Pray For Me

Please pray for me!

This is not your normal Discerning the Times. Usually, I try to describe in these letters the overall picture of the Holy Spirit’s work so that we may join Him as partners. At the same time, I share as I am able those areas into which we can pray to discern Satan’s efforts to oppose the advancement of the Kingdom of God. Both of these are required to pray effectively, “Father, Thy Kingdom Come!”

Today, I would like to ask you to pray for me personally.

Why and how?

There are four streams of prayer engagement into which I have been caught up for intense intercession in the last weeks. These are areas where I discern the Holy Spirit moving powerfully. At the same time, Satan is attempting to establish firmly his strongholds to push back against and block our Father’s will to see the Gospel of His Son, Jesus, advance throughout the world.

I wish this were a simple matter of one neat prayer request upon which we all could focus.

In fact, there are multiple interwoven levels of prayer engagement needed. I’m not requesting everyone to take on responsibility for all of these. That is where I have been laboring for some weeks now, and tormented by trying to handle them all at once. So, I turn to you, sisters and brothers in Christ, for help. I pray, the Holy Spirit may direct you to one particular focus of prayer.

Video Part # 1 Invitation to pray for me (Brad) re: Reactionary Conservatism, Radical Islam, and China vision.

In recent days, I have been struggling to discern how to call others to intercede. Here I ask you to pray for me and if you hear the Lord imparting guidance to you in terms of how to involve the Body of Christ more fully in prayer effort beyond this, my request, please share it with me.

1. The dynamic of Reactionary Conservatism was named a few months ago as another demonic stronghold in the world today. Pray for me, that I may not become a part of building that stronghold.

As the vision of liberal progressivism is increasingly implemented in the Church, society and in government, and the levers of power become more coercive, there will be and is already a growing movement against it.

Judging from past history, I believe Satan will counter this movement to overcome the present drift by distorting it from a positive restoration of our core Christian values to convert it into a “reactionary force” that will become just as tyrannical as the leftist movement it is opposing.

As I often find myself in the role of prophetic voice called to counter the movement of liberal progressivism, pray for me! I do not wish to become a reactionary conservative. I am thankful for co-workers and friends who help to keep me away from that, but I need strong prayer covering as I engage in these areas that are extremely dangerous to my soul.

2. The stronghold of Radical Islam continues to gain power and to have the political, economic and military means to impose its vision on the world. I wrote about this in a Discerning The Times article a month to six weeks ago that was met mostly by silence. That silence seems reminiscent right now—feels like it could be 1935 – 1936.

1935-1936 was the era when, except for the prescient few, the world was blind to the demonic stronghold of Nazism making the shift from deceptive, potentially dangerous ideology to one with the lethal, political, and economic means to impose its vision from hell on the rest of the world.

What I see in the heavenlies, as well as hear in the news, is that we are living in the days similar to those of 1935-36. The demonic stronghold of radical Islam continues to gain power. While it is certainly a noble goal to rid Syria of its chemical weapons, that is not the real threat to the Church or to civilized society. Rather, it is the growing power of Islamist forces in the Middle East that are willing to use any and all means to impose their vision of reality on the world. Their own stated goal is jihad, the mass destruction of both Jews and Christians, and the imposition of sharia law throughout the world.

Unless we wake up to all of this by falling on our knees before our Father to pray, “Thy will be done!” I see an impending catastrophe of terrible proportions upon us. What I hear from our government, from our culture, from the liberal church is “Peace, peace!” But what I painfully see is a false peace providing cover for the relentless preparation for war by the enemies of human freedom. Ironically, it was on the foundation of a Christian worldview that this peace was built in the liberal, democratic and pluralistic society of the Western world.

I really wish I did not have to worry about all of this, but I do. So I would deeply appreciate your prayers as I seek to know how to lead in this rather awful calling. If I were in politics or the military, which in my early years I really wanted to pursue, by now at the age of 62, I would perhaps be able to exercise influence to do something about all of this. But God called me away from those worldly means of power into a total reliance on His power. So I am forced to my knees in prayer, where I often feel rather powerless. So I ask you for your prayer for protection. But also for guidance to be obedient to the leading of the Holy Spirit as I often have the anointing to invite others into prayer.

3. The struggle to complete the first phase of the China vision. I cannot share much of the details of this yet. I did put an article in the Moving With The Spirit online asking for prayer support.

