The Holy Spirit moved during a Kairos moment at the recent spiritual warfare Dunamis in Edmonton to draw people deeper into prayer for the next great awakening. Here’s what happened.
The Dunamis project explores the person and work of the Holy Spirit and how as followers of Christ, we may be empowered to be witnesses for Jesus and walk daily in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Dunamis Project 5: Spiritual Warfare
The Dunamis Project consists of six retreat events. The fifth of these retreats focuses on spiritual warfare and kingdom advancement. This Dunamis begins by examining the more significant issues of spiritual warfare and the conflict between the Kingdom of God and the evil empire of our adversary Satan.
It looks at the aspect of personal spiritual warfare, exploring how flaming darts of the enemy can attack us. These attacks come from outside of us, but there is also an inner battle. The enemy can gain ground in our lives and seek to oppress us from within.
The project then goes further, looking at how we can help ourselves and others deal with these evil spirits through deliverance.
Towards the end of the retreat, the topic of high-level spiritual warfare is introduced. The topics covered here include the formation of demonic strongholds, demonic cloaking, and how to pierce it. The strategies and tactics for dealing with strongholds are also looked at.
Recently, at the Dunamis Project in Edmonton, Alberta, I was teaching the section on high-level spiritual warfare. We briefly discussed high-level warfare, battlespaces, and strongholds. We explored strongholds based in congregations and the strongholds that have afflicted our first nations peoples here in Canada. We discussed how to pray out the plans and schemes of the enemy and pray in what the Lord wants to do.
Praying for the Next Great Awakening
But then we shifted from praying against the enemy’s work to block and hinder God’s kingdom advancement to looking at how God’s kingdom advances through outpourings of the Holy Spirit.
Those outpourings can lead to revival and even the next great awakening. As we considered revivals, we saw how the Lord had used R.A. Torrey to be a catalyst for revivals worldwide. His teaching focused on three elements:
- Doing the work of evangelism.
- The empowering work of the Spirit through the baptism with the Holy Spirit.
- The work of earnest prayer and intercession for outpourings of the Holy Spirit.
These elements set the context for the Holy Spirit to ignite revival, which, when discipled well, could lead to the Next Great Awakening. But as Torrey himself observed, it must begin with prayer.
Part of that praying in is to pray for outpourings of the Holy Spirit, which could lead to revival and even the Next Great Awakening.
A Kairos Moment in the Prayer Groups
Participants were invited to move into groups to pray for their churches and communities. It soon became apparent we had stepped into a Kairos moment (a time when the Holy Spirit is moving). Participants quickly gathered into groups and jumped directly into prayer. Usually, there would be a few minutes of conversation before the groups settled down into prayer. But there was no talking. Instead, there was an immediate quiet as the groups began to pray.
The groups were given about 15 minutes and were intensely focused on praying. Towards the end of the 15 minutes, one of the intercessors became overwhelmed with a sense of God’s grief for the churches, and they began to cry out loudly with tears of sorrow. We continued praying for another 5 minutes before things started to quiet down and the sense of the Kairos time lifted.
We debriefed immediately, and people reported being engaged and feeling that sense of grief. Some reported being moved to tears as they prayed. We debriefed the cry from the intercessor, as it had been audible and could have caused confusion. But people had sensed it was the Lord working.
The whole time seemed to flow out of the quote by R.A. Torrey:
“Great revivals always begin first in the hearts of a few men and women whom God arouses by His Spirit to believe in Him as a living God,as a God who answers prayer, upon whose heart He lays a burden from which no rest can be found except in importunate (unrelenting) crying unto God.”
It is the work of prayer, which the Lord will use to bring about what Peter describes as “times of refreshing from the Lord” (Acts 3: 19). The Lord will answer by pouring out his Holy Spirit upon his body as we continue to pray. Believers will be empowered, churches will be revived, and awakening within our communities will start to occur through their witness.
As the Lord continues to bless congregations with his presence and power manifested in his mercy and grace, the body of Messiah will be transformed, and so will the social and cultural structures of our world, and it begins with prayer.
In the afternoon, during the prayers for empowerment, many people came forward, specifically asking for infillings to be able to pray for revival, awakening, and the NGA. It was very encouraging.
How You Can Pray For The Next Great Awakening
Let the Holy Spirit guide you as you pray. These pointers may help to get you started.
- Ask the Lord to give you a greater desire to pray for outpourings of the Holy Spirit leading to revival and awakening.
- Ask for the gift of faith to pray for revival.
- Pray that the Lord would open your eyes to see the deep spiritual needs of our world and that he would open your heart and fill it with love for people.
- Ask the Lord to form a team around you so you can pray together. This could be a group from your church or a group in your city, or even online (PRMI’s Global Prayer Call on Friday focuses on revival. Click here for details).
- Commit to a specific time, it could be once a day or a week, to pray for the work of the Holy Spirit within your church and for revival to take place.
- Listen to the direction and guidance of the Holy Spirit. He will give you further ideas about how to pray for the outpouring of the Spirit, for revival, and even for the next great awakening.
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