Apostolic/Prophetic Day of Prayer and Fasting "You are to be a strategic, informed intercessors who know the nations...from this time forth, according to the word of the Lord, you are to be a people who go to and from in the earth with nations in your heart...you are a doorway to the nations." (Prophetic word posted on www.iphc.org about 5 years ago).
A friend of mine who is a church planter in The Hague, Holland told me a story once about a team of intercessors who came and visited him many years ago. This team went to six different locations of his city and started praying over those places. As they prayed for each one of those locations, they started praying things regarding the history of each location that they had no way of knowing. My friend, Ronald van de Molen, had studied those areas and knew what they were stating was true. He was amazed at the preciseness of what they prayed, yet what seemed to amaze him even more was that a couple years later, in each one of those 6 places in the city, a new church sprung up. It was as if their prayers were making the way for a new congregation to be started in that area.
My home country,The Netherlands (Holland) is a nation with a rich Christian heritage which like most of Western Europe has been labeled as secular and post-Christian. This can be evidenced in Amsterdam, where large churches and monuments testify to that heritage, yet less than 3% of the population goes to a church on Sundays. The influence of immigration has caused that the major religion in Amsterdam is Islam, and not Christianity. It is almost as if the effects of secularization have stopped up the historic wells of Christian faith to where now very few people have a chance to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ.
In Genesis 26:18 we read a story which describes a similar scenario. “Isaac reopened the wells that had been dug in the time of his father Abraham, which the Philistines had stopped up after Abraham died, and he gave them the same names his father had given them.”
This is a great picture of what I believe we are to do concerning the Christian heritage of The Netherlands and throughout Europe. We are to unstop the ancient wells which gave refreshment and life to so many by revisiting the core of the message of Jesus Christ and making it relevant and tangible to our generation. This is not an easy task, yet it is one that begins with prayer.
Three years ago, we hosted the first IPHC day of prayer and fasting for the Northwest region of Europe in Amsterdam. That weekend Todd Presley, a missionary from Wales, spent 3 days praying and fasting in a home near our house. The first person that we baptized just happened to be someone who lives in the next building across to the building where he stayed for those days. It could be just a coincidence, but I believe that God somehow used those prayers at that location to bring this woman in contact with us, but more importantly with Himself.
Since that first day, we have had days of prayer and fasting in Brussels, London, Paris, and London. The idea is that every 6 months we will meet in a major city of Western Europe in order to be a part of praying that God’s “Kingdom come and his will be done in that city and nation.” This is why we describe these days as Apostolic as we believe that we are following the footsteps of the first disciples in going to new places and praying over them in order to activate and accelerate God’s work in that area.
The reason that we call these days prophetic, is because when we intentionally set aside days for seeking God and speaking to him we can expect him to speak back. This is at the core of the prophetic, to hear God’s voice individually, for others, for our churches and even for our cities and nations. This was evidenced in our last meeting in Wales, United Kingdom, where the leaders of that church felt like God had given them a lot of clarity and direction during this day of prayer and fasting. For myself, I can also say that during these different days, I have been highly encouraged by the prophetic words that have been prayed over me and even that I have prayed over other individuals. This is something that we can expect as we set aside time to seek God.
However, these days are not made to simply be an event, but to serve as catalysts to ignite the individual prayer lives of believers. Praying is not something necessarily easy. Most of us talk more about prayer than that we actually do it. This is why at these days practical tools and models are taught to help people learn how to pray.
The best way however to learn to pray is by doing it. Therefore the goal is not to just talk about prayer, but actually doing it by having not just corporate prayer, but also learning models such as the Lord’s prayer, the tabernacle, or prayer stations. At prayer stations individuals have access to tools such as: paper shredders to shred confessed sin as a symbol of forgiveness for sins; maps for nations and regions; lists of leaders and missionaries; a paper prayer wall where prayers can be written; and chairs where they can receive special prayer. These are just a few examples of tools that can be used for helping people pray. The idea is that everyone can actively and personally take part in prayer and not that they sit passively listening to other people pray away.
Our vision is to see these days of prayer spread throughout the world so that eventually we will be having days of prayer and fasting simultaneously around the whole world. Then we can even use technology and link up via internet with one another and share our praises and our prayer needs with one another.
This March, I will be having the opportunity to spend time in Oklahoma. My desire is on March 6th to help facilitate one of these days at the campus of Southwestern Christian University in the Oklahoma City Area and then another one at Evangelistic Temple on March 20th in the Tulsa area. We would love to invite people from these areas to come together for what will be a special day of learning more about prayer by praying. We believe that these will be days which will not only impact individuals prayer lives, but that will also cause things to happen in those areas as we pray God’s kingdom from heaven to earth.
