Prayer and the Process of Change

NHOP School of Prayer - "What You Need to Know About Praying for Government and Leaders." - Session 5 of 12 NHOP.ca

Transcript

hi my name is Craig doer and I'm happy to be here with you today to talk about prayer and the process of change this is the uh National House of prayers fifth session on praying for government and leaders and today we are going to talk about prayer and the process of change so let's jump into it almost every time we find ourselves praying for government we are we are praying for change of some sort because of that it's very important that we understand the process of change in the nation I recently wrote a book about this sit this this topic called to shift a nation how the body of Christ can effectively promote change in Canada and I'm I'm drawing from that book with

what I'm going to be sharing with you today so the for the first part of this teaching we're going to talk about how a nation shifts and then for the second part of it we're going to talk about what's the application of that to prayer what can we learn about that from prayer so let's let's dig into this how how does a nation shift here's what we need to do we need to lay a little bit of a a framework for this and to understand that there are four different types of change the first type of change is what we could call directed change directed change is change that happens because somebody has the power to make change happen so it's top down it's centrally controlled it's

basically imposed somebody has the power to make change so this can be the kind of change that uh a a parent usually has over their child um where the child is directed to go and clean the room or do something it's also the kind of power that the the government has over citizenry uh where if a law is passed that is top down change if uh the police arrest somebody that's top down change so it's directed change the second kind of change which is it's kind of like the opposite of directed change is organic change directed change happens from the top down whereas organic change happens from the bottom up organic change happens when people's values or beliefs change

and when someone's values or beliefs change they what they do changes they if they discover a better way of doing things they will change certain things in their life to adapt with that nobody impos it on them it was not topped down it came into their life change came into their life because of this change of beliefs a change of understanding change of values increase of knowledge so that gives you on one hand directed change on the other hand organic change top down bottom up imposed or or organic the Third Kind of change we'll talk about is what we call radical change now when when when we're talking about directed in organic that has to do with the source of the change when we

talk about the next two we're talking about the speed of the change radical change is quick so whereas the opposite of that is incremental change which is slow so you can have change that is quick or change that is slow radical change is sudden significant um it it's quick or large scale it often carries unforeseen uh implications because things are changing so quickly it can have ramifications we not we weren't really ready for whereas incremental change is gradual happens over a period of time and it's often difficult to measure when organic change starts or stops and to attribute it to a specific cause because you can see oh something's changing there but there wasn't like no

one forced that change there wasn't a law that was made there wasn't it wasn't directed it was organic and it's happening slowly so so it can be difficult sometimes to understand why it happens but this these are the four types of change directed change or organic change radical change versus versus incremental change so directed top down organic bottom up radical quick incremental is slow now here's what we're going to do we're going to take those four types of change and we're going to put them on a matrix if you take directed change and put it on one hand obviously organic change is the opposite of that you draw a line between the two and all change happens

some where on that line either it's directed meaning someone imposed it or it's organic meaning it happened because values and beliefs change so it's not necessarily 100% of one or 100% of the other it happens somewhere along that line partly organic but mostly directed partly directed but mostly organic or completely directed completely organic somewhere in that line the other line is the radical to incremental change so on on this line same thing radical on the top incremental on the bottom change happens somewhere in between there it can be you know very quick very sudden or very slow or it can be on that line somewhere moving up what that does is it gives us a

matrix with four quadrants to it on the the top left we have radical and directed change on the top right we have radical and organic change the bottom left we have directed and incremental change and then bottom right we have organic and incremental change now hang with me here because this is going to make sense we're going to go into each of these in a little bit of detail to explain because the as we begin to understand this you'll begin to see how change happens in a nation and it can happen any one of these ways it's not like change only happens one way but the question where we're headed to is as Christians praying for the nation where should we be

focusing where should we be focusing our prayers which quadrant of change so let's go through these the each quadrant and then we'll apply it to prayer so the first one we'll talk about is is I've got it in the uh in my diagram in the top left which is directed and radical change so directed and radical change this is the change that most people focus on and it's things like uh you can see it with when people are trying to make changes that is that is directed and radical they focus on on things like legal challenges uh demonstrations uh anger protest demand we often see this directed towards government change this and it it involves people trying to get the

