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(Scott Tolson)
Welcome to The Vine. We are really an outcome, an outpouring of the City Reach Prayer. Back on January 5th, we were commissioned by the City Reach Prayer group and a number of pastors and churches here in Windsor. We are thankful and excited to be able to host the City Reach Prayer here at The Vine.
This is my beautiful wife, Paula.
(Paula Tolson)
I almost wasn’t going to come up here, but the more that I have been coming to this thing the braver I am getting. As I look out and see faces, I feel like I am at a family reunion. The local body is your close family and then you have your extended family members, which would be those who are part of other congregations. It is so wonderful to see all of you and you have all been such an encouragement to both of us. You have been such a healing and empowering part of us stepping out and to what we have been called to.
(Pastor Scott)
One of the things as we gather each Friday night here at The Vine, is our desire that each and every person that is here would have the opportunity to experience and participate in the power and presence of God and that is one of the things that we pray about for each and every one of you who are here tonight. We also just want to say that we are looking forward to what God is going to do here in our community and I don’t know exactly what it is or how it is going to be, but I know prayer has to be the foundational part of it.
Mark and I have been talking with Todd and some of the other pastors about how we can strategically minister and begin tearing down strongholds within this community. We have only been doing that for a short time and we need help, so I want to thank you for being here tonight to pray with us and for us. We really want to seek His face and begin a journey that is hopefully going to go on for years and decades. Amen?
(Prayer)
One of the things that we do here at The Vine is we have everyone stand up and you have to try and meet everyone who is here. It might take a few minutes and that is ok. We will then dismiss the children to go their children’s thing and then I will turn this over to Sam Tillery and Harry Skandera and we will continue on in our time together.
(Sam Tillery)
I would like to on behalf of the Sonoma County Pastors Prayer and Ministry Alliance welcome you all not only to The Vine, but to City Reach Prayer. If you are not familiar with City Reach Prayer, we have been meeting for the past 8 years on the first Friday of every month in various venues, ministries, churches, prayer walks throughout the county and cities in which we are coming together to pray. To build the body of Christ in a humble way and trusting God to work in significant ways, so tonight is a prayer gathering and it’s different than most, because it is the gathering of the greater expression of the body of Christ as we come together in response to answering Jesus’ prayer in John 17.
It was His prayer that we may be one so that the world may believe. One reason that we see the lack of effectiveness of the Body of Christ is that in our independence (this is our independence weekend), as we celebrate our independence as a nation and a country, and that is a great thing in one sense, yet in another sense it is spiritual bondage, because we have moved in our independence in such a way that it has effected the church and we have been operating out of this independence as well. So, what we are doing here at City Reach Prayer, is we are responding to Christ’s prayer the body would be one.
We are going to move in a lot of different directions tonight as we pray together. If you do not feel comfortable praying out loud in a group, that is fine. You can agree and go, “uh huh, or yeah, ok”, or whatever you want to, but be a part of the conversation as we unite together to pray and seek God regarding our community and city. We are coming together like a big orchestra and where we get the word orchestra is from the word symphony, which is made up of many different instruments, different sounds and expressions and as they come together, they make a sound that is beautiful. So, we are going to be lead by the spirit as we pray tonight and the spirit is like the conductor.
As we go about our praying and our individual prayers, we have to pay attention to the conductor and to the movement through the areas in which we will be praying tonight, so that we can all be a part of that symphony of prayer and praise offered to the Lord. And so, we listen to one another and allow the different sounds to come forth as the different passions that He has placed within us come forth and release things in the heavenly realm that would not happen otherwise. There is something that we each carry that is distinct and special.
In Matthew chapter 12 verse 25 it says, Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand.” See, there is something here about coming together. Within a household there needs to be that coming together. Within the city and within churches, we need to come together. When we think about this city and if it is a new city and it is growing, that there are many areas that are affecting the lives of people. There are many churches that are not standing, so for us to make a difference, we need to stand together.
