May 27, 2020
For Prayer Points and a suggested written or audio prayer by Anne (prayer will be posted on 5/31), visit www.TurntoJesusPrayer.com
Two thousand years ago, God’s people were oppressed by the enemy. The followers of Jesus were sheltered in place in the upstairs room where they prayed. As a result, on the day of Pentecost, God kept His promise and poured out His Holy Spirit–and the world was forever changed!
I’m sure you are aware that today we, too, are being oppressed by the enemy. Our nation is in a mess. Our health, our government, our political system, our freedom, our very republic seems to be under enemy assault. And the real enemy is not the Democrats or the Republicans, it’s not Russia or China, it’s not the virus or the economic meltdown—our real enemy is the devil—satan—that old serpent who seeks to divide and destroy. Our real problem is sin, rebellion against God and defiance of Him. The real solution is turning away from our sin. Turning to Jesus. And asking Him to hear us, forgive us, and heal us.
So I’m asking women to join me as we turn to Jesus and pray…together. While anyone can answer this prayer call–and you are welcome to invite your husbands, sons, brothers, fathers, and grandfathers to join in– this call is specifically targeting women. Why?
We—women– have been created in God’s image, with a capacity to know Him in a personal relationship. He has made us the heartbeat of the family, the home, the city, and the nation. We determine the atmosphere and culture of future generations.
Do you remember when Jesus told His followers that He was going to the cross, His twelve disciples didn’t get it. But when Mary anointed His feet with her perfume and was criticized by Judas, Jesus said to leave her alone because she had done it for His burial. Mary understood, when no one else did, that He was going to die. At the cross, it was the women who stayed from the very beginning until the end, when Joseph and Nicodemus removed the body of Jesus. It was the women who followed and saw Jesus buried. It was the women who returned first thing Sunday morning to find the tomb empty. And Jesus’ first appearance after His resurrection was to a woman. In fact, His first commission to go and proclaim the Gospel was to a woman.
Listen to me. It’s obvious. Women can be disciples and followers of Jesus, too. He loves you and me! He wants to use us for His glory. Which brings me to this prayer call. In the Old Testament, Judges 4, when the Israelites were oppressed by their enemies, God used women to bring about victory.
There is no doubt that we are under an enemy assault. In fact, it’s more like an enemy blitz. I believe God will give us victory but I wonder if He will do so through women! Let’s find out!
Join me, appropriately, on Pentecost Sunday—May 31st
For the same one hour —
5:00PM to 6:00PM pacific time
6:00PM to 7:00PM Mountain time
7:00PM to 8:00PM Central time
8:00PM to 9:00PM Eastern time
May God have mercy on us, send down His Holy Spirit in Pentecostal power, and give us victory as we turn to Jesus in prayer.
www.TurntoJesusPrayer.com
May 14, 2020
God of Creation, God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Your name is Wonderful Counselor. Mighty God. Everlasting Father. Prince of Peace.[1] You are the One who is age to age the same, the Great I AM.[2] There is no shadow of turning with You. You are the One who brought Israel into existence. You have said that You did not set Your affection on her and choose her because she was more numerous than other peoples. But it was because You loved her.[3] Therefore, because You are the same yesterday as You are today and forever will be, we know Your love has not waned over the ages. Your eyes have never left her. Your heart is still filled with love for Your people …
Today! On Israel’s 72nd birthday, we shout Your praise! Her very existence is evidence that her God is God! Who has ever heard of a country being born in a day or a nation brought forth in a moment?[4] Yet on this day seventy-two years ago, You reestablished Your people as a nation in the family of nations! After 2000 years of being dispersed all over the world, You brought Your people back from the four corners of the earth to their ancient homeland, speaking their ancient language, keeping their ancient traditions. We greatly rejoice with Jerusalem! We are glad for her![5]
On her behalf, we claim Your promise that in the very last days, You will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication.[6] You have promised that the time is coming when You will make a new covenant with the house of Israel—that they will all know You, from the least to the greatest.[7] Is this the time?! You have promised that You will go out and fight against the nations that come against Your people; that You will set Your feet on the Mount of Olives once again;[8] You have promised that one day the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea;[9] You have promised that living water will flow out from Jerusalem; You have promised the Lord God of Israel will be King over the whole earth, and Jerusalem will be secure.[10]
Living Lord, we do not ask for what we want or what we hope. We are asking You to do what You have said! You do not mock Your children. You keep Your word.