government to use its power to create change or in some cases trying to get the courts to make a decision to force change probably the best example of directed and radical change is what we saw during the pandemic during the pandemic because of what was feared to be a a a significant Health crisis the government suddenly imposed all kinds of new laws new rules on the nation some of these were done by provincial governments some were done by Municipal governments some were done by by the federal government but it all was directed in radical change it changed our lives overnight when they came in with the decision well you know the lockdowns you can't go to work you have

to stay home I mean in some some cases it was very very severe in fact in in many cases across the country very severe and that was not change that happened because because people wanted it to change it was change that happened because government forced it but remember what happened when this took place all of a sudden around the world you get these voices that started saying hey this is fantastic look how much Good Government Can Do Good Government Can Do by just taking leadership and imposing change on people so you started to hear these calls for the government needs to use this kind of change to deal with climate change to deal with economic situations to deal

with immigration to deal da da like on and on and on and the the best example of that was the the world economic Forum came out with their great reset idea and just well this is this is this is how we need to approach transforming Society going forward we can solve all of our problems very misguided very concerning um but that's a perfect example of directed radical change quick and top down forced on people this is to be frank when Christians are praying for government this is usually where Christians Focus their prayers we we pray that God will like change the government or change the prime minister or change the law or prevent the law from going through um

you know there'll be a certain law that's working its way through the House of Commons or the Senate and we start to hold prayer meetings that God will stop that law this is this is directed radical change we're focused on God forc this to happen and it's it it's very much focused changing laws changing policies stopping the Prime Minister Etc like I just mentioned so you C you can get the idea it's it's a directed radical change and it's often where we focus our prayers but as you'll see I don't think it's the right place for us to focus our prayers now let me let me say this there's not we can focus on any of these in in any of these quadrants any of these these types of change our

prayers could focus there and it's not necessarily wrong my question today is what's most effective and what should be our primary focus in prayer so let let's move on to the second one the first one was directed and radical change top down and quick the second kind of change is radical and organic change so on radical and organic change frankly it's it's difficult to have radical and organic change it doesn't happen that often normally because radical means it's very quick but it's happening because values and beliefs have changed so normally those two things don't go together but sometimes they do and it's it's dramatic change that happens from the bottom up the challenge with this kind of

change is it's usually quite messy it has unforeseen con consequences that haven't actually were not able to properly mitigate properly plan for properly uh administrated etc etc but it's a very real kind of change and it does happen let me give you an example you might remember um back in 2010 what was called the Arab Spring it was December of 2010 there was there was a uh a Tunisian street vendor he was only 26 years old and he set himself on fire in the middle of the street to protest how the government was treating him and and his fellow citizens he died later of his injuries and as a result of that it created a huge public Uprising in Tunisia which resulted in the

overturning of the government in Tunisia which was basically a dictatorship and they ended up moving into a democracy if you recall this prompted a series of Uprising right across the Middle East but only in Tunisia did it actually end up resulting in something positive in the other ones it often created a vacuum of leadership because the the leadership of the day was pushed out it was uh and and what happened was the vacuum was quite often filled by radical extremists Isis the uh different different uh different extremist groups moved into to that that Gap and the end situation in some cases was worse than the first but it's a nonetheless it's a very good example of radical organic

change it came because the beliefs of people changed their values changed it it was bottom up it wasn't top down but it happened very quickly now we should note that radical and organic change usually happens because there actually have been incremental changes that have been happening under the surface so although it it happens quickly there's usually things that have been lining up but nonetheless when then change begins to happen it's quick it's bottom up this um this is the kind of change like we focus on this kind of change when in prayer we focus on things like Revival renewal Awakening and Reformation I believe in all of these things and we need these things we need

