I want to encourage you today about corporate specific prayer.
We were meeting on Friday in the Middle East.
Our team among Shiite Muslims,
And ten of us about in our living room
and we ask Yahweh what do you want to do?
He spoke: He said you really don't have faith
to believe that I can do the impossible!
to do more than you can imagine or take.
And I felt personally deeply convicted that day and we
collectively as a team felt like Yahweh
wanted us to be really intentional about
agreeing together in His Name to ask Him
for specific themes among Shiite Muslims.
He led us to pray two things in particular and
to ask thousands of other Christ's followers
around the world to pray with us.
We prayed for two things: We prayed that
... that Shiite Muslims would have the same
dream in the same night so that they
would follow Jesus together.
That came out of our pain we were seeing
an isolated individual Christ's followers
and we wanted to see families that
were following Jesus, not to stop individuals.
So Yahweh let us the Holy Spirit
convicted us to pray for whole families
that would have the same dream in
the same night and follow Jesus together
the other thing that we prayed was that
Shiite Muslim leaders, religious clerics
would come to Christ and that they would
mean many other Shiite Muslims to follow Jesus.
We pray that two specific things
and honestly I lost count of how many
people around the world. From Chinese
in the Houses' Church in China
to believers in Korea staying up
on nights to pray, to Christ's followers in
America sitting there. You know their
alarm cities to wake up in the middle of
the night to pray. We agreed that we
would pray at twelve noon on Fridays
in the Middle East. We're also attending prayer to Yahweh.
All that to say we ask the
others to pray very specifically
intently with us those two things for
Shiite Muslims. Now let me tell you the
story that was shared with me that
encouraged me to stay the course and
to persevere and asking Yahweh to do more
than we can ask or imagine among the nations.
Yahweh in His sovereignty, allowed me to
meet somebody who told me the story.
She said, Oh! you work with Shiite Muslims.
and then she said I want to tell you a story.
We had a pastor who came to a
particular neighborhood to start a
church among Shiite Muslims. He knew very
clearly that the Lord said go to this
neighborhood and take his family and
start a church. He went. In a few days
after he arrived the doorbell rang. And
he went out to the gate to open the door.
And three masked men put a gun to his
head pulled the trigger and murdered him that day.
Not long after Yahweh spoke to
another man of Yahweh, a pastor. He said I want
you to go and take his place. I want you
to take your family and go to that same
place at same neighborhood and I want
you to plant my church among the Shiite Muslims there.
That Christ's follower
willingly obeyed the Lord's instructions,
took his family and went to the same flat,
where that pastor had been. Not long
after he moved in, there was a ring at
the doorbell at the gate outside. He went out
to the gate and three men masked put
a mask over his head and threw him into
the back of a car. He said that he rode
for a long time in the trunk of that
vehicle, not knowing where he was going.
But he said the vehicle came to a stop
and they lifted the lid and pulled him
out of the car. And he said that he was
still masked and they walked him some
steps to a building that he went up some steps.
Heard a door open. Stepped
inside and the masked man took his
hood off the pastor. And he looked around
the room. It's a giant room with 900 men
sitting around the room. 900 Shiite Muslim men.
The pastor said at that point, he thought oh my,
they are going to do a public execution
for me. And at that point the masked the
masked man that kidnapped the pastor.
He looked at him and he said
Ah sir, we do not mean to frighten you but
um do you remember the man that lived in
that home before you did? And of course
the pastor said: Yes, I do. And then the man
said: Well I'm the one that pulled
the trigger the three of us are the one
that once that murdered him. And the
night that we killed him, Do you see
this man in this room? Pastor said, yes!
He said the night that we killed that
man, every single one of us in this room
had the same dream. We dreamed that
the blood of that man was on our hands.
But Yahweh in His mercy would send
someone in his place, could tell us how
we get the blood off our hands.
Are you that man? And that night... that night that
pastor had a blessed opportunity to share
the gospel with 900 Shiite Muslim men
who had the same dream, the same night.
And that night we're told that all
900 men chose to follow Jesus the Messiah.
And we heard later that their entire
families, their wives and children came
to know Christ and follow Him as well.
So I say to you again: Is it worthless to ask
without ceasing? Is it worth it to be
intentional with what we ask Yahweh to do?
Do we have faith as tiny as a mustard seed
so that we could say to this mountain,
move from here to there? And it will move.
I encourage you in this hour in history,
let's not grow weary into incurred.
Let's not grow weary asking Yahweh to do
great things among the nations. Let's ask
Him to do things better beyond what any
human being or any government leaders or
any militia leaders could ever think.
Unless ask Yahweh to continue to be the
desire of the nations and to bring more
and more Shiite Muslims, Sunni Muslims
ISIS members, you name it. May we trust
our mighty Yahweh to raise up more and more
Christ's followers who will ask Him for
the nations together and intentionally.
Yahweh bless you.