Harry and I, as we have been teaming up with the pastors alliance, and he is going to come up and give us a word and some direction for prayer as we think about the city. Typically City Reach Prayer is divided into two sections. The first part, we pray for the city that we are in and its needs and its challenges. The second part, we pray for the host ministry. Gathered here tonight, of course, it is The Vine Church of Windsor.
Harry, would you come and share with us.
(Harry Skandera)
There is a clipboard going around; please make sure to sign that so that we can know who was here and so we can keep you posted on events etc…
The first thing that we want to do tonight as a warm-up to blessing the city of Windsor, we want to bless those of us that are here in Windsor tonight. Jesus, when he taught His disciples to pray, taught what we call the Lord’s prayer – “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Now, we know that God has a heart for everything that He created, and of course that which He created in His image is us. The thing that sets us apart from the animals is that we have the ability to be like God and to speak. We remember what God did. The first thing that He did was in Genesis and He spoke the world into existence. He then created us with the ability to speak; the animals do not. The Bible tells us that with the tongue we have the power to bless or to curse, and because of that, great things can happen when we choose to bless. Just like things can be destroyed or ruined by the words of our mouth.
Now, when we start to talk about blessing a city, for some of us that is hard for us to get our minds around, because we live in a culture that has learned out of a matter of habit, to complain, put things down or degrade things and regard things as to how bad they are or how that they should be better, and so we get into a habit.
I work with young people every day at a Christian school and it is amazing how much our culture has been affected so that we are unable to bless each other. So, the first thing that I want us to do tonight is going to be a prelude to blessing our city. We are each going to bless the person sitting beside us. Some of you have done this before and I hope that you are not saying in your head, “Oh, we’ve done this before”, because the reality is, if we did this every day, we wouldn’t be doing it enough. We are going to each take a minute, go quietly, and ask the Lord to give us something from His heart in heaven for someone here on earth, and then what we have heard, we are going to speak. It may be a word, a phrase, a picture or a scripture and/or a compliment. You are going to bless the person next to you.
First, we are going to bless left, then we are going to bless right, so both sides are covered. Now, I know that for some people they can bless others like crazy, but it is very hard for them to receive a blessing and being able to receive it is as important as being able to give it.
The Lord had been telling me something for years and every time that I would hear it, I would say, “Yes, but…” It took me 30 years before I learned to stop saying, “but…." Try to just receive what the person is going to bless you with. Let’s just go quietly for a minute and then when you are ready to bless or receive go right on ahead.
We were on this trip with about 8 of us and we were traveling by train, but we were separated, because the trains were separated and we had been broken up. Well, these trains where full of drunk Russians even though it was only 7 in the morning. So, some of these younger girls were where I could see them and I was watching this one gentleman who was really friendly to the girls and I was a little concerned. It turns out that he is a happy drunk and he is trying to make conversation with them. He is speaking a little Russian and a little English, and over the course of time I realized that all he had was good will towards these girls.
After the first couple of hours of praying for this guy, I thought, “You know, I am not going to be able to say anything to this guy, so Lord, how can I bless him?” Then I remembered that I had a piece of hard chocolate in my bag, and so I got it out and walked all the way down to the end of the train car. When I got up to him, I held that chocolate bar out like a piece of communion. At first he looked at me as thought he didn’t understand, then he got it and he broke off a piece and I broke off a piece. That whole end of the car got quiet and all of these guys who were stone drunk, just riveted on this whole exchange and I said, “I want to thank you”, in Russian.
This guy kind of starts to break and I shook his hand and then I walked down. One of the guys who was on the trip with us, R.C. Carillo turned out to know American sign language along with some of the other kids who we were with. R.C. began to sign to one of the kids who was in the middle of the train by us and at the far end is the happy drunk that we had just had the chocolate communion with, and all of a sudden this guy starts signing. He then ends up walking the length of the car to get to R.C. and they have a 20 minute conversation and it was a tremendous signing conversation. It taught me something about how to bless and how the Lord can open something up to really speak into somebody’s life, so on that note, let’s continue to bless one another.
