The missing elements in many prayer movements
As I gather today in Washington, D.C. for the National Prayer Breakfast, I am glad that this event happens and that I can be part of it, but I long for more strategic prayer to emerge. In Mark 16, after instructing the church to preach to all creatures and “make disciples of all nations,” the first criteria that Jesus describes for evaluating the effectiveness in this mission is that signs like “casting out of demons” would be evident. Christians can measure success of the Great Commission by effectively dealing with the spiritual forces of darkness that are oppressing not just individuals, but people groups and cultures. Paul told the Corinthians to tear down strongholds with the weapons that are mighty through God (2 Cor 10). The Apostle Paul wrote in Ephesians 6 that we do not wrestle merely with flesh and blood in a nation” but against “principalities and powers in the heavenly places.” They are the “spiritual forces of darkness.”
When Jesus sent out his disciples to preach His word and heal the sick, they returned rejoicing that the demons were subject to them. Jesus responded by explaining to them that as they proclaimed the truth, Satan fell like lightning. Through this, Jesus was showing the disciples how fasting, praying and declaring a biblical message impacts more than just the individuals they encountered. It changes things in the heavens and in the earth.
When Daniel found himself as a refugee in Persia and his people dealing with persecution and threats under pagan rule, he began to fast and pray. In Chapters 9 & 10 it shows that after three weeks, an angel came to him and told him that although his prayer was heard immediately, the “prince of Persia” (Dan 10:13) stood against the angel and delayed him from coming. This “prince” was not a flesh and blood prince but the spiritual prince assigned to that territory. To complete the break-through that Daniel was asking for his people, the “prince” or demon needed to be defeated.
Daniel made serious investment of his time to study the books of Scripture and analyze the behavior of the Jews before he began prayer. It is also important for us to research the history of our community and culture and discover the areas where greatest destruction is occurring. Armed with this information and the discernment given through the Holy Spirit, we can fight with more focus and effectiveness.
If there was a spiritual prince over Persia, there is likely similar demonic strongmen in every nation that has to be overcome. A church can worship and pray diligently without ever significantly influencing the culture of a nation. To see major results, we must do spiritual reconnaissance, determine the enemy’s strongholds, and pray intelligently against the work of the devil.
Repentance and letting go of our own worldview is often needed to truly understand the areas of darkness in our culture. Many times our own preconceived ideas blind us to the true battleground. For example, many Christians are quick to pray against freemasonry or witchcraft in a nation, but neglect the far more pervasive propagation of sinful and demonic ideas and behavior through our school systems where the vast majority of Christian families send their children! Our kids today are not influenced by Masonry, but certainly by radical sexual and gender ideologies in the schools and in social media!
Furthermore, knowing our adversary is not enough. Christians must fight our opposition in UNITY with other churches in their area or region. Territorial demons are not cast out in the same manner as individual demons. They are more powerful and entrenched in the culture. It takes unified, informed intercession with other churches in a region to see territorial darkness pushed back and breakthroughs come.
There are some outstanding examples of this in church history. (The Celtic Church of Ireland is a great testimony of this. You can read it in the paid subscriber section.)
One preparation for unified worship is reconciliation. Every believer is called to mend damaged or broken relationships. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus said that if we approach God and remember a breach with a brother, we must leave our offering and go to the person to first be reconciled. As believers we need to be more mindful of how our personal behavior, our personal relationships, our interactions, impact the community. Corporate divisions between churches of different denominations, between races and classes, as well as generational rifts often harm our communities and prevent true transformation.
But this is still not enough. Far too often, Christians identify demons, pray against them in their nation, and stop there, thinking the mission is accomplished. But Jesus said unless something more powerful fills the void, the demons will come back even stronger (Matt 12:43-45). Just as in a battle, to push the enemy off a high ground is a waste if the attacking army does not place a strong detachment of the army on that spot. Likewise, it is not enough to simply focus on demons and evil with our prayers. After we cast out the demons, we need to learn to pray for good to come. And we also must seek to actively fill that vacated area with godly things and better leaders.
A prayer meeting for personal needs and requests is different from prayer gatherings to cast out a nation’s demons. Unless we recognize the strategic essentials for research, repentance, reconciliation, unity and then finally placing different leaders and institutions in that space formerly dominated by darkness, then we will not see the “signs” follow us of casting out the nation’s demons as Jesus expects.
The content below was originally paywalled.
The Celtic Church – Forerunners of Devotion and Cultural Transformation
The church in Jerusalem lifted up its voice together in Acts 4:24-31 and saw great breakthrough. Other testimonies are found in church history such as in Ireland.
The Celtic (i.e. indigenous) Church in the British Isles adopted monasticism beginning around 400 with Ninian’s monastery in Scotland (based on the model of Martin of Tours, France which emphasized not only prayer and worship but also scholarship and learning). In general the Celtic Church was known for being a Bible-centered and de-centralized in church government (i.e. self-governing churches). It’s family-based monasteries are best described as mission-bases and centers of learning and worship.
In 432 Patrick (c.390-461) went as a missionary from Wales to Ireland carrying this model of church and monastic life. He evangelized and transformed the entire nation and planted many churches but his base church and monastery was in Armagh. Patrick planted 200 churches and baptized 100,000 converts. He is called the father Celtic Christianity. In the 450s Patrick wrote his Letter to Coroticus and then his Confession. His confession shows the amazing example of the Bible-centered and Spirit-filled life he lived (no other church fathers’ writings of that era are so full of Scripture). He also stopped human sacrifice, protested slavery and established a law code (Liber Ex Lege Moisi and the Senchus Mor) to train civic leaders how to govern Biblically and personally discipled many of them.
