My husband and I went for a free vision exam. The advertisement made a lot of amazing claims just as they so often do. It said the doctors were skilled with extensive experience in advanced diagnostic equipment, the procedure rooms were specially designed for optimal results, the technology used was the best with complete follow-up care and affordable prices! We had thought we were going for a normal eye exam only to discover that the doctor was examining us for laser surgery. Because of the fancy advertisement, the place was packed with people wanting to improve their vision through free laser surgery.

While we were waiting, I noticed a group of patients gathered around a big window intently watching something very interesting in the next room. I walked over and to my surprise, they were watching a live laser surgery being done on one of the patients! It took only about ten minutes to complete this surgery that provided a vast improvement of one’s vision, even with those who had been wearing bifocal glasses for years and years.

I was fascinated as I watched the doctor wash the eye with a solution and know exactly how to do what seemed like a simple surgery on the eye. I am sure it was much more complex than I imagined. Then he would wash the eye again, and I would see magnified a beautifully colored and designed eye so unique and carefully created by God. It was an amazing surgery that impressed me greatly.

God is doing eye surgery right now on the body of Christ. He wants us to see with His vision. He is a skilled physician with the very best equipment, and He has the greatest experience of anyone in the entire world! His technology is supernatural, and He provides daily follow-up and personal care. God wants to remove our shortsightedness and the cataracts that fog our vision. He wants us to see through eyes of faith what He can do in our cities and nations. He wants to put his own eye salve on our eyes so we can see brilliantly what is before us and how we are to pray.

While on a prayer journey in the Biblical city of Laodicea in Turkey, I was reminded of God’s message to the Laodicean church. God wants us to be willing to go through His refinement so that we are not lukewarm and naked like the Laodicean church but, instead, are on fire for Him. He says to the church in Laodicea in Revelation 3:18:

“I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful naked-ness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.”

I didn’t qualify for lazer surgery, but I am glad that I do qualify for God’s surgery that opens my eyes further to see from His glorious perspective! You qualify as well. I encourage you to begin to see your city from God’s Kingdom perspective. Think about starting 24/7 in your city for a week or a month. Think about the Kingdom of God invading your city.

We sometimes do one-month Houses of Prayer. When we do this in cities for a month, it changes so many of our lives! Time in God’s presence changes you dramatically just as it did Michael’s family. Perhaps you are thinking:

“But you don’t know my nation – the church is too small or too divided!”

God doesn’t need a large population of Christians in order to bring in His presence. He will work through a few churches that decide to unite in prayer in order to seek His presence for their city. This is where He loves to show His presence. When we had a one-month House of Prayer in Spain, we had only 12-15 committed churches.

By Debbie Przybylski
Intercessors Arise International
IHOPKC

“God’s kingdom, when it comes, probably won’t arrive in the way we expect or even want it to. But viewing history with the eyes of faith, through the grid of past prayer movements, we can easily see the correlation between seasons of intercession and the extension of God’s kingdom in the world.”

What will your city look like when it has a Kingdom vision and focus?
How will it be different than it is right now? Notice the abundant prosperity that God brings to the city in Jeremiah 33:9:

“Then this city will bring me renown, joy, praise and honor before all nations on earth that hear of all the good things I do for it; and they will be in awe and will tremble at the abundant prosperity and peace I provide for it.”

When the believers in a city have a kingdom vision and begin to pray together with eyes of faith, several dramatic changes take place:

• Trust – A new level of trust is developed between believers of different backgrounds. Suspicion is gone. There is the realization that we need one another to reach our city.
• The wisdom of God – The Christians begin seeking heaven’s perspective for their city and heaven’s agenda. They begin seeking the mind of Christ and the wisdom of God for their city.
• Relational unity – The city church begins to want deeper fellowship with other churches. This unity is much deeper than a unity based on an event. It is true friendship.
• Transformation – The believers seek for God to transform their city and revive the city church. They then bring the revival fire into the streets and community. The church begins to influence the city.
• Lovers and worshippers of God – The church becomes a lover of God instead of just a worker for God. They learn to worship God out of intimate fellowship. This pushes out the powers of darkness.
• Kingdom building – There is a willingness to lay down personal agendas and work towards building God’s purposes. The church begins to see the big picture of what God wants to do in the city.
• Presence of God – There begins to be more emphasis upon waiting on God. The presence of God replaces man-made fleshly ideas, programs, and methods.
• Learners of simplicity – The church learns the power and wisdom of simplicity. The way God works is not through a highly intellectual, organized, and complicated program. He works through simplicity.

