BOOK REVIEW: CITY OF PRAYER (2019)

AMERICA'S UNCEASING PRAYER MOVEMENT

There is only one major American city, of which it can be said, that it is completely blanketed in daily Prayer. On the surface,  Austin, Texas, whose motto is “Keep Austin Weird” may seem like the unlikeliest place for the most concentrated, sustained and focused city-wide movement of prayer in this great country.

Just as in the Third Great Awakening began with one man’s vision for prayer  (Jeremiah Lanphier), Austin’s decade old “Unceasing Prayer Movement” began when one man and his wife. Pastor Trey Kent of Northwest fellowship Church in Austin Texas, and his wife, Mary Anne,  were prayer-walking their neighborhood one night in February 2008. There, under a street lamp, the Holy Spirit gave Pastor Kent a clear vision for a 24/7 prayer movement, powered by many churches from the capitol city of Texas – Austin.

Thus began execution of this divine directive, which quickly evolved into what is now 100 churches of all races and denominations, praying for their city, their churches and the lost. They pray, literally, 24/7/365.  CITY OF PRAYER is the first document of its type to not just record the success of a growing grassroots movement, but the book provides a roadmap which can be, and has already been reproduced in the USA, with interest from other countries!

Written by Pastor Kent and Dr. Kie Bowman of Austin's Hyde Park Baptist Church, CITY OF PRAYER gives not just the history of what is now "The Unceasing Prayer Movement" and "Austin Prays", but also a brief primer on the great revivals and moves of God in the last 150 or so years. These Revivals/Awakenings began with and were fueled only by prayer. Some of the prayer movements of Scripture are also looked at, as a foundational to this book.

Chapters include such themes as: A Culture of Prayer; A People of Prayer; The People of Prayer; Launching 24/7 Prayer in Your City and the Results of Prayer. Without "spoiling the end", as "they" say, this group of churches fervently praying in Austin brought a direct answer from Heaven, which ended a terrible drought in Central Texas! 

CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE CITY OF PRAYER

The Chapter on "Launching Your Own 24/7 Prayer Movement in Your City" is of particular interest to me. I have been part of now five year old and on-going, intentional, twice per month noon prayer meeting of some local pastors and just anyone who loves to prayer. We had met for years on end from 2005 at the local HOP or House of Prayer run by a good brother of mine- Scott Beauchamp. However since relaunching in recent years, more and more prayer leaders are coming by on our lunch hours on the First and Third Tuesdays of each month to press in for transformation (personal and city wide), the church and everything else that comes up. We have pastors who are Bible churches; Baptist, Assembly of God, Nazarene, Apostolic, Non-denominational and others I have no idea where they go to church. All I know is they love Jesus and love to pray.

When I assumed leadership of the Annual National Day of Prayer event at the Illinois State Capitol, little did I know I was walking, as a prime target, into a blazing hot war. The Lord led me directly to this core group which were already in the infancy of our little city prayer group.  There is a living testimony as to the power of prayer to deliver, empower and embolden which I personally found in this group of praying men back in February 2006. I have never forgotten it as we move into Year 16 of facilitating the annual National Day of Prayer, and stay close to the flame of praying men and women of God, who are all about Jesus and the Holy Ghost. We may be growing very slowly, but there is something to persevering and pressing ahead, regardless, since our Audience is an Audience of One.

  

Almost every movement of God began with one man praying. The Third Great Awakening, the last great nationwide move of God in America, began in New York City in 1857 when one man with a vision for prayer – Jeremiah Lanphier. The first week Lanphier called a prayer meeting, no one showed up. But then on week, one other man showed up….and then more and more. The economic and socio-political conditions in the USA were not unlike those we have today.  Yet Revival spread like wildfire across the nation, leading to many millions saved and the gospel spreading like wildfire to the new American frontier! It laid the spiritual foundation which guided the nation through the devastating Civil War which followed very soon after the Awakening.

We are almost similar Civil War times, not with the Fort Sumters or Gettysburgs, but a civil war of Culture, Community and Church dysfunction. The only answer is the Praying Church. Get this book and let the Lord lead us to what He would have us do.

LINKS:

The PrayerShop

AUSTIN PRAYS

National Day of Prayer

THE 3:16 VERSES OF THE BIBLE, PART 19: "THE GOD OF THIS CITY"

He has broken my teeth with gravel; He has made me cower in the dust. (Lamentations 3:16)
Several years ago, I met Aaron Boyd, the lead singer of the Irish pop band BLUETREE as they were doing an American tour. They had the best version of their original song "GOD OF THIS CITY" (sorry, Chris Tomlin) and it launched them all over the world. Bluetree had that mysterious and gentle, yet thumping, Irish sound which you hear in the music of U2 and the great Christian singer from Northern Ireland - Robin Mark (Days of Elijah etc.). In fact, Aaron told me that he was once Robin Mark's drummer. What does this have to do with Lamentations 3:16?

