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(Harry Skandera)
We welcome you to City Reach Prayer in this beautiful Alexander Valley. We are so blessed to be here and know that this is the Lord who has brought Warren and Becky here to pastor at this church.
I want us to be thinking about how we receive from the Lord tonight. Are we going to strive always and work to make happen what we think should be, or are we allowing the Lord to give to us? We often are striving for something that may not be the best thing.
I believe this, one of the reasons that we are here tonight is to release something that is unique to this place for the rest of time. What I would like us to do is to, and I know that this may be a little bit stretching, but I would like us to break into small groups and make sure that there is variety of people.
There is a faith here for generations by this church. It is exemplified in the history of this building and is exemplified in the name of this valley.
In our groups, I would like you to express your gratitude for this place. Maybe for what you have seen and for those of you who live here and are a part of this congregation will have a lot more to say and that will help us as to what is going on here, but we have our impressions as well. So, let’s take this time to express our gratitude to the Lord and to thank and praise Him, because not only does the Lord dwell in the praises of His people, but gratitude is the seed that plants the tree of faith that grows out of the soil of gratitude, so we want to lay that foundation. We want to acknowledge that it is God who has given us what we have experienced here so far and what some of you have known for years.
(Prayer)
(Sam Tillery)
It says in the scripture that we are to encourage one another daily. It also teaches us the fact that we, in the spoken word God uses to release things in the places where we live and in the lives of people. We are going to speak words into those right around us. You don’t have to hunt for it, you just have to listen and the Lord will give it to you. Maybe there is something God has given you that He may want you to impart to them. It may be faith, hope or whatever it might be and you will speak that and plant it in them.
Harry and I were in the country of Latvia about a month ago and we were in a city where Russian is the language. We were in two separate churches and Harry was speaking in one and I in the other. I was in a Baptist church and He was to go to a Pentecostal church and they don’t always mix too well. We had asked if they would bless one another, so he went and spoke the blessings from the Baptist church to the Pentecostal church.
A little later on I was ushered over to the church where they had been listening to a message, but had been waiting for me to come and speak to them. It took three hours for me to arrive and when I got there, there was standing room only. Harry and I were there together and we have learned how to handle each other and our differences, and so at one point I kind of caught his eye as he was sitting in the front row and he said, “You should have them bless each other.” And I thought, “Hey, wait a second here. I am in charge and I know what I am going to do up here”, but then I know that there is that working together as the body of Christ, so I asked then to turn and bless one another with a word.
Harry happened to be sitting next to the pastor of the Baptist church who had come over with me and the word that Harry spoke to him was courage. Moments later, as folks were speaking their words of encouragement, I called the pastor up and said, “The Baptist Church has extended a blessing to you. Would you like to extend a blessing to the Baptist pastor to take back to his church?”
So, they in their Pentecostal way began to give their blessing to the pastor and about a quarter of the way through doing that he said, “Stop, stop, stop”, in Russian. He began to say, “I must confess and ask for your forgiveness. For, I for years have spoken against your church and against your pastor, and I have been wrong. And I now ask you as a church body and the pastor if you will please forgive me?” You see, the word blessing to him at the beginning was, “courage”, and God gave this leader courage to do something that is very difficult, and as he asked forgiveness from this pastor; the pastor comes up to the front.
It is still the most incredible picture in my mind. To see these two men who had been somewhat enemies and who had spoken against one another, now embrace each other with this huge bear hug that they wouldn’t let go of each other. I was crying and they were crying and Harry was all a little bit stunned at the fact that the very word that he had spoken into this man's life had brought a releasing into the whole city there and would effect the history of Latvia, because this man spoke a word, not knowing exactly what that may mean and the Lord released him with courage to ask for forgiveness. After they let go of each other, they looked at each other in the face and then embraced again.
It is important that we learn how to hear from the Lord and speak God’s destiny into one another’s lives and begin to change not just that persons life, but impact denominations. So, God is beginning to move in that city, because that was spoken.
