A Prayer Strategy

This is a message for Christian prayer warriors.

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Summary of the Prayer Strategy Concerning Coronavirus Disease 2019 Discussed in this Post:

I am asking God to take apart the virus, and to deliver us from evil—including deliverance from all potential health interventions that would harm. And, prompted strongly by the Spirit, I have also initiated prayers of command to nature, invoking the name and authority of Christ to do so. I command the virus to come apart into its constituent elements, inert and harmless, so that not even one copy of it can be found anywhere on the earth. And the energy that is released by this breaking-apart action, I command to come under the authority of God, to be used according to his kingdom purposes.

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Full Article:

Prayer Strategy for a Pathogen

On April 19, as I was reading a book about the interaction of science and theology, my spirit took special notice of a scientist’s description of the actual coming into being of living material. I will quote part of it here:

“… very complicated things have to happen. Fundamental constituents of all living beings are the proteins. Each protein is a very long chain of much simpler molecules, called amino acids. In a famous experiment Miller and Urey showed how these amino acids could be formed by the effect of electrical discharge and radiation upon a simple chemical environment made up of nonorganic molecules such as water, methane, carbon dioxide, etc., …  present in the … atmosphere.”

John C. Polkinghorne, One World: The Interaction of Science and Theology.
(West Conshohocken, Penn.: Templeton Foundation Press: 1986, 2007: 62.)

A few days earlier I had read a poem about the virus being a protein and “no respecter” of powers because “it is only a protein molecule” and “does not care.” Although I had disagreed with the poem’s conclusion, thinking about the poem did stimulate my mind, I think, to be ready, when I read the above passage from Polkinghorne, to perceive a basis for a prayer strategy against a virus. (Space does not permit a long detour here into the power of writing and other forms of art for the kingdom of God, but I do want to call attention to how God uses the various creative expressions of his people.)

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“Small effects are sometimes triggers for the discovery of large measures of new understanding.”

–  John C. Polkinghorne (One World, page 66)

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I prayed then:

God, what is the strategy?

• My thought is that the type of electrical discharges and radiation—evil thoughts and deeds—have fused existing living material into this very harmful form.
• What should happen? Is the strategy to have it broken apart (and therefore made inert as a virus)? Or to have it mutated into something harmless? (No matter is destroyed in either scenario, yet the evil is overcome.)
• And once you reveal the strategy, should I ask or command? (Jesus commanded nature (Matthew 8:27) and he gave us his authority (Luke 10:19) to use as agents of his, as we remain in him and in the Father.

Jesus said we would do greater things than he did (John 14:12), because he was going to the Father and they were then pouring out God’s Spirit on us. Here is one of those greater things. While Jesus healed individuals with leprosy, he did not, I think , undertake to eradicate the spirochete bacteria that causes the disease. As Acts 3 clearly indicates, Jesus left some work for his siblings to do.

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“… science has played an important part as an enlarger of the human imagination.”

– John C. Polkinghorne (One World, page 77)

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Creation is God’s. It waits eagerly for its redemption. Here would be a step toward that redemption. Here would be God’s kingdom coming to earth and his will being done on earth as it is in heaven: creation would not be doing violence against itself.

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I depend on God alone; I put my hope in him.

Psalm 62:5 (GNT)

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Focusing God’s Power

I prayed: God, it seems that the key is in applying your holy energy to the virus, in order to subsume, overwhelm, and then render inert the evil energy that was used to form the virus’s identity as a piece of creation that produces death.

On the topic of the application of God’s holy energy, the Christian healer Francis MacNutt thought of it as radiation. In the context of healing prayer for a sick person, he wrote, “The longer the diseased area is held under the radiation of God’s healing power, the more disease cells are killed.” (Christian Healing Ministries Facebook shared this quote in its Fridays with Francis post on April 7, 2020; I believe this quote was originally from Francis MacNutt’s book The Power of Healing Prayer.)

On the same topic, Agnes Sanford also used the term radiation to describe God’s power. She said in some of her CFO lectures (https://www.cfoclassicslibrary.org/library) that a group of doctors she spoke to about the healing power of God told her the correct term to use for it was radiation. She was attempting to describe for them the specific phenomenon she felt under her hands of the sensation of God’s power going into someone for whom she was praying with the laying on of hands, and she was at a loss for an exact label for the sensation. Call it a radiation, they told her, for that is what it is. They had invited Sanford to meet with a group of them to discuss this power, because they knew about it and had identified it as God’s power, but they didn’t know how to appropriate it and apply it to their patients, and they had heard that she was using it to heal.