(Prayer and Blessing)
(Harry Skandera)
Speaking of blessing, just a side note; I remember in the 70’s James Dobson put out some statistics that they had figured that the average father only spent 12 seconds of face time a day with his children. I wonder if it has gotten any better? That is a little scary isn’t it. I bring that up in the context of blessing, because there are a lot of worse things that we could do. It is really good to see all of these men in this room at a prayer meeting, because that in itself is speaking blessing to our family and to those who God brings us in contact with.
Ok, we are going to shift direction now a little bit. We have been blessing Windsor, because we have been blessing the people, but now what about blessing Windsor, the City. Some people might think that they can’t do that or may feel that they don’t have the authority to do that and that that is too big of a deal, but think about this. Have you ever complained about the place where you live? Well, if you have the authority to complain, then you have the authority to bless. What a better way to use your authority in the blessing of the city.
Geography is very important to God and I am not going to go into the long teaching that I have in Acts 17 in the Apostle Paul’s sermon about how everybody is destined to be at a certain place at a certain time, but I will point out in Genesis chapter 28 in verses 10 and following about Jacob. Verse 16 states, “When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, “surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.” I wonder if the Lord is in Windsor and we’re not aware of it? I wonder if He is waiting for us to lay down on a rock and catch a dream of angels and Him sweeping into our life. That’s what He did for Jacob. I am not sure exactly what He has for this particular place, but I do know that He has brought you to this particular place and in that He has destiny.
So, what I would like us to do is to divide ourselves into groups of 4 or 5 people and I’d like us to speak blessing over the city of Windsor. It doesn’t have to be the emancipation proclamation. Think about it like this, think about your releasing something that is going to keep resounding. Nothing is going to stop it from resounding, so what you speak you are releasing over the city.
(Blessing the City of Windsor)
(Sam Tillery)
What seemed to be the theme in each group?
Freedom from the lies about God and unity within the city.
Prayed for blessing for the children of the city and in the schools.
Prayed for children and the youth, this seems to be on a lot of hearts.
That the schools and teachers to be blessed and united.
Blessing over the government and city officials.
To give city vision, understanding of boundaries and racial equality.
Now, what you are hearing and receiving here tonight doesn’t stop here. Take it into your homes and your churches and continue in praying for these things. Continue to let God prompt you and lead you to really build upon what He seems to be prompting us as a church to speak. There is something about speaking out loud these truths.
Earlier we spoke of a scripture in Matthew 12 where it spoke of your home or your city divided against itself will not stand.
I am going to read this passage in 1 Peter and you can see it on the screen. I ask that you would keep this in mind as you go into your groups to pray for the City. It will give you some concrete things to pray about, because we are in a city that is divided.
Within churches, outside of churches, there are families that are divided and they are struggling within the community and in the city.
In 1 Peter Chapter 3, beginning in verse 7, it says, “Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect…(now, does that not give us a clue as to how to pray in respect to families and children, that they would respect) …as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers”. Maybe, the hindrance to things are our prayers and there is something going on here as it relates to relationships. Team off of that verse and stay to the point. We want to pray about how we can be considerate and respect and not praying about how bad it is. Walking with respect, showing respect to one another.
Look at verse 8, “Finally, all of you, live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble.
Go ahead and just launch into prayer in your group from this passage.
(Prayer)
(Sam Tillery)
Now verse 9, “Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult…” is that happening? Is that not an attitude within schools, families and churches? So, the verse says, “Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing…” Have we not been endeavoring to speak blessing to one another and into the community? It will release blessing. Without our speaking it, it doesn’t happen. Verse 9 goes on to say, “but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.”
What have we been called to? So, pray this, “Lord, help us to walk in this….”
(Prayer)
(Sam Tillery)
Ok, moving on in this scripture, because see we are simply letting the scripture guide us. In verse 10 it goes on to say, “For, whoever would love life and see good days must keep his tongue from evil and do good;” Let’s pray into the positive aspect of this, that the church would speak blessing to one another and not evil. May we pray that our tongue is used for right and not for harm to one another. The focus is Windsor and the church is to be the example.