Show up in great power, giving Your people supernatural strength to withhold vengeance, to execute justice, to remember mercy, to walk humbly as they acknowledge that victory will be won not by their might nor by their own power, but by Your Spirit.[11] Give them a shared vision and a shared faith, as well as a shared identity, that will transcend their differences and unite them under Your “wings” of protection and blessing.[12] You have said that when their government is on Your shoulders, there will be no end to their peace.[13] How we long for that day!
On this significant day, we look to You. You are a great prayer-hearing, prayer-answering, covenant-keeping, miracle-working God. We believe in You. We believe that Jerusalem’s God is God. We believe You are as strong today on her behalf as You were in the beginning, and always have been, and always will be. We believe our words have been heard.[14] Because our words are based on Your words. We believe that we have asked according to Your will, in the name of the One who is the Son of David…and the Son of God. Therefore, we expect to receive answers.[15]
For the Glory of Yeshua
AMEN
These are amazing promises for the daughters of Zion and the sons of Abraham put to music…ZION by Aaron Shust
[1] Isaiah 9:6
[2] Exodus 3:14
[3] Deuteronomy 7:7-8
[4] Isaiah 66:8
[5] Isaiah 66:10
[6] Zechariah 12:10-12
[7] Jeremiah 31:33-34
[8] Zechariah 14:3-4
[9] Habakkuk 2:14
[10] Zechariah 14:8, 9, 11
[11] Zechariah 4:6
[12] Psalm 91:4
[13] Isaiah 9:7
[14] Daniel 10:12
[15] John 14:13-14
May 10, 2020
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May 7, 2020
National Day of Prayer 2020
Prayer is… | Anne Graham Lotz from Anne Graham Lotz on Vimeo.
I am delighted to join you on this National Day of Prayer. I have been asked to answer the question, what does prayer mean to me?
And as I thought about it, that is a hard answer to put into words. So, I am going to try to illustrate it by pointing out the fact that I’ve been told that breathing is the strongest instinct we have. That we would let go of anything and everything else, but we will still fight to catch the next breath. I think that is one reason the Coronavirus is so frightening. It attacks the lungs and our ability to breathe…because without breath we die.
What breathing is to me physically — prayer is to me spiritually. Without prayer I don’t have spiritual life and not just prayer – that is like a “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep” kind of prayer – but a conversation with God.
Prayer is… confiding in God — my hopes and my dreams and my aspirations, my fears, and my longings. Prayer is… discussing things with God — anything that is on my heart and mind; my family, my ministry. And prayer is also asking God for things; my wants, my needs; asking Him for help, for strength, for wisdom, for counsel, interceding on behalf of other people. So, prayer is not just presenting to God sort of a reading in King James English, and it’s not just giving him a shopping list of our needs; it’s not just quoting a Psalm or a poem or something. But prayer is a conversation that we have with God who is our Father…
On this National Day of Prayer I want to thank you for your commitment to pray for our Nation. Our nation desperately needs prayer. But I want to ask you this – are you praying effectively? Because your prayers are based on a personal relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ.
If you’re not sure you’ve ever established a personal relationship with God through faith in Jesus, or if you’re pretty sure you’ve never done that, then I’m going to ask you to do that right now. And I am going to lead you in a simple prayer as you establish a personal relationship with God.
Dear God,
I come to you now, and I want a personal relationship with You. I want to be able to call You my Father. I want to know that I have access into Your presence, that I have Your full attention when I pray, that I get answers to my prayers. And so… I confess to You that I am a sinner and I am so sorry. I am not perfect. I have done wrong things, and I am willing to turn away from my sin and my self-centeredness if You’ll help me.
And I believe Jesus died on the Cross for me. I am asking that You would forgive me in His name, wash me clean with His blood. And I believe Jesus rose up from the dead to give me eternal life. So right now I’m asking You, dear God, give me eternal life, which I understand is a personal relationship with You now and heaven when I die.
And I open up my heart, and I invite Jesus in the person of the Holy Spirit to come into me. I understand He will never leave nor forsake me. And I choose from this moment forward to submit my life to His authority, to follow Him in a life of obedience one day at a time, to follow Him all the way to HEAVEN. I thank You for hearing my prayer that I have prayed in Jesus’ name and for His glory. Amen.
