An Incredible Evening of Prayer for Canada
Wednesday, May 4, 2011 at 8:34PM | Print Article On April 26 2011, House of Prayer Edmonton hosted a special evening of intercessory worship for the Canadian Federal election. We worked quite hard to spread the news and invite as many people as we could. As the evening got closer we had no idea how many people would show up: would people be stirred to gather and pray for the election or would apathy about politics prevail? The other question was how would people engage with the model of intercessory worship that would be quite new to the majority of people? We decided to set up the room for about 50 people, which is double the number that we can seat in marketplace chapel. We soon realized that we would need to put out more chairs and set out another 50; as more people continued to arrive people went over to the main building of McKernan Baptist to find additional chairs. In the end we had about 120 people come and join us for two hours of prayer and worship for the nation.
So what do you do with 120 people who care enough about Canada that they pass up watching the Stanley Cup playoffs to come and pray? At the beginning we had a time of worship and then a number of the HoPE prayer leaders began to lead in prayer while the worship team played and responded in spontaneous song. Soon we invited people to come and line up at the microphone to offer 10-20 second prayers along the theme of God’s will prevailing in the national election. Immediately there was a long line of people eager to pray and from there people became increasingly engaged with the intercession and worship.
It was an amazing evening, filled with significant intercession for Canada and the Federal election. There were a number of people from across the Body of Christ who came together in unity to exalt Jesus Christ and celebrate Him as King over Canada. We were thrilled to have a very wide representation of Baptists, Mennonites, Presbyterians, Alliance, Pentecostal, Victory Church, and independent charismatics.
I personally was very honored to be part of this evening. It was exciting to see so many people from such different church backgrounds come together and pray in unity for the will of God in our nation. This was truly in keeping with the prayer of Jesus in John 17, when he asked God the Father that the Church would live in unity!
I believe that this was the first of many future city-wide gatherings for worship and intercession. The Holy Spirit is stirring a desire in many believers for unified expressions of worship and prayer that exalt and honor Jesus Christ and work to establish the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven!
Our next special evening of intercessory worship will be on Thursday June 9, 2011 at Central Baptist Church. This is part of the AWAKEN 2011 CONFERENCE on June 9-11 that House of Prayer Edmonton is hosting. Maria Collett will be again leading the intercessory worship and Wes Martin, the main speaker at Awaken, will be preaching. I really encourage you to check out the conference website and to join us for this incredible weekend.
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Reader Comments (1)
That must have been such a great feeling to see that many people come in for prayer. Nothing like a solid rapid-fire prayer time to engage the room!
We'll commit to pray for you guys in Canada. We are a HOP in the SF Bay Area, California. I'm the director. Hope to get to know you better in the future.
Keep going!