Well, the God of This City in a song, is the God of this and every city, where He wishes the hearts of all men, women and children will be open to letting their hearts be open to the Message our Creator wants to give to them. Some of the lyrics of the Bluetree "GOD OF THIS CITY" (2009) are perfect here:
You're God of this city, You're the King of these people
You're the Lord of this nation, You are
You're the light in this darkness, You're the hope to the hopeless
You're the peace to the restless, You are
For there is no one like our God
There is no one like You God.

The people of Jerusalem, God's own city, did not see that, acknowledge that or seem to believe it in their hearts, even while going to their temple (built by Solomon over 400 years earlier) to perform rituals before Him. They are no different than the people in the current city of Jerusalem or just about any city in the world today.

But the God of the City sees. He sees the evil deeds of man and the dark hearts, souls and eyes of everyone who rather bow before an idol than live the simple life of the Believer. He sees and His patience will one day run out. In the days of Noah, He Himself said He regretted making man (in Genesis Chapter 6 and following). He flooded the earth and wiped everything out. He rebooted the earth and saved only those in Noah's Ark. Here thousands of years later, in 586 BC, He destroyed the spiritually filthy city of Jerusalem and the now corrupt temple and used the most brutal army on earth to do it. Less than 600 years later, in 70 AD, He would use the brutal Roman army again- headed up by General Titus, to completely destroy Jerusalem again. There is one more complete do over coming, but this is the last one, before the New Jerusalem descends from Heaven, completely built to divine blueprints and specs.

This 586 BC destruction of Jerusalem was led by the prideful and power-mad king Nebuchadnezzar (who would later become a big Evangelist for Yahweh in Babylon while he was alive). The prophet Jeremiah who had warned and warned and warned kings and princes and priests and others about the coming Judgment, if they did not change their evil ways, witnessed this destruction in absolute horror. He knew what would happen if the people did not listen. It is one thing to know it, preach it and even suffer persecution for it, as Jeremiah did. It is a whole other thing to see the violent and precise Judgment of God right before one's eyes.

After seeing the brutal Babylonians carry out what God had ordered on the object of His Wrath, the prophet wrote the Book of Lamentations. He wept and pour his heart on in this document, because there is nothing good about evil and just as bad, seeing destruction which follows it. Yet, even in this long song of Lament, Jeremiah saw the hope of the Lord. 

In this valley of despair and rubble, where he felt like the Lord, through the Babylonian army, had only left dirt and dust for the remnant left behind to eat (re: Lamentations 3:16), Jeremiah still saw the goodness of God, the God of This City.

First of all, this poor man, who was chosen by God just barely out of his teens, to be His mouthpiece against the wickedness in the palaces and the Temple, was spared when Nebuchadnezzar sacked Jerusalem and killed all the royalty, except the king and took the elite of the nation into exile for 70 years. In fact, the Babylonians were made aware by God just who Jeremiah was and literally spared and left him behind to look after the poor remnant whom God wanted to stay behind and not go into exile. Jeremiah then wrote the Famous Letter to the Remnant in Jeremiah 29, which contains one of the most famous bible verses of all times - Jeremiah 29:11. It was a letter which gave hope to the people graciously left behind by God, that He had a plan to rebuild their lives, IF they would trust in Him.

The second thing which Jeremiah saw, even in the lament of this book (Lamentations), when he felt that all that was in his mouth was gravel, dirt and bitter herbs, was God's Love. This is a lesson for all of us who now feel like Jeremiah did, as we go through trial, tribulations and worse. It is a lesson we should observe as true, when we also see our communities, counties and country destroyed by the same evil, sin and the sinful like Jeremiah saw when Yahweh destroyed HIS city in 586 BC. 

When we weep for our own cities and towns like the Bible records one great man of God doing in the Book of Lamentations. When we not just weep but look up to the God of this City and Country as our only Hope, we too can fall back on the words found in this same Lamentations 3, and written by Jeremiah himself. These are the Words which should gives us hope in the midst of despair today:
JEREMIAH 3:19-32
19  Remember my affliction and my wandering, the wormwood and bitterness.
20  Surely my soul remembers
And is bowed down within me.
21  This I recall to my mind,
Therefore I have hope.
22  The Lord’s lovingkindnesses indeed never cease,
For His compassions never fail.
23  They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.
24  “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“Therefore I have hope in Him.”
25  The Lord is good to those who wait for Him,
To the person who seeks Him.
26  It is good that he waits silently
For the salvation of the Lord.
27  It is good for a man that he should bear
The yoke in his youth.
28  Let him sit alone and be silent
Since He has laid it on him.
29  Let him put his mouth in the dust,
Perhaps there is hope.
30  Let him give his cheek to the smiter,
Let him be filled with reproach.
31  For the Lord will not reject forever,
32  For if He causes grief,
Then He will have compassion

According to His abundant lovingkindness.

(Graphic Credit: Pinterest)