(Prayer)
(Sam Tillery)
“He must turn from evil and do good;he must seek peace and pursue it.” Let’s pray into that.
(Prayer)
(Sam Tillery)
If we are going to see transformation in Windsor, it starts with the transformation of the church. Is that not true? What evil are you going to turn from? What evil in the congregation you attend is present? There is evil in our churches, you know that? We often sugar coat it and don’t want to deal with it, but we need to say, “Lord, would you begin to show us, in the next number of days and weeks within our congregations, what evil we need to turn away from? Would you identify it for us so that we may repent and walk in power and authority?”
If we don’t repent and recognize these evils, then we can’t walk in power and authority. If we don’t deal with the issues with our spouses, our prayers are hindered. It’s not just about throwing great prayers out there, we must walk in obedience as God reveals things to us, so we want to pray, “Lord, will you reveal to us what evil we need to turn from,” and then when we turn from that, it is the law of replacement. You can’t throw out a bad habit just by not doing it anymore, you have to replace it with something good and different and it takes time.
God says, “Seek peace and pursue it”. So who are you going to seek peace with?
Lord, would you reveal with each one of us as individuals another person that we need to seek peace with, to pursue peace with another person.
Then it may need to be prayed about what denomination that you or your church needs to seek peace with and pursue it. So, Lord, reveal that.
Does that make sense to you? It moves from simply just praying and directly into what we do.
For a quick illustration; several months ago, the Greater Power House of God in Christ came to my church and they wanted to bless us. We had gone to bless them, and my church is historically a conservative Baptist church. So, here you have a church of God in Christ, coming to a Baptist church to bless. One of the things that the Lord brought to mind in that service was the question, “What do they need to seek peace for and pursue it?”
So, I challenged them, because the Azusa Street Revival, do you remember that? There was a lot of excitement, but there was an interesting dynamic and in the breakdown you have the Assemblies of God (white folks) and then you have the Church of God in Christ (which were predominantly black folks), each carried distinctive truths of God that they were endeavoring to protect and so, they divided and have been separate.
So, I said to the pastor, “You know, the step that we need to now take, I am going to invite you to join back here later on this summer, to come and have the Lord’s supper with us, but we are simply going to be in the middle, because another church that we are going to invite is the Assembly of God church, and we are going to seek peace and pursue it. We are going to reconcile in relationship, because it is the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ that makes us one.” It moves from simply a concept, that is no longer ok in Sonoma County, as far as I am concerned, that is for us to continue to live in a divided way.
Yes, God has given us distinctives that we must respect and walk in, but we also need to seek peace and pursue it. Well, there was a great, wonderful response and I didn’t know if they would respond positively or negatively. So, later on this summer, we will all come together, the different ends of the spectrum, seeking peace and pursuing it.
Do you not think that will add power and authority to our prayers? Maybe our prayers have been hindered and our effectiveness in evangelism has been limited because we have not as the Body of Christ sought peace and pursued it?
City Reach Prayer is about seeking God’s heart and His peace and we come together as diverse, different congregations in His name.
I would like one person from each group to pray and ask God what evil we need to turn from and that He would show us how to seek peace. Who do we need to seek peace with? It may be a specific location or person. I can’t reach the denomination of the Church of God in Christ, but I can one at a time. One at a time, and I know then that we are building relationship, so therefore, we are going to seek peace and pursue it and God will open more doors in authority when that happens, so just pray that for your group and the churches that may be represented in your group.
(Prayer)
(Sam Tillery)
“For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and His ears are attentive to their prayers.” So, there is some kind of condition there on the righteous. It is not just a title that we hold, that we are righteous in Christ. Yes, we are righteous, but we saw earlier that in relationships with spouses, relationships with others is an important component where our prayer is to make a difference and to pronounce a blessing instead of a curse.