But the ministers of the gospel that Patrick trained were the ones that would change not only Ireland, but most of Europe as well. Patrick died in 461 just 15 years before the collapse of the western Roman Empire. His first disciples trained others and most of them founded churches and monasteries along the same lines. Similar things soon happened among Celtic Churches in Wales and Patrick’s disciples visited some of them from time to time (but the rest of England had been conquered beginning in 442 by pagan Anglo-Saxons who killed and destroyed most of the Celtic churches there even as Barbarian tribes had done to the rest of western Europe).
Around 520 the Celtic monasteries and schools in Ireland began to grow dramatically beginning with Finnian’s in Clonard. Finian (d.549) is called the father of Irish Monasticism because of the new impetus he gave to the movement through his disciples such as Columba, Comgall, Ciaran, Brendan and others. As they founded monastery after monastery many thousands of people came to study and pray including many of the leaders of churches and nobility from western Europe. 7000 students were at Armagh, 3000 at Clonard. Ciaran’s monastery at Clonmacnois was founded in 545 with over 6000 students. Comgall (d.602) in 550 founded a monastery at Bangor with 4000 students divided into seven choirs that chanted praise 24 hours a day. This model of ceaseless praise lasted almost 300 years until the Danes invaded. And in that period was came forth a fully transformed and discipled Christian nation, probably the most complete example in all of Christian history.
The Irish Celtic form of Christianity truly transformed western Europe. Columba (521-597), after founding many monasteries in Ireland, went to Scotland in 563 and established Iona. Iona became the chief seminary of Britain and burial place of Scottish kings and monks for centuries. Columba’s disciples (Aiden) went from Iona in Scotland into northern England. Columbanus, a disciple of Comgall, left in 590 for France, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Ukraine and Italy and there founded 94 monasteries. 12 others went with him on his team but many other Irish Celts or Celtic-influenced English missionaries went to the continent over the next 200 years and established these monastic missions-bases and centers of learning.
The Celtic monasteries were walled villages which provided housing for the monks. Built out of stone they contained scriptorium, library and church. They were centers of learning, devotion and intercession, farming, fishing, manual labour, discipleship, evangelism, hospitality, protection, charity and at times family life. They functioned primarily as mission stations but became outstanding centers of learning which preserved and copied manuscripts of the Bible and other classical literature from Greek and Roman antiquity.
Columbanus duplicated Comgall’s perpetual service of praise, known as Laus perennis, by which choir succeeded choir, both day and night. For these flourishing communities he wrote his “rule”, which embodies the customs of Bangor and other Celtic monasteries. Luxeuil in France became the nursery of saints and apostles. From its walls went forth men who carried his rule, together with the Gospel, into France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. There are said to have been sixty-three such apostles. These disciples of Columbanus are accredited with founding over one hundred different monasteries.
Most Celtic churches and missionaries did not recognize the authority of the Roman Catholic Church until the 8th century just before the emergence of a united kingdom of England under Alfred and the Holy Roman Empire of Charlemagne in France and Germany. Alfred had himself studied in a Celtic monastery in Ireland and framed laws drawing on Patrick’s laws. Those principles eventually emerged in the Magna Carta in 1215 and therefore are the roots of America’s law and liberty as well.
Scotus of Ireland and Alcuin of York…carried the sophistication of Celtic learning into the court of Charlemagne’s Frankish Holy Roman Empire. Alcuin was English but deeply indebted to the Celtic heritage which preserved the classical writings of Christianity, Rome and Greece. Except for the Arabs, the wealth of ancient culture would have been lost without the work of the Celtic monasteries. The world is therefore forever indebted to Ireland and her famous Celtic monks. The Catholic Encyclopedia plays down the Celtic influence upon Alcuin citing his scanty knowledge of Greek which was a favorite pass-time of the Irish monks. Be that as it may, without Irish antiquities he would have had little to take to Charlemange s court. He became Charlemagne’s ‘Minister of Education’ and drew on the books and personnel from York and Northumbria. He was the mainstay of the Carolingian renaissance teaching theology, and Latin, and setting up schools and libraries, and promoting morality, and liturgy. He developed the Caroline Minuscule, in order to copy manuscripts.
The Celtic missionaries’ importance cannot be overstated. One modern book is rightly titled How The Irish Saved Civilization, for everywhere they went, they took with them this two-fold emphasis of an extravagant devotional prayer life and a desire to build civilization with Biblical law, liberty and learning. Their model of an unceasing mixture of prayer and praise inspired similar attempts much later in church history by Bernard of Clairveaux (12th century) and Zinzendorf of the Moravians in eastern Germany. There the Moravian Christians started a prayer meeting in 1727 that operated 24 hours a day and lasted about a hundred years without ceasing. The result of that was one of the greatest missionary movements in the history of Christianity, touching many nations.
A more modern example is in Korea at a Prayer Mountain that began in 1973 and has had almost non-stop prayer ever since. Since it started, South Korea has emerged as the best model of government in all of Asia and one of the top global economies. Christians there truly discipled their nation. The 24/7 House of Prayer in Kansas City in the United States began in 1999 and has spread to many places. This is good, but the world desperately needs to see the concurrent movements to disciple the nations as was seen earlier in history.