CHAPTER 26

Strategic Prayer

John D. Robb

John D. Robb is the former chairman for the International Prayer Council, a network of regional and national prayer ministries around the world. He served 23 years with World Vision, traveling extensively throughout the world, facilitating conferences and seminars for Christian leaders in 100 countries. With international teams of prayer leaders, he has facilitated interdenominational prayer initiatives in 60 of these nations.

From “In God’s Kingdom . . . Prayer Is Social Action,” World Vision, February–March, 1997. Used by permission of the author.

A giant tree stood on the banks of the Awash River in an arid valley about two hours’ drive from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. It had been there for generations and seemed eternal. Unable to bring the water in the river to the higher level of the land, the people who lived in the surrounding area suffered through famines over the years. In their suffering, the people looked to the tree for help. They worshiped the towering giant, believing a spirit had given it divine powers. Adults would kiss its great trunk as they passed by. They spoke of the tree in hushed, reverential tones, and the children said, “This tree saved us.”

When World Vision began a development project in 1989, including an irrigation system to make the valley’s parched earth bloom for the first time, the great tree stood like a forbidding sentinel of an old order. It presided over the community of people, enslaving them through fear. The people were convinced that the spirits must be appeased by sacrificing animals and observing taboos. The World Vision workers saw how the villagers worshiped the tree and recognized that this idol was a barrier to the community entering Christ’s kingdom and being transformed.

One morning, as the World Vision staff prayed, one of Jesus’s promises struck them as particularly relevant: “If you have faith, you can say to this tree, ‘Be taken up and removed’ and it will obey you” (Matt 21:21). They began to pray that God would bring down the menacing Goliath. Soon, the whole community knew that the Christians were praying about the tree. Six months later, the tree began to dry up. Its leaves disappeared, and finally it collapsed like a stricken giant into the river. The people were astonished. “Your God has done this!” they said. “Your God has dried up the tree!” Within a few weeks, about a hundred villagers received Christ because they had seen His power displayed in the spectacular answer to the Christians’ prayers.

RETURN TO LESSON 10: How Shall They Hear?

The Spiritual Nature of Social Problems

Christians have been divided for years over the most effective means of transforming our world. Is it through verbal witness or social action? In truth, the two cannot be separated. Without both, there simply is no good news. One thing ties them together—prayer. When we pray for God to save souls and also to bring His justice to bear on issues of the day, evangelism and social action are linked in the most essential way. The God who inspires prayer for the world stirs the hearts of His people both to share His good news and to demonstrate love and mercy. Wherever we see people coming to Christ, health improving, economic opportunity increasing, and kingdom values growing, we find that believers have been praying. Because of the nature of evil in the world, prayer is essential.

As Christians who help the poor and fight injustice, we sometimes forget that we are also fighting against principalities and powers. Since the garden of Eden, human beings have gained control over other individuals and whole societies by cooperating with Satan and his evil spirits. This has led to wide-scale famine, disease, poverty, slavery, injustice, and suffering. Whenever we try to help the victims of these tragedies, we enter into a fray that involves great spiritual forces at work in the realm of society. They are the ones that rule the world’s massive institutions, social structures, and systems. Both Satan and his powers are dedicated to destroying human beings who are made in the image of God. Satan is the master deceiver, the author of idolatry who seeks to dominate the world. He undermines faith in God, twists values, and promotes false ideologies. He infiltrates institutions, governments, communications media, educational systems, and religious bodies to seduce human-kind to worship money, fame, success, power, pleasure, science, art, politics, and religious idols.

Socio-spiritual forces of evil clench societies in a dark, destructive grip in two related ways. The first is by covenants that are openly idolatrous and cultic. The second is through false patterns of thinking which blind people to the reality of God and His truths.

The Devastation of Idolatry

Throughout much of the Old Testament, Satan induced Israel to stray from God and flirt with the false gods of the Egyptians, Amorites, Canaanites, and Edomites. God had warned the Israelites what would happen if they did so, and they suffered the consequences—oppression, slavery, foreign invasion, and poverty (Judg 6:6; 10:16; Deut 28). The same sin and its consequences afflict the world today.

Northern India is one of the world’s darkest regions. Indians estimate there may be more than three hundred million gods in that region. Kali, the goddess of destruction, is a regional deity worshiped in Calcutta, West Bengal. Anyone who has been to Calcutta knows the devastating impact the worship of Kali has had on the people of that city. Elsewhere in the world, the occult is behind some of the most brutal injustices of the century. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge—who killed as many as two million people in the 1970s—were based in two occult strongholds. Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction and regeneration, and Naga, the serpent god, are worshiped in these northern locations. During Liberia’s civil war, SIM missionaries reported that many of the combatants practiced juju, a kind of African magic or witchcraft, to gain power. They wore fetishes, called spirits to come into them, got drunk, and murdered whole villages of innocent people.