Some of you are still cursing, maybe it is within your home, maybe you’ve got in the habit with the rest of the world of being very negative. It says that the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and His ears are attentive to their prayer, but that the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. When we are indifferent, complacent or judgmental to other churches or people in the body of Christ, that is evil. That is carnal, fleshly and right from the pit. It is sin. Does anybody disagree with me? So then, why do we walk that way? Take a moment and ask God to help us awaken and take our individual responsibility.
(Prayer)
(Sam Tillery)
Looking at 1 Timothy 2:8 – “I want men everywhere to lift up holy hands in prayer without anger or disputing.” I would dare say that many of these people are in the churches. People who are lifting their hands, which is a traditional thing to do and is a posturing yourself to worship and/or receive from the Lord, so there is nothing wrong with that. Here in the scripture it is talking about a holy manner of living. The hands are an expressive and active part of the body and also the posture of prayer. “I want men everywhere to lift up holy (set apart) hands in prayer, without anger and disputing.” He puts it very practically. There is anger and disputing things going on in churches. When we lift up our hands and when we posture ourselves to pray, we need to repent of those things and move forward.
I am going to have Harry read a passage in Exodus.
(Harry Skandera)
Exodus 17:9-11
Moses came to Joshua, “Choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amalekites. Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands.” So Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered, and Moses, Aaron and Hur went to the top of the hill. As long as Moses held up his hands, the Isrealites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning.
(Sam Tillery)
When we talk of lifting up our hands here, it is really a posturing of dependence upon God, and so there is the sharing of lifting up hands, our ministries and our prayers. Lifting up our prayers to the Lord, and when we do that, like Moses, they were winning and when they didn’t, they were losing, right?
Maybe some of the ways that we keep moving backwards in our individual churches is because we are proud of our American independence. That’s pride and a self-centeredness and we need one another. When we posture, think, pray and act that we need one another and that there is something I need to hear from God from you, that God has placed in you to give to me, so that I might grow. There is a humbleness there. I want to encourage us tonight that one of the things that will happen for Windsor in a positive way, something that we have discovered as we move around the county over the past 17 years, is that we are seeing that God is moving when intercessors are released.
When watchmen are listened to when they hear from the Lord and there is a mutual respect for one another, from various denominations in Christ. We want to encourage you that as you grow as a unity movement here in Windsor, that you have a unique distinctive that needs to be protected and prayed for, but you cannot do it simply within your own congregation. Yes, you need to pray, but we need to think and to pray outside of our walls and interface with others that may look a little bit different and pray a little different than we do, and not be judgmental, but be open. We can begin to temper one another to experience the power of God moving.
Earlier we said that broken relationships affects our ability to pray, so the assignment for Windsor, as Windsor begins to move forward in this movement of seeing and posturing itself in repentance and not just leaving with what God did here tonight, but has God stirred something within you, that you continue to pray into that and to speak it within your various congregations and communities and stop looking the other way.
As you pray, let God open those doors and as He brings things to your mind through His spirit, that you have been assigned to and that you can speak blessing. In fact not just tonight, but throughout the week you can speak blessing into the lives of unbelievers. It’s not all about bringing people to salvation, it’s about bringing the kingdom of God which will manifest itself in peace, wholeness, activeness, fullness and quality of life for all of the citizens of Windsor.
A part of worship is showing honor and respect and somehow we think that we are excused from showing honor and respect to those who do not know Christ. Whether they come to know Christ or not, we still love them without a string attached like, “Well, if you come to Jesus then we can be friends”, that kind of an attitude will change the spiritual climate and those people will be less apt to come to Him, because they can feel that you have a hidden agenda. They will be compelled to know Him when they see your love and respect for them and for each other. God has something for us to learn as we interface with those who do not know Christ and may never come to know Him. Get a grip! Wide is the way that leads to destruction and narrow is the way that leads to eternal life.
It is not a matter of the masses coming, it is a matter of us being faithful. So, let’s take a moment of prayer and pray as the Lord would lead you about some of these things that we have talked about.