(Time of speaking words to one another)
(Harry Skandera)
Awesome.
There is a bigger picture and something that God will allow us to do to bless more that just one other person and I recall this to be a county wide move of prayer. I know that some of you are more courageous than others, but as you are in your groups and into blessing the county, I would like you to consider some things.
Remember we spent the first part of prayer in gratitude for this place. There may be something that you may want to bless the county with and say, “I bless Sonoma County with…” and then fill it in with whatever that thing is. We want to be specific in naming what it is that we want to see here or bless in regards to.
(Time of blessing Sonoma County)
(Harry Skandera)
It is time for the church to bless the earth. We are going to go around to each group and if you could all just say one of the things that Sonoma county was blessed with from your group.
Jobs, grace, church to have unity, worship, open heaven, Godly leaders.
(Sam Tillery)
There are a number of ways that we are seeing God lead us as a united body of believers. Prayer is one way and it is very important, but there are tangible ways of showing blessing. One of the ways which began about 3 years ago as a united body effort, is a thing called Spring Clean.
We are going to pray for that in just a moment, because April 28th we are praying that some 2000 plus Christian volunteers from over 30 churches and ministries will gather together in Howarth Park, to bless, tangibly bless the county. We will be cleaning up graffiti, picking up garbage, trimming trees throughout the park and throughout the creeks and streets through various regions in the county.
Last Spring Clean there were some 1400 Christians that came together on that one Saturday. Now, that is opening some significant doors for the gospel to move forward. We don’t have time tonight to go into some of those things, but tonight we have Spring Clean coming up, so we are partnering with the City and the County Officials. For the past 8 months we have been meeting with city and county officials to prepare for this huge event of being stewards of the land.
You know, this valley is a valley that speaks of stewardship, responsibility and caring for the physical land. We the church need to take up what God has given to us in the land and stop saying, “Well, we’ll pay government officials to do that”, because it is not their job, it’s ours.
You are to steward your front yard, your back yard, your kitchen and your living room. We are to steward our local churches, we are to steward our land and to care for it. We are to demonstrate the love of Christ and the responsibility of being good stewards of the land, and so Spring Clean is about the expression of the body of Christ being a steward of the land, and God honors that.
I am going to ask that just one person on behalf of all of us would pray into this, that God would bless April 28th and that the city would be impacted. When you’ve got close to 2000 people wearing the same yellow t-shirt that says that we’re better together and that we are serving Christ by serving others, that shows unity. If we could pray that this wouldn’t just be a productive day, but that the city and the county would get it, that they would see the demonstration of the love of Christ in the community.
(Prayer)
Now we would love to have representation from Alexander Valley there at Spring Clean, so if any of you would like to participate then let us know and we’ll look for you. It is because of Spring Clean that the city of Santa Rosa is beginning to see the united body of Christ and a variety of other things. It is a catalyst for many other things.
It was two months ago that the city awarded the Pastor’s Alliance an award of 100 thousand dollars of tax payers' money for a mentoring program to help get gang members out of gangs, into jobs and into Jesus. It is a program called Hope Works. I just got word two days ago that there had been another 50 thousand dollars that had been given for the next three years from another source. That is an answer to prayer and God has given the local church the stewardship of these things by way of the government, because they see that we are one.
John 17, Jesus’ prayer is that we would be one in prayer, caring and sharing that the world may believe. The city is saying that we want a Christ centered program to deal with the gangs and we will fund it for you, and this has never been done before. So, one person pray for protection and direction.
(Prayer)
(Sam Tillery)
Another area that we have been concerned about is our relationship with Isreal. It is clear in scripture that God is serious about those who bless Israel. We will be going again the first of May and I would ask that you pray for us as we go to bless Israel and as we go representing Sonoma County.