Revival we need Reformation we need Awakening Awakening but the question is is that how a nation changes it definitely has an impact on the nation but here's here's the issue with this if we focus on this kind of change we're focusing and kind of waiting for God to do something so our our emphasis and our priority is still very much on on seeing something happen that we have no control over so that's radical and organic change let me give you the third the third one the third quadrant is directed and incremental change this is where the change is top down but it takes time and there's not very many examples of this um but you can find suon when it when it comes to government the best

example of this is how lobbyists work lobbyists are very patient they meet with government they meet with ministers they meet with MPS they meet with Senators they get their message across very slowly over time they attempt they attempt to uh to ask the government get the government to make change but they're happy to have it in incremental kind of changes this kind of change um would be the kind of change in prayer if we're focusing on uh elections candidates um changing the minds of parliamentarians getting the different people appointed so it's change that happens because something happens in sort of what we call like the the the power level we're changing who's in control

we're changing who's making decisions is again there's nothing wrong with this type of prayer but the one that we really want to get to is this next one is the bottom right quadrant which is organic and incremental prayer sorry organic and incremental change and organic and incremental change as I mentioned earlier happens because the beliefs of people or the values of people change like I said earlier rather than the policy changing so the the change at the top is reflected because of the change at the bottom changing the beliefs of people results in organic change which politicians are not able to refuse they can for a little while but in the end they have to

kind of what uh former Premier Ralph kleinon Alberta said called get in front of the parade see where the people are going and get in front of the parade and this is a this is a very real thing in public office and with government government can only do what the people will allow the government to do we we really have to kind of get our heads around this because as Christians we often look at the nation and we think that it's in the state it is because of government decisions yet in fact it's in the state it's in because of the state of society and Society is in the state is in because of what people believe and what they value I like to say it this way

government is a mirror that mirrors back to us the state of the nation so if we don't like what our government looks like we have to realize that our government is actually just holding up a mirror that says this is what your nation looks like so if our prayers are constantly focused on changing government and changing laws then we're constantly dealing with the symptoms and not the roots now again it's like everything sort of you have to take this in Balance because the other thing with government it is a mirror but the other thing with government is that it is a megaphone which means the government of the day basically has the loudest voice so whatever their message is that's the

message that tends to dominate the airwaves it tends to dominate the media it tends to dominate conversations it tends to shift the focus but again I'm going to go back to this that they can't do that unless it reflects the values and the beliefs at the Grassroots level the doesn't mean all the values doesn't mean all the beliefs but the the pro the the the majority of beliefs so government is both a mirror and a megaphone we when we realize what's happening government is reflecting what is happening at the Grassroots level that's where we need to see where we need to focus that shows us our priority so in prayer when we focus on this area the prayer focuses are uh values beliefs incremental

change uh we're we're we're focusing on the role of the church as salt light leaven in society we're going to we're going to get into this a little bit more when we the next part here where we start to talk about prayer strategies but this is where organic and incremental change when we're our prayers are focused there that's what we're focusing on we're focusing on things like values like beliefs we're not saying God change the government don't let the law pass we're actually going for the route so let's let's apply this to prayer specifically when it comes to praying for the ation praying for government praying for leaders how does this apply in in more practical ways let me let me

give you four examples or four four points and and again I'm going to repeat this it doesn't say this is the only way to pray it what it does say is this is our priority in prayer and the reason organic and incremental changes are priority in prayer is because this is how the kingdom works let me give you point number one for prayer to be effective we need to focus on the right things so the first thing to focus on is that we should focus on organic not directed change and if you look at Jesus Parables most of Jesus Parables talk about organic change they talk about the parable like for example of the Mustard Seed uh Matthew 13 31-32 how Jesus says the kingdom of God is lik UN to a

mustard seed I'm not quoting it I'm paraphrasing here from memory but the kingdom of God is like un to a mustard seed which when it planted it it it starts small it's the smallest of all seeds and it begins to grow and it grows and becomes a large tree so that even the birds of the air can come and nest in its branches this is a critical understanding of the Kingdom of Heaven or the kingdom of God on the earth that the kingdom of God on the earth began small and is growing and Brad Brad laid some excellent foundation for this in the in the earlier sessions that the kingdom of God is is here now but it's not here in its fullness because as Jesus said it starts as a mustard seed and then

grows we have to kind of get a hold of this in our prayers and realize our prayers are watering those seeds the seeds of the Kingdom Jesus there was there was other uh Parables as well like the the parable where Jesus talks about about Levan Matthew 13:33 how the kingdom of God is like leaven once leaven gets into a loaf there's no way you can get it out and this should be an encouragement to us about the kingdom of God on the earth about our role as Christians we can look around and we can say say things are pretty bad but never forget the fact that Levan is often unseen at the beginning and later you begin to see the impact of it I often wonder how did the disciples feel you