This is what we must prayer towards. When we had our first one-month 24/7 House of Prayer in southern Spain in 2006, we only started to taste what God wanted for the city. The taste made us desperately hungry for more. It was life changing, and I don’t think any of us could say that we want to go back to the old way. We had just begun to taste what God wanted for the Campo de Gibraltar area. A Kingdom vision was born. But there is so much more.

God is giving incredible grace for prayer at this hour. This vision is spreading far and wide, and we will soon be captured in a movement of prayer and a hunger for His presence that is unstoppable. All over the world there is beginning to be a desperate cry for fervent prayer. Let’s discover how to prepare the way for God’s presence and Kingdom by learning to pray together with churches in our area for extended period of time.

Pray through the above list over and over again for your city. See with eyes of faith what God wants to do. Cry out for Him to ignite a Kingdom vision in your city. The hour calls for it. Your city desperately needs God’s presence. His vision is life changing!

“Without a vision, people are doomed to live mediocre lives, carried along by social influences and self-centered interests. The Bible says, ‘Where there is no vision, the people perish’ (Proverbs 28:18 KJV). Our own vision for our lives cannot sustain us; we must have a vision that originates from the heart of God, from His very throne room. His vision is life-giving, life-changing, and worth abandoning our hearts and lives to.”

By Debbie Przybylski
Intercessors Arise International
IHOPKC

One day Jesus and his disciples were crossing a lake in a boat. Jesus was tired out after his long day teaching the crowds so he went down below deck to lie down and rest, but he soon fell asleep.

A mighty storm started to blow up across the lake. Huge waves came over the sides of the boat and it began to fill with water and sink.

Jesus disciples and everyone else on the boat started to panic. They went down below to wake Jesus up. “Save us master,” they begged Jesus, “We are all going to drown!”

Instead of being worried about his disciples however, Jesus got angry with them. “Why are you such cowards” he asked them? “You have seen me perform lots of miracles, yet you can’t even believe that you will be safe in a storm. Why do you have so little faith?” He demanded to know. Then Jesus went up on deck and told the sea to be still and the wind to calm down. The men were so astonished that the sea and the wind obeyed Jesus (Matthew 8, 18-27).

Jesus gave his disciples a huge ‘telling off’ several times for their lack of faith. When they asked him to give them more faith so that they could believe lots more things about Jesus, he told them that if they had faith the size of a tiny little mustard seed (and that’s really tiny), they could say to a mountain to move, and it would move. (Matthew 17 v20)……….. Wow!!!!!

It certainly is very difficult to believe in something that you cannot see. It takes faith to believe that God is real and that He sent his son Jesus to die for us on a cross. (John 3 v 16) Jesus tells us not to worry about having a lack of faith. He says that we can ask (pray to) God to give us more faith. Just like the disciples, we also forget the power of God and that He has offered us this power to use wisely to help other people. The way we get our ‘healing faith power’ is through believing and asking. Remember that Jesus was always healing the sick and performing miracles and he has said that we should follow his example. If you think that you can’t pray and heal someone through the power of God, then you won’t be able to heal them. That’s not good if it is something that you would really like to do though!!!

So, let’s see! When people in the bible with strong faith asked God for something what happened?

A man called Jabez (1 Chronicles 4, 10) cried out to God to increase his wealth and possessions, and God answered his request. Jabez had lots of faith to believe that God could give him all that he wanted, and God did! When Peter wanted to walk on the water to get to Jesus, Peter could do it. But the minute Peter started to doubt that he could, he began to sink! When Paul turned his life around and began to believe and have faith in Jesus, he travelled all over the Mediterranean telling people about Jesus and that he was God’s son. This is how the church as we know it today began.

Without Paul’s powerful faith that other people would believe that what he said about Jesus and God was true, Paul would have stayed at home and we would never have known anything about God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and Heaven. We would never have had the opportunity to believe in Jesus and have eternal life (life for ever in Heaven with God).

Did you know that we can change people’s lives by praying for them in powerful faith? That is, we can ask God to give us lots of faith, or lots more faith, so that when we believe that something will, or we pray for something to, happen, God rewards our powerful faith by making it happen!

Just think of all those powerful faith prayers you could pray today! Think of all those amazing people that you could heal, and you could also help them to believe in Jesus and our Father God so that they too could have eternal life.

Powerful prayers shouldn’t just be a ‘maybe I will have a try’. We must learn to pray powerful prayers all the time! We must have faith that God will join in our prayers and make them happen!

This is an example of a Powerful Faith Prayer:

Dear Lord Jesus,

Please give me lots of powerful faith so that I can move a mountain if I need too, and right now, please heal my very sick uncle Bill! I believe that you will! Amen.

Don’t give up if at first your prayers don’t appear to get answered! Just keep asking our father God for more faith to believe that they will!!!