The Despair of Strongholds

When Satan is not influencing people through blatant idolatry or fear of spirits, he controls them through false ways of thinking which lock them in spiritual darkness. The Apostle Paul mentions this kind of bondage when he talks about “arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God” (2 Cor 10:5 NIV). Paul uses the Greek word hupsoma, which is translated as “pretension” or “high thing.” It was an astrological term meaning “the sphere in which astrological powers hold sway.”¹ Paul considered that those who opposed the gospel had their thinking patterns influenced by such powers. According to George Otis Jr.,

These strongholds are not demons or geographical locations, but psychic habitats. The word argument, often translated imagination, is an interesting one, taken from the Greek word logismos; it is defined more precisely as calculative reasonings over time (as opposed to random, occasional thoughts). This definition makes these arguments or imaginations look more like what they almost certainly are—religious or philosophical systems.²

Francis Frangipane also identifies these strongholds within the mind, “the spiritual fortresses wherein Satan and his legions hide and are protected.” He says that “these fortresses exist in the thought-patterns and ideas that govern individuals and churches as well as communities and nations.”³

For example, the idea of “fate” in Hinduism imprisons millions of people in spiritual and economic poverty. This insurmountable force of fate supposedly determines the caste you were born into. If you were born into a poor caste, there is little chance you can better your life by becoming an attorney or an accountant. This thinking is a satanic strong-hold, a deception that keeps people in bondage to poverty. Development efforts among people who are imprisoned by fatalistic worldviews have limited impact because they are convinced that nothing will ever change.

Besides hindering people from achieving their God-given potential, the evil one can use strongholds in the mind to unleash horrific destruction. When Hutu extremists took over the government of Rwanda in 1994, they used degrading ethnic stereotypes that described the Tutsi people as “cockroaches” that needed to be exterminated. In only three months, up to a million Tutsis, along with moderate Hutus who refused to attack their Tutsi neighbors, were murdered by roving bands of killers.

What shall we do in the face of socio-spiritual evil? Undoubtedly, we must share the truth of God’s word to counter such deception, but we must also be aggressive in prayer.

Dealing with Supernatural Evil Forcefully

Evil spirits cannot be reformed or negotiated with. They can only be expelled in a forceful way that has to be considered an act of spiritual violence. We think of Jesus as the model for a peace-loving, nonviolent approach to one’s enemies; yet He taught that we are to turn the other cheek to human enemies only, not demonic foes. He never allowed Satan and the demons to have their way. Instead He took a forceful, authoritative, even violent posture at every turn, rebuking, resisting, and casting out these demons.

He also spoke of the violent struggle and counterattack that would accompany the coming of the kingdom: “The kingdom of heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force” (Matt 11:12, NKJV). Many biblical scholars agree this means that the kingdom has been under attack from violent foes. Human beings and their institutions captured and killed John the Baptist. Religious leaders in league with the Roman authorities executed Jesus. Behind these human forces, however, Jesus saw the one He often called the “prince of this world.” He refers to Satan as the strong man who must be bound if his captives are to be liberated. Binding a strong man (Mark 3:27) involves violent combat, yet it is a battle the church can win through the power of God. Jesus Himself promised that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it [My church]” (Matt 16:18 ESV). The Apostle Paul, too, emphasized,

Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. (Eph 6:12 NIV)

Prayer is the decisive weapon in this struggle—and is often aggressive and violent. The forces of injustice, oppression and war are so overwhelming that all our efforts to combat them will fail unless we first invite God into the fray. Until we have achieved victory in prayer, it is hopeless to engage the outer world in combat.

I am not saying that prayer is all that is necessary to change the world. Many evangelical Christians have used prayer for too long as a substitute for action—dumping back on God the responsibility for doing what He has already commanded us to do throughout the Bible. Yet neither is social action a substitute for prayer. There is still a profound air of mystery surrounding prayer and how God uses our praying to transform the world. Theologian Walter Wink writes:

Prayer is not magic; it does not always work; it is not something we do, but a response to what God is already doing within us and the world. Our prayers are the necessary opening that allows God to act without violating our freedom. Prayer is the ultimate act of partnership with God.⁴

Paradoxically, the most aggressive and powerful spiritual warfare must be waged out of great personal brokenness and weakness. A primary example of this is Jesus’s triumph over the forces of darkness through His utter humiliation and powerlessness on the cross. Similarly, we are strongest against evil when we come to the cross with Jesus—confessing and renouncing our own cooperation with the powers of darkness.