My friends and intercessors, this is a huge struggle for me. Moving from the role of Intercessor to the role of Joshua seamlessly is very difficult. Let me explain. Not only am I caught up in the heavenlies praying for the fulfillment of the China vision which is to nurture a wave of the Holy Spirit in China by establishing thousands of Dunamis Equipping Schools, but I am also called to the “Joshua work” of putting in place the teaching curriculum, raising the money, building the organization, and equipping qualified teachers. All of this is the hands-on Joshua work that must be done so that the Holy Spirit may have the means to accomplish this vision that He himself has given us.

Yes! I know God is sovereign and He is working His purposes out! And, of course, I am surrounded by countless other intercessors and Joshua workers in the PRMI office and PRMI family. Thank you all! Our God has called us as His friends and co-workers and He expects us to do our part in the dance of cooperation. Sometimes, I just feel alone in this. Thanks for your prayer!

Specifically, join me in praying for the more than 50,000 dollars still needed to fund the First and Second Units of the Chinese Mobile Dunamis Curriculum. I am always tempted to believe I am solely responsible for raising resources rather than trusting in our Father to provide all we need to accomplish His will.

This is a huge joy, of course. It is also a burden! Right now I am delegating to others portions of my responsibilities as Executive Director of PRMI, so that I can focus on the work that only I can do—because I speak and write Chinese and have written most of the Dunamis materials, I am the one who needs to oversee the translation work and the final compilation of the teaching materials.

4. As if all this is not enough! I have been tormented by what has been going on in the US Government. I suppose everyone is breathing a sigh of relief that Congress and the President are getting their act together and not shutting down the government and not going to default on our national debt.

I am not relieved! I am quite nearly in despair! Raising the debt ceiling and not defaulting on our debt is not the real issue. The real issue is what has been and continues to amass such debt, and thus, to raise the debt ceiling in the first place.

Video Part # 2 Invitation to pray for guidance about how to pray for the USA massive, uncontrolled, unsustainable debt.

It seems that our nation is unable to deal with two major issues that are going to destroy us.

The first is massive, unrestrained spending. Our national debt is growing at an unprecedented rate that even the Government Accounting Office has warned is unsustainable.

The second is the relentless implementation of a socialistic vision of society that is destroying the foundation of a free, democratic, society. We need an energetic economic engine running at full steam in order to begin paying off the debt, while continuing to fund all the government programs required for a civilized society.

I am doing my best to remain non-partisan in this. Facts are facts.

US Debt

US Government Outlays verses Receipts

The terrifying thing taking place is not only uncontrolled government spending, but also the fact that liberal progressivism, with its ever growing entitlement society, is destroying the economic foundations for creating wealth in the first place. With ever growing unlimited government we find unlimited spending. We are on the road toward the destruction of our liberal democratic society.

Another huge expense comes from interest payments on the debt itself that sucks away more and more resources from the nation. Those billions of dollars paid every year in interest are building China as a great military power. We are filling the coffers of Saudi Arabia, Russia and others. The Bible warns that the debtor is enslaved to the lender. (Proverbs 22:7) In this case, we are enslaving ourselves as a nation to those with a vision that is destructive of our own.

This is the picture of a nation bent on causing its own ruin. Or to use Arnold Toynbee’s famous maxim, “Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.” This is the picture of the United States and indeed the Western world, committing a slow but relentless suicide.

There is no denying the facts! It seems however that both houses of Congress as well as the Obama Administration are, with the exception of a few, lone, mostly ignored voices, denying these facts. But as John Adams said,

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

And this fact of the massive debt being incurred and the government and political structures that are creating this debt, will have disastrous consequences whether they suit our worldview or not.

How do we turn around a government system in which short term political gains are bought at the cost of a future catastrophe that will sweep away whatever short term benefits there may be? How can I warn of all this without being accused of being too partisan?

I ask your prayers on this one! To me all this feels like this cartoon.

The sentiment expressed in that cartoon represents where I am. The US debt combined with the seemingly inexorable strengthening of the demonic strongholds of Radical Islam and Liberal Progressivism leaves me exhausted emotionally, physically and spiritually.

Am I alone in feeling like that lemming who knows there is something wrong but the forces that are carrying us along are so vast and complicated, that there is no turning back or resisting the tide?

Am I the only one tormented by all of this? The only one kept up at night with visions of a preventable apocalypse? There are days when I wish I could simply turn a blind eye to it all. There are many days I wish I were wrong, misinformed—and I may well be. So please tell me if I am! I fear that I am not.

Pray for guidance as to how we are called to work as intercessors and Joshua workers to do our part to divert, what all the evidence confirms are, Satan’s plans for the future in continuing rebellion against our Father’s vision and will.

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