The Priority of kingdom focused prayer- the conclusion

The urgent need for a new prayer focus
 Acts 1:14-24; Acts 2:1,42, 46-47; Acts 4: 23-24,31; Acts 6:5-7; Acts 12:5


Have you ever stopped to think about how the apostle Paul managed to plant the gospel and establish so many churches without todays technology? The simple answer is that God Almigty was in it! The church was praying about GGod's agenda, instead of praying about it's own agenda. Who else besideds christians (the church) have the responsibility of bringing the kingdom of God to this earth? Yet, when the majority of local churches meet to pray, the focus is often on matters of perceived crisis (the church sick list, families with urgent needs , etc.) rather than matters of higher priority (the unsaved, what God is doing). Revival and spiritual awakening will not come to our communities or to our nation as long as the local church continues to place the focus of prayer on physical illnesses. Yes! prayer for the physically sick  is biblical. Don't! stop praying for the sick. But, there is no scriptural justification for this kind of prayer to be the main emphasis when the church meets for prayer. It is often said that today's church is spending more time praying  to keep the saints from going to heaven then praying to keep the sinners from going to hell. The enemy will not hinder the prayers of the church for sick people as long as those prayers continue torob the church of time that could be spent praying for lost souls and kingdom concerns.
Greg Fritzell wrote: "A church's prayer power will only be as great as it's prayer focus." We must encourage a shift of focus from our agenda to God's agenda when the church of Jesus Christ meets to pray. The people who are truly in critical condition are not the saints who are sick, but the sinners who are lost.

Mid-Week Prayer Meeting Survey

a) Do you spend more time naming, describing, and discusing requests than you spend in actual prayer?
b) Do your prayer requests primarily focus on the health-related needs of the saints?
c) Do you refer to your mid-week assembly as "pryaer meetin", yet spend the majority of the time doing something other than praying?
d)Do you sense the leadership of the Holy Spirit to move the focus of your prayer meeting from man's agenda to God's agenda?
e) Do you believe there would be a powerful move of God upon your church if the mid-week service became a time of kingdom-centered prayer?
God wants to show you great and mighty things which you do not know (Jeremiah 33:3) Call to Him, and listen as He reveals things you could never have thought of on your own. Pastors, you should always allow God to confirm His will and timing for making adjustments. If God does give you confirmation, be obedient and be consistent. You should expect to hear the devil's growl whenever you take an initiative like this one that sheds light on darkness and releases powerful prayer regarding the kingdom. It could be that something miraculous you have been asking God to do in your church will happen, as you lead your hurch to adjust it's prayer focus to being kingdom-centered.

Steps that Pastors may consider

1) Ask God to confirm this initiative in your heart.
2) Together with your congregation, agree that God's word teaches the priority of kingdom-focused prayer (Matthew 6:9-10, 33). Agree on the desire to see God glorified through the prayers of the church.
3)Preach and teach on the subject of God's kingdom, and on the need to focus the prayers and ministries of His church on His agenda.
4) Lead the congregation to make a unified decision to focus on kingdom concerns at the regularly scheduled weekly prayer meetings. Let the church hear you pray for the concerns of God's kingdom. Singing, and the reading of scripture can still be included, but consider spending the majority of the time in actual prayer.
5) use the twenty-one kingdom related topics list below for a guide. Take several weeks if necessary to explain and review the decision to focus on kingdom-centered prayer. Recognize this adjustment as an important teaching opportunity on the subject of prayer, not merely a new approach to a meeting.
6) Provide the opportunity for church members to publicly testify during worship services of answered prayer and of blessings from making kingdom- focused prayer a priority.
7) Prayerfully appoint a faithful, spiritually mature church member to the position of Church Prayer Coordinator. Develop a written job description for the coordinato that will help maintain kingdom-focused prayer as a priority ministry of the church.

Twenty-one Kingdom- Related Topics for Church Prayer meetings

Pray for:
1) the various ministries of your church, with a focus on those related to missions and evangelism
2) the predident, vice-president, cabinet, senators, congressmen, and supreme court judges of the United States
3)governmental leaders locally and throughout the world
4) the name of the Lord to be exalted in the community
5) the specific needs of specific missionaries
6) for your pastor and pastors everywhere who preach Jesus as the only way for salvation
7) the return of Jesus Christ
8) a loving, forgiving, unified spirit among ministers and churches in your community
9)Pray prayers of thanksgiving for what God is already doing in your community
10) divine intervention in community, national and global matters that dishonor God
11) christians currently experiencing persecution throughout the world
12) genuine spiritual awakening and revival to come to your church and to your ommunity
13)lost people by name
14) new converts will be discipled and will share their faith
15) sincere confession of sin and biblical repentance will occur in your heart, your family, your church , and your community
16) the churches in your area would consider hosting an area-wide evangelistic crusade
17) more laborers to enter the harvest, locally and abroad
18) your church will seek to discover, accept and carry out, God's will towards the establishment of God's kingdom in your community
19) currently unreached people groups around the world
20) denominational leaders and initiatives
21) your personal interest in lost people will grow from a concern to a burden
You are encouraging the church to pray outside the box. you are leading the people of God to pray with God's heart.

Fruit that remains

The far reaching ifluence of kingdom-focused praying will be immediately realized by prayer meeting participants.They will notice remarkable changes taking place in their own lives. Kingdom-focused intercessors sense the reality that their prayers are having a dramatic effect on the most important matters in the world. Kingdom-focused prayer means standing in the gap between fallen man and a righteous God. This kind of prayer produces much fruit that remains eternally. And best of all, our heavenly father will be glorified by our learning to pray the way Jesus taught us!