Lessons in Prayer

A group of Cambodian Christian leaders told me about the intensity of their spiritual battle and requested support from a team of prayer leaders outside of Cambodia. I took a team to assist sixty Cambodian pastors and evangelists in prayer for their nation. We quickly encountered the influence of the spirit of murder, exemplified in the worship of Shiva, the god of destruction, and Naga, the serpent god. Naga was believed to be the guiding spirit of the Cambodian people. The Spirit of God spoke through one of the team members saying, “Some of you have blood on your hands.” In the room were former Khmer Rouge killers who had executed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people. Great weeping followed, with confession of heinous acts in the killing fields.

This self-humbling and public confession led to a time in which the Cambodian Christians renounced the ancient covenants made by the Cambodian kings with the powers of darkness. These covenants had been made in the temples at Angkor, in the northern part of the country. This deep outpouring of emotion and confession of sin began a process of reconciliation that led in turn to the formation of a national Christian fellowship.

Several features of this prayer initiative are valuable lessons for other prayer efforts:

1. There was much prayer preceding and accompanying this effort. Our team and the Cambodian Christians were not praying alone. We were supported by thousands of people who interceded for us around the world. United prayer—joining the prayers of God’s people around the world in a special focus for particular places and people—is a powerful combination.

2. Local leaders carried out the dramatic acts of identificational repentance as representatives of their people. Our team sought to be servants and catalysts, recognizing that God had given the local leaders the primary authority to break the pacts with demonic forces.

3. Humility and brokenness were essential for all who took part.

4. We depended on God’s leading at every point. Everyone involved in our prayer effort sought to be led by God’s Spirit. We researched the facts about the present situation in the country, as well as its history, then waited for the direction of the Holy Spirit.

5. We prayed in a holistic manner. We prayed for the government, the social problems of the country, and the various people groups that were still unreached. We prayed for the unity and vitality of the church. We prayed for God’s shalom to come upon Cambodia with a lasting spiritual and social transformation.

6. Effective prayer is persistent prayer. Long after our team’s visit to Cambodia, those who took part continued to pray. Recent disunity and outright conflict among different factions in the government have made it clear that intercessors must never let down their guard. They must watch over their nation like sentinels upon the wall; otherwise, the evil one will come in the back door, creating division and destruction when least expected.

Can Anything Good Come from Cali?

In answer to the prayers of intercessors, God’s shalom and transformation have also been at work in Cali, Colombia.⁵ This Latin American city has been in the grip of the infamous Cali drug cartel, reported to be the largest, richest, and best organized criminal group in history. This cartel controlled most forms of government and huge amounts of money, perpetrating the most obscene violence. Anyone who opposed it was simply killed off. In sheer desperation, the pastors of Cali agreed to meet every week to pray for the city.

The pastors’ association hosted an all-night prayer vigil at the civic auditorium which seats about twenty-seven thousand. They had hoped a few thousand people would turn out and fill the bottom section. Instead, thirty thousand showed up to pray throughout the night! In the words of one organizer,

The primary purpose of the vigil was to take a stand against the cartels and their unseen spiritual masters. Both have been ruling our city and nation for too long. After humbling ourselves before God and one another, we symbolically extended Christ’s scepter of authority over Cali—including its bondage over cocaine, violence, and corruption.

The first outcome of this prayer meeting was that no murders occurred for the entire day following it. This was a newsworthy event because the average rate had been multiple homicides per day. (There were fifteen thousand murders in Colombia during the first six months of that year—giving it the highest homicide rate in the world, eight times that of the United States.) During the next four months, nine hundred cartel-linked officers were fired from the police force. Then, several intercessors reported dreams in which they saw angels arresting the leaders of the drug cartel. Within six weeks of these visions, the Colombian government declared allout war on the drug cartel bosses. By August of that year—only three months after God’s revelation to the intercessors—Colombian authorities had captured all seven cartel leaders.

The believers in Cali decided to hold a second all-night prayer rally. In preparation, they surveyed the political, social, and spiritual needs in twenty-two administrative sections of the city. Then they prayed in specific terms about what they had learned. Again, dramatic changes followed. Colombian authorities launched an anti-corruption investigation—not only within the city government of Cali, but even up to the office of the nation’s president.