I have felt this manifestation of God’s power, and so I know that it is not a figure of speech or a symbol; it is a real and palpable force.

Why not, then, focus—in cooperation with God—our attention on the target of a particular virus—ubiquitous in the world—and invite him to send his radiation of power through us to…

1. not only heal individuals, but also
2. by his power, to revise the structure of the virus away from evil and harm, so that it is inert, OR
3. by his power, to dismantle the structure of the virus from a structure that causes sickness unto death, to constituent parts that are benign.

It came to me relatively soon thereafter that the correct prayer strategy was not for the revision or mutation of the virus, but for it to be taken apart.

I believe this strategy is intended to be focused on every instance of the virus’s existence throughout the earth, so that it will be completely gone and not one copy of it can be found. (This last part is important.)

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Deliver Us from Evil

There is another part to this strategy, and this is as important as the first part of the strategy.

It became apparent very quickly that I needed to begin praying for widespread deliverance from any potential health intervention that would do harm.

This part of the prayer strategy also stems from the “deliver us from evil” model that Jesus taught in the Lord’s prayer. Jesus also modeled this in his prayer for all disciples (“I’m not asking you to take them out of the world, but to keep them safe from the evil one.” – John 17:15 NLT).

This prayer reaches into warfare on another battlefront in the same war against complex evil.

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Prayers for Guidance

On April 20, I laid this concept at God’s feet and asked him to let me know A) if this is right, B) what he wants me to do; and C) if this is a right prayer strategy, whether it is a prayer of command to nature or a prayer of invitation to God to work through us (without our commanding).

I also asked him to show me whether to share this with others. I recalled that Agnes Sanford, that prayer warrior of the 20^th century, said that often there is more power in keeping prayer projects secret. However, there were also times when she cited the prayer of a group with spiritual authority as being needed to have enough power to effectively pray for a big project. So I asked God to show me the right next step.

I had a calm assurance about all of this. It didn’t sound either far-fetched, or exciting. It just sounded like what needs to happen.

I prayed again on April 21 for guidance regarding whether the prayer strategy should be shared. On the night of April 22, I felt an impression that it should be shared, not only in private correspondence, but also publicly. On the morning of April 23, I asked for, and received, confirmation of this direction.

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Adding Power to the Prayers of One, by Unity in the Prayers of Many

And so, here is a call to prayer. I believe that this is a prayer strategy on which we could focus, in unity, and find God’s will done on earth and his kingdom come here.

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Two Kinds of Prayer

At this point, I am praying two kinds of prayer, the combination of which seems right for this task:

1. I am asking God to take apart the virus, and to deliver us from evil—including deliverance from all potential health interventions that would harm.
   
2. And, prompted strongly by the Spirit, I have also initiated prayers of command to nature—of course, invoking the name and authority of Christ to do so. His is the name above every name. Even the wind and waves obey his command. When we are aligned with what he wills to command, then our intentions and words in this matter focus his power onto the work to accomplish it. In this case, I command the virus to come apart into its constituent elements, inert and harmless, so that not even one copy of it can be found anywhere on the earth. And the energy that is released by this breaking-apart action, I command to come under the authority of God, to be used according to his kingdom purposes.

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Let us bring glory to God on earth by completing this work he gave us to do. (See John 17:4.)

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Guarding Against Unintentional Declarations and Agreements

The tongue can bring death or life.

Proverbs 18:21 (NLT)

As we see things unfolding in the world which our spirits discern have potential for complex evil, we should guard against making pronouncements that this or that negative thing will happen. The words of humans have power in the spiritual realm, so we must guard against even unintentional agreements in this vital matter. This is true for all people, but especially for those who carry a great deal of spiritual authority. I would urge, instead, that we make declarations into the spirit realm that call forth God’s deliverance for us from evil, God’s will to be done, and God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in Heaven.

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May your kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth, as it in heaven.

Matthew 6:10 (NLT)

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AmyLu Riley is the author of Faith with Wings, a true story that beckons believers to prepare themselves for what God is getting ready to do to pour out healing through his church in our generation.

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Featured photo credit: Hal Gatewood on Unsplash