So, I want to thank you for the prayer that you’ve just prayed and for your commitment to pray effectively for our nation.
God bless you.
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His word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot. JEREMIAH 20:9
Our Father, who is in Heaven, we worship You as the living God of Daniel. You set the heavens in place and laid the foundations of the earth.1 In a world that changes and undulates like the surface of the sea, You and Your Word are unshaken. You are the Creator who spoke everything into existence through the power of Your Word.2 Your thoughts are as high above our thoughts as the heavens are higher than the earth.3 Who could know what’s on Your mind and in Your heart except as You choose to reveal Yourself to us? And You have! You are Light.4 You have made Yourself visible and knowable through the pages of our Bibles. And Your Word is our life.5 It is eternal; it stands firm in the heavens.6 There is no shadow of turning with You.7 From age to age, from generation to generation, You and Your Word do not change.
Thank You for being utterly trustworthy. We find security and hope in knowing we can take You at Your Word. You are a Gentleman. You do not mock Your children. We can stand firmly on Your promises, which are like prophecy. They will come to pass because what You say is so. They resonate deep within our hearts; like sparks of life falling on our dry spirits, they ignite a holy passion for You and what You want.
When we lack fire and zeal for You, Your Word, Your will and Your wants, we have only to look at the priority we have given to our Bible reading and study. We confess we have been neglectful of Your Word. There are days when we go without reading it. And there are many days when we read it but we don’t take the time to process what we are reading. When we close our Bibles we don’t even remember what we read. No wonder we don’t know how to pray! So when we do pray we have cared more about our wants than Your wants. We often tell You what’s on our minds without ever asking what’s on Yours. We pour out our hearts to You, but quickly leave our prayer time without waiting to listen to Your heart.
We have been . . .
deaf to Your voice,
willful in our ways,
self-centered
in our wants,
shallow in our thoughts,
and miserly in our love.
We are deeply ashamed.
Let us know that the work of prayer is to bring our
wills to Yours,
And that without this it is folly to pray; When we try to bring Your will to ours it is to command You, to be above You, and wiser than You; this is our sin and pride.
We can only succeed when we pray
According to Your precept and promise,
According to Your sovereign will.
And now, O God who has ears to hear and listens to Your children as we pray, we ask that You would teach us to pray according to Your Word. We want our wills to conform to Yours. Mold our lives according to Your Word. We want to ask You for what You have already purposed to give us, to do for us, and to do through us, yet will not do so until we ask. We don’t want to get to Heaven and discover all the answers to prayer for which we never bothered to ask You, because we were ignorant of Your Word.8 We don’t want to get to Heaven and hear of all the blessings You wanted to pour out on others through us, only to find that our self-focus and self-centeredness had blocked the flow.
So come down, most Holy Lord. Look on our
world . . .
On the battlefields and the mine fields,
On the corruption and the destruction,
On the greed and the need,
On the strategy sessions and the spinning deception,
On the sin that’s flaunted and the sin that’s hidden,
On the murders and the misery,
On the abuse and the arrogance,
On the victim and the vice . . .
On our foundation that is cracking,
On our nation that is crumbling,
On Your church that is sleeping,
On Your people who are crying out to You.
Teach us to pray according to Your Word with such power that Heaven is moved and our nation, and our world, are changed.
We ask all of these things in the name of the One who said, “Here I am . . . I have come to do your will, O God . . .”9 then got up from Heaven’s throne, made Himself nothing, took on the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled Himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross!10
We pray in the name of the One whom You have exalted to the highest place . . . the One to whom You have given the name that is above every name . . .11
We pray in the name of JESUS.
For the glory of Your Name.
Amen.
1. Isaiah 51:16.
2. Genesis 1:3, John 1:1–3.
3. Isaiah 55:9.
4. 1 John 1:5.
5. Deuteronomy 32:47.
6. Psalm 119:89.
7. James 1:17.
8. Ezekiel 36:37.
9. Hebrews 10:7.
10. Philippians 2:6–8.
11. Philippians 2:9–10.
**This Prayer is adapted from The Daniel Prayer, Anne Graham Lotz, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, MI, 2016
