An Awesome Testimony Of The Power Of Corporate Prayer.
Here is an awesome testimony of the power of corporate prayer. Last year, a church in New Mexico embraced an assignment they received of praying drought out of their entire state. They immediately began to pray during every Sunday morning service and in prayer groups throughout the week for rain and snow.
At first, many people were skeptical about prayer actually having an effect on weather, but they persisted week after week. They enlisted the children to pray for snow, as it seems adults can be resistant to ask for it. The children went after it gung ho!
The first Sunday they prayed, they had a bright, warm day when church began and by the time service dismissed, it was snowing. This was the first of many times the weather forecasters were confounded.
Attitudes of people began to change and faith to ask rose significantly. All through the spring and summer of last year, they had rain. Presently the snow pack in their northern mountains is at 169% of what it was this time last year.
The eastern side of the New Mexico is asking for the rain to move to the western side because they are far ahead in rainfall. People in different areas of the state began to hear about this praying church and requested them to pray for their county too. Perhaps what is most wonderful of all, is that people who were not active in corporate prayer began to see and testify of the difference praying together makes.
The following excerpt is taken from John G. Lake, His Life His Sermons His Boldness of Faith, Kenneth Copeland Publications:
In my ministry in South Africa there was a young lady, one of the most beautiful souls I have ever known. She was baptized n the Spirit when perhaps only seventeen or eighteen years old. One of the remarkable developments in her after her baptism in the Spirit was that the Spirit of God would come powerfully upon her on occasions, and at such times, she would sit down at the piano and translate the music her soul heard. Other times the Spirit would come upon her so powerfully that she would be caused to sing the heavenly music in some angelic language.
Some years later Clara Butts, the great prima donna, came to Africa. She was singing at the Wanderers Hall in Johannesburg. One evening after the concert, while being entertained at the hotel, I was introduced to her. She said to me, “Mr. Lake, I have been very anxious to meet you, for I have heard that among your people is a remarkable woman who receives music in the Spirit, apparently of a different realm than ours.” I said, “Yes, that is a fact.”
She inquired if it would be possible to meet her, and so a meeting was arranged. One evening we went to her hotel and as we sat down, Clara Butts said to the young lady, “I wish you would sit down and play some of the music I have heard about.” She did not understand that such music only came at such times as the Spirit came powerfully upon the woman. However, the young lady sat down at the piano.
I said to the company, “Let us bow our heads in prayer.” As we did and waited, presently the Spirit of God descended upon her, and then there poured through her soul some of that wondrous, beautiful, heavenly music. I waited to note the affect on the company. When the song was finished, I looked especially at Clara Butts, who was weeping silently. She arose to her feet, and coming forward to the piano, she reached out her hands saying, “Young lady, that music belongs to a world that my soul knows little about. I pray every day of my life God may permit me to enter. In that realm is the ultimate which my soul sometimes hears, but which I have never been able to touch myself.”
Beloved, in the Christian life, in the heart of God, there is an ultimate note. That note which is so fine and sweet and true and pure and good that it causes all our nature to respond to it, and rejoices the soul with a joy unspeakable.
There is a Christianity that has that high note in it, bless God, into the heavenlies. Indeed, Christianity in itself, real Christianity, is in that high note of God, that thing of heaven that is not of earth and is not natural. It is more than natural. It is the note of heaven. It comes to the earth. It fills the soul of man. Man’s soul rises into heave to touch God, and in touching God receives that glorified expression and experience into his own soul, and it is reproduced in his own life and nature.
The hunger of my soul for many a long day has been that I might be able to so present that high true note of God, that the souls of men would rise up in God to that place of power, purity and strength where the presence and character and works of Christ are evidenced in and through them. There can be no distinction between the exercise of the real power of God as seen in Jesus and its reproduction in a Christian soul. There is a purity, the purity of heaven, so high, so holy, so pure, so sweet that it makes the life of the possessor radiant with the glory and praise of God.
2. Give God worship and praise.