know the 12 the 72 the the the the 400 where they were up against the en entire Roman Empire and the the the the Jewish leadership and understanding and there was only a few of them and yet over 300 years they were able to transform Society to such an extent that the government of the day the Roman Emperor said okay this is going to become official religion and that I mean this is something that's for another day but we we really need to kind of get our hearts heads around this but this is what they this is what they did they focused on bottom up change organic not directed change they didn't go to the emperor and try to get him to pass a law making Christianity uh legal or so we don't get

persecuted they were focused on bottom up Jesus gave the parable of the the farmer who planted the seed and says how the farmer plants the seed and then he goes away and he doesn't know how it happens but sure enough it grows over time and becomes a huge crop so example after example Jesus is talking about the Kingdom of Heaven the Kingdom of Heaven on the Earth being organic in nature so number one Focus we should focus our prayers our primary prayer focus should be on organic and not direct to change this means our prayer should primarily focus on people and not policies sometimes we think if we could just change the policy it'll fix the problem it won't it might give us a bit

of relief and there's times we should do that there's times God can can cut things off at the past cause something to not go through that should have gone through but when that happens we need to realize it's a very temporary fix that the real solution is to focus on on organic on people not policies because Nations change when people change so focus our primary prayer focus should be on people not policies should be organic change not directed change the second focus is that we should focus on incremental and not radical change so these points kind of overlap but you get the idea change happens usually very slowly Abraham was told by God I'm going to make you the father of many nations

look up at the stars of the sky and that's your descendants and yet Abraham only had one son I mean when we think about this we think okay God God gave me a promise like that I would expect he's going to give me lots of children but God gave Abraham one son and then that son he gave one son so this this wasn't happening quickly and then finally the third son had 12 sons and we begin to see the slow implementation of the promises of God the prises of God don't always have to be slow but they are usually incremental and not radical when it comes and again I'm speaking to the shifting of a Nation the shifting of a people the change how change happens when we're praying for government and

we're praying for leaders obviously we believe in miracles things happen quickly we pray boom things happen but when we're talking about people and Nations shifting we should focus on organic not directed change and we should focus on incremental and not radical change so here's the prayer key the prayer key on this one is focus your prayers on the journey and not the destination the previous prayer key was focused on people and not programs or policies on this one it's focus on the journey and not the destination the we we all want to get to the end and we want to get to that destination whatever it is right away yet God actually loves the journey and we need to be thinking to ourselves

what what is the next step in the journey to getting to where we need to go let let's let's say it has to do with a certain policy of government we could pray night and day that the policy changes and I'm not saying that's what be without effect I'm just saying it's more effective to say God give us wisdom give us Insight in the transition of our nation in the in the shifting of a Nation what's the next step on this policy what is what is that next incremental stage and zero in on that that's the second Point focus on incremental not radical change the third one is this every change involves a transition and a trigger I I'll explain this so that means every change involves

a transition that's something that needs to change that's a process like something shifting but it also involves something that causes the change that's the trigger every change involves a transition and a trigger let me give you an example of this the the parable of the talents and for the sake of time again I won't read it but you can it's found in Matthew 25 14-30 where Jesus tells the parable of of the landowner giving the talents to a few of his his his people and then he goes away they to make good use of what he has given them he comes back and one has some great success the other has medium success and the other has no success because he buried the talents the the transition

here was to see an increase in wealth so the landowner wanted to see an increase in wealth but the trigger was investing and doing business wisely so the transition increase in wealth the question though what's the trigger that causes the transition the trigger was investing doing business wisely and another example of this is where Jesus says that the Harvest is plentiful and the workers but the workers are few Luke 10: 2 he's saying the Harvest is plentiful but the workers are few the the transition is to see the Harvest come in but what's the trigger that causes the Harvest to come in the workers so Jesus says pray that the lord of the Harvest will compel workers into

the Harvest field he didn't say pray for a Great Harvest he said pray for the trigger pray for the workers to go out and bring the Harvest in pray for more workers pray that God would compel the workers to go out and bring the Harvest in we tend to focus on the Harvest the transition and this is where we can get frankly off track praying for Revival like we need to pray for Revival because we need to have this heart that burns for God to move in our nation but we need to understand that that there's there are things that trigger Revival there are things that trigger changes and we need to look to God to give us spiritual and prophetic insight into what are the triggers what are

