pray like crazy!

I don’t know about you but I’m sensing that we really have to pray harder than ever for the transformation of this world?

Seriously pray like crazy.

And when I say crazy I mean pull out all the stops to pray over the nations that cover this planet.

The recent events in Norway, horrendous in proportion, are part of an ongoing onslaught of evil that is wreaking havoc throughout the world causing tensions, war and death that leaves millions wounded, devastated and even destitute.

What do we do about that?

Humanly I really don’t know.

Humanly I feel powerless.

But I write here what I believe God has moved my hand to write.

We have to run towards the conflict not away from it. We have to run towards it with spiritual eyes, run to it with unbridled love, grace and mercy. We have to run towards it with the opposite Spirit. And we have to run towards it without fear and with Holy Spirit fire in our being.

God is calling prayer into a prominency unprecedented in recent times. And he commands us that this is not the time to over complicate our prayer. He commands his disciples to pray for the coming of the kingdom. It’s a kind of praying that is often overlooked. But God says, pray this, “Your kingdom come.”

As evil runs like a sickly lava flow from an angry volcano crushing all that gets in its way. The Kingdom is the only power that will stop and disperse this flow.

Why?

Because the kingdom is transformative. When the Kingdom touches lives it changes things.

Your Kingdom come?

Praying for the coming of the kingdom is prayer in high definition.

Charles Elliot in his book, “Praying the Kingdom,” says, “The coming of the Kingdom implies transformation of human society, its politics, its economics, its personal, group, institutional and international relationships.”

If that is true, then that is good news for the world as it screams out its painful cry to be transformed.

So it makes massive sense to pray “your Kingdom come” on every aspect of life.

That is a big task!

So it’s amazingly generous of the King of Kings to give us a simple plan on how to transform society through prayer.

What if we prayed, I mean seriously prayed, your Kingdom come on our schools, our governments, our workplaces, our families, ourselves?

What if we made it a priority to pray for the coming of the Kingdom on every aspect of human society?

It makes so much sense because the kingdom, when it touches earth, will bring transformation to millions.

And it can be so exciting, so fulfilling so utterly and deliciously missional.

It might mean we have to be ultra creative in our approach to praying for the coming of the kingdom, it may take doing crazy things that don’t seem to make any earthly sense. Like the time I was leading Liverpool Boiler Room. One night a group of us were worshiping late into the night. I don’t know how we even came to this decision, but out of prayer we all suddenly felt that God was calling us to go down to the river Mersey and plant his word in the waters.

It made no sense.

No sense at all.

We discussed how we could do that.

Someone said, we could stand along the river and shout scripture over it, some else said that we could write scriptures out and drop them in the water. But then someone else said in a very serious voice, “I think God means we need to throw whole bibles into it.”

We all laughed!

She didn’t! She was serious.

So we knew we had a box of very old and damaged bibles, about a hundred of them, that I had once rescued from a closed down Church.

We all took a few bibles each, and about thirty people ventured out at around midnight in a convoy of cars down to the City centre, and specifically to the water front.

We parked the cars and all stood in a long line along the rail that marked the water’s edge. It was a beautiful calm night and the lights of the City threw there coloured beams onto the still water.

We were parked in a favourite spot of lovers, and I could see a few steamy windows being wiped for a better view of these strange people standing along the water’s edge.

They must have thought we were mad!

We began to pray out loud, all of us, at once.

Then someone said, “After three.”

On the third count, we began to throw these old bibles into the black water as far as we could throw them. People were shouting and you could hear the flutter of the pages as they whizzed through the night air.

Amazing!

We planted the living word of God direct into one of the main shipping gateways to the rest of the world and to the city of Liverpool that is the Mersey.

We had great fun. And even though we had no clue why God had called us to do this crazy thing, it doesn’t really matter.

Crazy? Yeah.

Your Kingdom come? Yeah.

We really do need to get even crazier with our praying, take risks, and be creative and innovative to bring the coming of the Kingdom to this mad world.

I believe God is calling those who would pray to raise our game.

To pray like our lives depended on it.

To stand against the rising tide of evil in this world.

To stand with the armour of love and compassion.

To stand against the violence and destruction with none violence.

To love the world through our prayer.

The way the world is? We Jesus followers can easily slip into a state of powerlessness.

As I said, humanly we feel powerless to do anything?

But that’s a deception.

Not by might nor by strength but by my spirit says the Lord. (Zech 4: 6)

The Spirit of God obliterates our feeling of powerlessness.

So we can get on with his amazing work.

I also think God is calling the praying people to the streets. Of course there is nothing less powerful about praying in our buildings, but out there in our cities, our communities, we sense and see what God is sensing and seeing.

The time is now.

Run towards the conflict not away from it. Run spiritually towards it with a kind of backpack full of prayers!

Prayers for the Lost, prayers for the broken, the hurting, and the needy. Prayers for the violent, the corrupt, the controllers of this world.

Pray hard with all kinds of prayers.

Pray Your Kingdom come.

Pray like crazy.

It will change everything.