I had asked one of the city officials to go to Israel last year and he was unable to go, but he has pursued me and had sent me an e-mail saying ,”Sam, I know that I couldn’t go last year, but do you think that I could go this year?” Now, keep in mind, he is a non-believer and he says, “I would really like to go with you and the pastors to Israel this year”. We were all like, wow, thank you Lord.
Then we began to pray that the Lord would work in this man’s life and bring him to a place of understanding of who Christ is in his life and my personal prayer is that I would be able to baptize him in the Jordan river.
Just last week, Thursday I was able to confirm his salvation and to ask him if he would like to follow the Lord in obedience to the waters for baptism in Israel in the waters that Jesus was baptized in. His eyes welled up with tears and he is so excited and said that the reason that he had been so compelled and wanting to follow after and want to spend time with you and fellow believers is because I see the unity of the body of Christ and the impact that it is having on our community.
I want us to pray, because we are going to be interacting with government officials there and bringing one from the city of Santa Rosa who is now a member of the body of Christ. We want to pray that God will protect what God has for him to bring back to this city as a light in a way that he hasn’t been before in his area of influence.
There are a few others here who are also going to be going on the trip, so if we could have someone pray for this now, that is what we want to do. We are endeavoring as a part of this prayer movement to say, “God, we want to be a part of blessing your people and bringing what He wants us to bring.”
(Prayer)
(Sam Tillery)
Pastor Warren, would you come and share with us some of the vision and dreams and ways in which we can pray for Alexander Valley.
(Warren Hayes)
Well, I’ve got a bunch of new stuff now, but I will share with you all. I was sitting there and we started talking about breaking into small groups and I picked up on these young people here and I ran over and I said, “listen, God wants to share something with me tonight through you”, and their face was like, “yikes”, I guess that does put some pressure on them, but I assured them that all that they have to do is to tell me what they already know. I told them, “don’t think about it, just do it”, and I would say they were prophesying.
They affirmed some things. There was a revival back here in the turn of the century in the creek over behind here. 80 people were baptized and 80 people back them at the turn of the century was like most of the valley, well that revival is not over. We said that it was over, we thought that it was over, but it wasn’t over.
I think that it was affirmed over here when Christelle said that she saw a wine being poured into this church, not a new wine, but a wine that has been fermenting all of these years and now is ready to be poured out and it came out of that revival.
There was something that was begun at the turn of the century and before in this valley and God has been fermenting this wine and it’s being poured out into this place. It has been aging and it is now ready. There was a word that God wants to fill the people in this valley with compassion. That they would see with their eyes and hearts, that God would bless the workers here, the Hispanic folks in this valley and that God would honor the lowly in a special way.
One of the things that was spoken was the waters, more specifically, the river, and water was seen flowing out of this church and into the valley. Spiritual water, touching the people in this land and God is pleased with this. There is a peace that you feel. The peace that you feel isn’t just the physical pleasantry of the views, but what you feel in this valley is God’s pleasure over this place, because the land belongs to Him. How many of you know that God enjoys this, His land? God sits over the vineyards and watches grapes grow and He actually finds pleasure in it, just like He finds pleasure in you. He also finds pleasure in watching His vines grow, so God actually finds pleasure in this valley.
In so many of the churches that I have been in, finances are a problem and there was always the struggle to find out where more money could be brought in. It has come to me that these financial problems are the wrong focus. The finances don’t bring the vision. The vision brings the finances. God pays for what He orders and I don’t want to focus on finances in this church, God will provide and has provided what we need to go after the vision at this point.
Again, it’s first the natural then the spiritual, we all understand those concepts, but you know it’s no accident that there are vines and grapes growing in this valley that are so significant to Jesus. How often did He talk about vineyards? The fruit of this land is like a natural sign of the fruit that He wants to bring and has been bringing. It’s not like God is doing a new thing, although there are aspects of it that you could call a new thing, but God wants to add on to all that He has been doing.