(Prayer)
I have asked Pastor Scott to give us some prayer points specifically for his church, The Vine. I would ask that you all listen carefully, because you need to grab a hold of something to pray about. Listen for the prayer point that you most gravitate to, because you may not pray for every one of them and that is ok. Pray for what God has caused your heart to be moved towards.
(Pastor Scott Tolson)
A couple things that come to my mind, I have been a pastor for one church for 20 years and I have now just started this journey of planting a church. One of the things that God has been laying on my heart is not to do church the same old way. One of the things that we are desiring to see God do, is to build community in our church and yet we’re struggling/wondering if it is an aspect that we need to build community within the churches? As I have been thinking about this, small groups have been coming to my mind and maybe a way that we could do small groups within our churches and have that community there, but that is a prayer point for me. I am like, “God, I don’t want it to be just about The Vine, I want it to be about reaching and ministering to the community”, so pray for us in that direction.
Secondly, we have a huge need for children’s workers. We have one service on Friday night and we are thinking outside of the box in that we have thought about maybe doing something with college students who are looking for service hours that have a heart for God and a passion, so please pray for us in that.
Thirdly, and this goes for all of our churches, that as we work together, our goal is not to take people from other churches, it’s to get people who are not in churches or who do not know Christ. So, we are trying to reach out to non-believers, if you want to use that word, and sometimes when you want to do that differently, I don’t have a clue how to do that and not seemingly be a problem to other churches, so if you could please pray that God would orchestrate that.
(Sam Tillery)
Ok, before we go into prayer for that, something that came to my mind to ask is, how many of you go to churches that have some sort of missionary work that they do at home or overseas? Raise your hand. Most all of our churches have some way of mission. You know, it just dawned on me, most of our churches meet on Sunday. As a mission, one of your churches that meets on Sunday and has children’s teachers and workers, may want to come on Friday nights here until The Vine has enough new people coming in or trained or equipped to take that over. That would be a perfect expression of what we have been praying about, so you might want to pray that way. It might not be you, but it may be somebody that you know or somebody in your church.
(Prayer)
(Harry Skandera)
We pray that God releases a breath of fresh revelation over your city. Mark is going to come and play a closing song and as he plays that song, I am going to ask that we form a large circle around the sanctuary and those of you who wish to come and pass under this banner, this green flag. Banners are used for all sorts of things in scripture. I am going to read Isaiah 62 verses 10 through 12. “Pass through, pass through the gates! Prepare the way for the people. Build up, build up the highway! Remove the stones. Raise a banner for the nations. The Lord has made proclamation to the ends of the earth: Say to the Daughter of Zion, ‘See, your Savior comes! See, His reward is with Him, and His recompense accompanies Him.’” They will be called the Holy People, the Redeemed of the Lord; and you will be called Sought After, the City No Longer Deserted.
There are a lot of things that we could say about that passage. You might want to go back and review it for your city, Windsor, because I think that there is some meaning there, but for our purposes tonight, before we close in our song of praise to the Lord, we want to ask one of the Intercessors from one of the congregations here in Windsor to release the blessing of the fresh revelation of blessing over your city.
For those of you who would like to be released in this way, as we are singing and are in a big circle around the room, that those who would like to, would come and pass under this banner as she waves it while we are worshiping. I don’t want anyone to feel compelled other than by the Holy Spirit, so Pam would you come?
Take this blessing from the city of Windsor and on to the nations.
(Sam Tillery)
Be sure to check the web site, www.unitedprayer.org to check for location for the next City Reach Prayer. The Vine’s offering is in the back along with Pastor’s Prayer and Ministry Alliance as well. If you want to support the ministry, you can make a check out to P.P.M.A. and it will go toward this City Reach Prayer movement and unifying the Body of Christ.
The Vine will be having its first Baptisms this next Friday night, so come out for that if you would like to. It is going to be an awesome time of celebration and fellowship in the Lord.
Thank you Harry, Sam, Intercessors and everybody, we need you guys and thank you for being here.
Special Thanks to Christelle Eddy
who transcribed this document. |
