in His secret place. Then we can ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to us what the conversation in Heaven is over our situation, and we can craft a prayer which will be answered...
A very practical example is given in the book about when a friend is diagnosed with a brain tumor. His friends gathered together with the purpose of crafting a prayer for him and his situation. The step by step process of crafting a prayer is discussed.
The book is written with exercises and examples designed to teach how to know the will of God in a situation and write a prayer for that situation.
I highly recommend the book to people who want a more effective and deeper prayer life. It could be used by an individual, church or small group. kf |