Since that time, the city of Cali has grown economically with more than 25 percent improvement. Upon seeing the impact of the believers’ prayers, the mayor of Cali announced, “This city needs Jesus Christ to bring peace.” The city authorities have provided sound systems and platforms for twenty-two concurrent evangelism crusades with forty national and international evangelists. Crime statistics have dropped, and the incidence of AIDS, which had been the highest in the Latin American continent, has been lowered.

The churches in Cali have grown tremendously in a “spiritual explosion.” Cali has become a cuttingedge city, since its spiritual awakening is spreading to other cities. But a price for this has been paid in spiritual backlash. In the past two years, over two hundred pastors in Colombia have been killed by guerrillas or paramilitary forces.

Copyright © 2014 International Mission Board. All rights reserved.

Prayer for Unreached Peoples

Aggressive, strategic prayer is an essential component in evangelizing unreached people groups for two reasons.

To Bring About Obedience to Christ

First, unreached peoples are by definition “churchless” peoples. Unreached peoples may be defined by ethnic, linguistic, or social features. Yet in all cases, unreached peoples are those which do not yet have a flourishing church-planting movement, proclaiming and demonstrating the gospel of the kingdom. God intends for churches to be an open display of obedience to Christ. Satan works to deny that obedience by trapping people in society-wide assumptions about reality. We’re not sure how these strongholds get their start—probably by trapping people in their own high-minded “wisdom” as they pursue self-sufficiency. But we can see that in settings where Christ is not obeyed—where there is no church—such strongholds go unchallenged, sometimes for centuries, gaining strength with every passing generation. Bold, determined spiritual warfare is required to weaken and dislodge these fortresses of presumption which block “the knowledge of God” and deny “the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor 10:3–5). No amount of human persuasion can liberate an entire people from such darkness. Prayer is utterly essential. Only God can move by His mercy to open such society-wide blindness to the light of Christ.

To Send Workers into the Harvest

The second reason prayer is paramount for unreached peoples is that we need God to send laborers. Usually, unreached peoples have been resistant or hidden, so there are few, if any, missionaries working to reach them. Christ told His first followers to examine the places where the harvest was great but the laborers were few and to boldly plead with the Lord of the harvest to do what only He can do: raise up and send effective laborers.

It is thrilling to see wonderful breakthroughs among unreached people groups. In every case, we can find sustained strategic prayer on behalf of the people group preceding the breakthroughs. Mission history is rich with astounding stories of God summoning laborers from all over the world, opening doors of access, thwarting the threats of enemies, and demonstrating the gospel in power with precise timing. As we act in coordinated, strategic, united prayer, we are more able than ever to see that such moves of God are matched by prayers asking God to do these things. We can only conclude that the Lord of the harvest intends to send laborers among each of the peoples of the world.

In our day we see immense cooperative efforts to pray for unreached peoples. Hundreds of teams have traveled to prayerwalk among unreached peoples, as my team did in Cambodia. Such prayer journeys simply help people pray in the very places they expect God to bring forth His answers. Since God is the true initiator of prayer, and people are praying in such abundant ways, we should not be surprised to see some of His greatest moves in reaching nations and transforming societies in the near future.

God Listens and the World Changes

In the book of Revelation, the Apostle John describes a vision God gave him of humankind’s history. It is filled with images of God and heavenly beings interacting with one another and with our world. The Lamb of God opens seven seals—each affecting the history of this planet. By the end of chapter seven, all of heaven is singing and worshiping God, wondering what will happen next in human history. However, at the beginning of chapter eight, all fall silent. Seven angels with seven trumpets stand before God ready to announce the unfolding fate of the world, but they must wait until the eighth angel offers God incense which includes all the prayers of the saints—prayers for justice and victory. Nothing can happen until the fragrance of these prayers rises before God.

Prayer is the most powerful form of social action because God responds directly to praying people. Prayer is the most powerful part of mission to unreached peoples, because God does what only He can do. Even in the most hopeless of situations, He breaks the false dominion of the enemy, brings spiritual light, and breathes life for lasting social transformation.

GO TO THE BEGINNING OF LESSON 4: Mandate for the Nations

Notes

1. Gerhard Friedrich, ed., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972), 614.

2. George Otis Jr., The Twilight Labyrinth (Grand Rapids: Chosen Books, 1997), 281.

3. Francis Frangipane, The Three Battlegrounds (Marion, IA: River of Life Ministries, 1989), 14–15.

4. Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 312.

5. Otis, Twilight Labyrinth, 298–303.