Joomla! site syndication http://www.canadainprayer.com/en 2008-07-25T01:37:35+01:00 http://www.canadainprayer.com/en http://www.canadainprayer.com/en/images/M_images/joomla_rss.png text/html 2006-04-09T22:13:54+01:00 http://www.canadainprayer.com/en http://www.canadainprayer.com/en/content/view/1/ We are an electronic prayer community committed to uniting, encouraging and equipping believers in effective prayer and fasting for Canada, resulting in the transformation of the spiritual landscape of Canada.CIP serves as a catalyst that provides information with inspiration to help promote prayer, intercession and revival. We provide practical information that can be a resource to you as your family, church, ministry, and/or small groups join in agreement and believe Almighty God for revival. To serve you, CIP’s resources include First Friday Prayer Newsletters, our online Prayer Forum, Seminars/Conferences, Prayer Assemblies, Evangelistic Crusades, and a host of other web services.“Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. (1 Tim. 2:1-4) text/html 2008-06-02T13:56:03+01:00 http://www.canadainprayer.com/en http://www.canadainprayer.com/en/content/view/41/ “God hates the great things in which love is not the motive; but He delights in the little things that are prompted by love.” - D. L. MOODY Greetings Canada’s Kneeling Army, Greetings Canada’s Kneeling Army, It must be June, because overnight you’ve noticed that pile in the basement, the clutter in the garage, and the flower beds looking a little tired. Friends, before you get to your to-do list, remember to clean up the most important room in your life – your prayer closet. Before I get any further in my letter, I would like to thank those who have emailed and written to Canada In Prayer over the last month. Your kind words have been an encouragement to myself and the team here at CIP. Please continue to write your thoughts. They are truly appreciated, because after eleven years of being on the front lines crying out for revival it’s always good to know that what we do here still matters. Now on to our meditation for this month. June marks the month of harvest from the Hebrew perspective and, more specifically, our Jewish brothers and sisters celebrate the major festival “Shavuot” between June 8th and 10th. This Jewish holiday is enlightening to all of us as Christians, but especially to intercessors who are very tuned in to the Orthodox calendar – the one that started it all. Shavuot is observed exactly 50 days after Passover and 50 days after the original calendar date of Easter. If we remember, before Almighty God gave the Torah to Israel and before they were a family and a community, they had to experience a new birth at Mount Sinai. Shavuot is likened to a wedding as, on that day on Mount Sinai, God vowed eternal devotion to a people, and the Jewish people, the descendants of Abraham, pledged everlasting loyalty to the one and only Living God. Wow, talk about the ultimate new beginning!! As we continue on with our theme for 2008, “New Beginning,” I encourage you to meditate on Acts 4:13-31. Here in scripture you will find the second corporate outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and the phenomenal growth of the early church. Friends, my prayer is that you will see the same crimson thread that runs between Shavuot and the outpouring in chapter 4. On further inspection of this chapter, we see in chapter 2 that the disciples were transformed from “weak to willing”, from “zeroes to heroes”, and three thousand responded to Peter’s sermon at a 9:00 am service! From chapter 2 on through to chapter 4, things get a little tough when the servants of God start exercising their new beginning power. Therefore, let us not be caught off-guard or surprised when we enter into this new place of empowerment in our prayer closets. Things will seem like they’re going off the rails, but let me remind you that we, like the early believers, like the children of Israel, must never judge according to our circumstances, but we must always live and operate in our blessedness. Below, you will find what I believe can help us reach our breakthroughs, or for those of us who have already entered that place, go BEYOND our breakthrough. 1. Desire a fresh repentance and humility (Acts 4:13-22). Repentance to turn the Church in Canada and ourselves from our wicked ways. “In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and saying, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand! For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah, saying: The voice of one crying in the wilderness: `Prepare the way of the LORD; Make His paths straight.' (Matthew 3:1-3) And humility to admit our need for God. “God is attracted to weakness. He can’t resist those who humbly and honestly admit how desperately they need Him. Our weakness, in fact, makes room for His power.” - JIM CYMBALA, Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire 2. Intercede in boldness (Acts 4:22-31). It’s time to pray in an increased boldness and faith! “And when they had prayed, the place where they were assembled together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with boldness.“ (Acts 4: 31) “’If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.’ Then He said to them, ‘Take heed what you hear. With the same measure you use, it will be measured to you; and to you who hear, more will be given. For whoever has, to him more will be given; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him.’ And He said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground, and should sleep by night and rise by day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he himself does not know how. For the earth yields crops by itself: first the blade, then the head, after that the full grain in the head. But when the grain ripens, immediately he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.’ Then He said, ‘To what shall we liken the kingdom of God? Or with what parable shall we picture it? It is like a mustard seed which, when it is sown on the ground, is smaller than all the seeds on earth;“ (Mark 4:23-31) “Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us,“ (Ephesians 3:20) “Faith’s supreme longing is for the return of the glory that has departed from the sanctuary. If we today would rediscover the virtue in that Name, the victory in that Name, the violence in that Name, we would set this world alight for God.” - LEONARD RAVENHILL, Revival Praying 3. Be a God Chaser (Acts 4:31-37). We must go after God with even greater intensity for the Church in Canada, for our communities and for our families. Paul said, “My determined purpose is that I may know Him, that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him.” (Philippians 3:10 Amplified) “O God, You are my God; early will I seek You; my soul thirsts for You; my flesh longs for You In a dry and thirsty land where there is no water. So I have looked for You in the sanctuary, to see Your power and Your glory.“ (Psalm 63:1-2) “God chasers are after the fresh presence of the Almighty. Sometimes their pursuit raises the eyebrows of the existing church, but usually they lead the church from a place of dryness back into the place of His presence. It’s simply not enough to know about God. We have churches filled with people who can win Bible trivia contests but who don’t know Him.” – TOMMY TENNEY, The God Chasers Intercessors, in closing, I salute you for your steadfastness and I encourage you this month to confess that you are indeed blessed, remembering never ever to judge according to your circumstances, but to remind yourself of the crimson thread that runs from Mount Sinai to Calvary and now to you. Crimson Thread, Brian Warren Executive Director, CIP