You see, God doesn’t do a work and then say forget it and then say, “well, I guess that didn’t work.” How often do we think, “Well, that was a great Azusa Street down in L.A., and what happened to it?” Nothing happened to it, because God brought fruit from that revival. If you go around the nations and you see revivals and you study the great revivals all over the earth for centuries, we may think, “Well, the fire went out of that revival”, No! The fire didn’t go out, that is what God was doing at that time and He brought forth what He wanted to bring forth.
How many of you know that the victory is won in the valley? The vallies of our life is where we are always looking for the mountaintops experience, the emotions, the high church experiences and we think that is where God wants us to live.
Listen, life is full of problems. My mother had some serious heart problems and she almost died on Tuesday night. She is 101 years old, it is almost time for her to go. I was watching her in the natural. In the natural she is very weak, her mind is weak. Her brain has shrunk literally. She doesn’t have the bodily, physical properties that she used to have and she’s not functioning properly.
She can’t think straight, but in her bed at the hospital she raised her arms and started prophesying to people that came in the room and she got clear, because her spirit was coming up through her natural process of the outward body wasting away. Her spirit is being renewed and the renewed spirit that prophesied and prayed over people and it was as clear as a bell.
She said things to me this week that I had never heard of or thought about myself nor could I have expressed in words. This is a little church in the valley and it’s a nice little place, but I am telling you what. In the natural it looks a certain way, but in the spiritual it is going to rise above and I think joining in with other churches.
I think that one of the things that God is doing here and is one of the most crucial things that is happening in this church, is that we are getting connected with the greater body of Christ and we are going to see tremendous things. I like to have a clear vision so that I can say specifically what is going to happen, but I think that God is going to surprise us here. I don’t think that He is going to let us see everything that we want to see.
How many of you have actually seen the visions that you want to see? He usually shows you the path as you go, because if He showed us the path we wouldn’t be trusting in Him and what is worse is that we wouldn’t be desperate. So, my vision for this church is what I am seeing today and it will probably be different tomorrow, because the vision is new and it flourished like a beautiful vine and there is new fruit constantly in the vision.
If somebody says, “Well, here is the vision and this is where we are going from A – Z and this is the finances that we will need to do it, so let’s get busy, because if we don’t have the finances then we are not going to get there”, that is the wrong vision. The vision is always people. How many of you know that? It is always worship of God and people, His people. The vision here is to worship God here in this valley, in this place and to be a worshiping remnant in this community. We will worship out of faith and reverence to God and let Him do the work.
So, I am excited. Can you tell? I am excited. Becky and I were going in one direction and God knocked on our door in November and moved us in this direction I never would have dreamed that God would have led us here, nor would I ever have applied for a pastorate in this church or even thought of it. It was a total shock. I am thinking, “God, what are you doing?” The vision is starting to come. I am beginning to see and my eyes are open and seeing how God is doing powerful things in this area, so I am excited about that.
(Harry Skandera)
Ok, well the rest of us would like to pray for Alexander Valley Community Church. I see that many of you are gathered here. Could we get all of the Alexander Valleyians up here, so that we can gather around you as we pray for you.
(Prayer for Alexander Valley Church)
We pray that this church will be as a city on a hill and that others will be drawn to it. We pray that it wouldn’t be hidden, but that it would be known and would greatly impact this valley on to the nations. May they sing and declare your purposes throughout this valley and beyond. May they stand faithful as you bless them and draw them unto you and as you do the work that you have set out for them to participate in.
Father as people see the bright lights of the casino, that this place would be a greater draw and that people would find what they are needing here in a much greater way.
(Sam Tillery)
If you want to know where City Reach is going to be next month, we don’t know yet, so you will need to check the web site @ www.unitedprayer.org.
If you would like to be a part of supporting this movement of unity in the body of Christ, you can help us out financially, just make your checks out to PPMA(pastors prayer and ministry alliance). Thank you for being here tonight and we would love to see at the next City Reach Prayer.
Special Thanks to Christelle Eddy
who transcribed this document.
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