On July 1st, I sent a Shields Up Prayer Alert (below) concerning the fact that I sensed the Lord saying to be watchful and pray over our nation and key cities as a spirit of violence had been loosed in the earth. Thankfully, we went to prayer as a nation and we have not seen an organized terror attack.
However, on Saturday, Patrick Crusius, only 21 years old, killed at least 20 people and wounded at least 2 dozen more in an attack on a Walmart at a mall in El Paso, Texas. It is considered an act of domestic terrorism, as he targeted Hispanics in the border town. Additionally, Connor Betts, age 24, shot and killed 9 in Dayton, OH. It is not known what motivated Connor, but reports are that he has been obsessed with death for many years. He was suspended in high school for writing a hit list on a bathroom wall at the school.
These situations are becoming “too common” and we must be more proactive in covering our home territories. We must prayer walk and prayer drive and hold prayer watches, forming something like a spiritual Neighborhood Watch. We must pray over our malls where we shop, our stadiums while we enjoy sporting events, and especially our schools where we deposit the most precious ones in our lives on a daily basis.
Start a prayer watch at your church or in your neighborhood and at your schools. Be watchful and PRAY everywhere you go!
As I said previously, this warning from the Lord is not to cause us fear! God is so good to warn us, so we have time to intercede and turn back the enemy's plans. He wants us to pray so things cannot escalate, and so that the violence will not happen.
Join me in prayer now:
• Worship the Lord. Acknowledge that He is the Protector we need and ask for.
• Intercede for those who have recently become victims of the spirit of violence in El Paso and Dayton. Pray for healing for the wounded and comfort for those who lost loved ones. Pray for healing of trauma in those cities.
• Identificationally repent for our national sin of not relying on God. Pray the prayer that Daniel prayed in Daniel 9:4-19.
• Pray Psalm 91 over your family, over your neighborhood, over your city, over your schools and workplaces.
• Ask God to uncover any plans for violence in your area, before they can be carried out. Command every plan being conceived in darkness to get in the light!
• Boldly bind any spirit of violence at work and in your realm of influence in accordance with Matthew 16:19.
• Go and prayer walk and prayer drive your community.
• President Trump put it well when he said that the problem of shootings has been going on “for years and years” and “we have to get it stopped.” There is a spiritual component and a natural one. Intercede for God's solutions to come to lawmakers, legislators, mental health professionals, law enforcement officers, educators, and any other person who can help stop these attacks in the natural.
For the healing of our nation.