these things that we should be focusing on in prayer that will cause or contribute to the transition that we know is in the heart of God for our Nation for our communities Etc so the prayer key here is obvious focus on the trigger not the transition focus on the trigger not the transition here's the fourth one the first one was focus on organic not directed change the second one focus on incremental not directed change the third one every change involves a transition and a trigger the fourth one is every change has a root and a result again this is similar to last one but it emphasizes something a little different that is important for us to hear every change has a root and a

result the root is what caused the situation and the result is what you see that needs to change so when we look around Society we see lots of results that are not good let's let's take homelessness for example we see an increase in homelessness we can pray against homelessness all day and again I'm not saying that's bad I'm saying that's probably less effective than if we said to God show us the roots of this and and began to pray into the roots the root is what caused the situation and the result is what we see needs to change I'm repeating myself Jesus constantly focused on the root and Luke 6:45 he says this a good person produces from the treasury of a

good heart and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart so he's saying the heart is the root in this case of our actions but the principle this principle applies across the board you see something visible there is a root to that we we really as Christians tend to get focused on looking and praying at the result we need to look at what's the root what's the root God what's the root what are we praying into here so the prayer Focus here again is obvious Focus your prayers on the root and not the result so you can see how understanding this this process of change and the ways that change happen how we have we have directed and uh and radical and directed

change we have radical an organic change we have directed an incremental change and we have organic and incremental change depending on how you think change should happen is going to affect how we pray and what I wanted to leave with you today is the the the these insights into prayer that we can focus anywhere but our priority in prayer when it comes to government and the leaders in our nation the priority in prayer should be organic and incremental change it should be change that looks first of all at organic not directed that looks at incremental not radical we should be looking for the trigger not just focused on the transition and we should be considering the root and not just the

result I I really believe that prayer that focuses here can be so effective it will surprise us and I I remember I remember uh God pointing something out to me about this one time and it was a story of of a uh a Canadian um military person a number of years ago who was a marksman and uh and he was actually the guy at the time he had the the the longest um shot Marksman you know like with a sniper long as a he was a sniper and he took a shot that was three and a half kilometers away took that bullet 10 seconds to reach its Target his Target at that time was an Isis operative that Isis operative was part of a team that was in the process of being about to execute a major strike and this

sniper took out that one single Isis insurgent and by doing so prevented a whole series of cascading things that would have happened as a result of the strike that they were planning and in the process of implementing like this is a great example of you you you can pray against the result all we want but if we find the root that's significant once we do that then you can actually see significant changes begin to happen so this is um this is critical to understand because sometimes in prayer we are we're looking at the wrong things sometimes we're focused on the wrong things and then we get we get frustrated with our our Effectiveness our lack of Effectiveness especially when it comes

to the nation I my wife Gail and I have been on a journey for about 30 years where God has taken us into first into nonprofit organizations and then eventually onto Parliament until um where I where I currently work and in that process you've been teaching us about the process of change and I I I remember in the in the 2015 election all all the prayer that went up for the government because we were concerned about the outcome of the election we could see that the the choice given to Canadians was a very Stark choice between two very different Visions for the country and that if the nation made the wrong choice we were going to pay some serious consequences and prayer is prayer is not

partisan like like um like Brad has explained God doesn't align himself with a certain political party and but he does align himself with certain values and we have to say well no part's perfect no party is like God's party but which one is best representing the values that I I hold as a Christian and reflect God's values and we need to both be part of helping that to happen but praying into there being more of those values in the nation but I my point is this in 2015 we were praying about the government and I remember that after the election happened there was a lot of Despair because the outcome we were wanting the outcome we were praying for the outcome we were fasting for and

contending for did not happen and God really began to speak to me uh during that time after that time as I was reflecting on you know we we spent all this time and all this effort in people praying Across the Nation and yet the the shift we were looking for didn't happen why and he began to show me that some of the things that we had learned working for nonprofit organizations how change happens applies to prayer and to the church as well there's a number of stories I could tell you now I won't go into them but they're they're they're in my book um to shift a nation how how we we learned in these nonprofit organizations this very same principle so even outside the context of

the church and prayer the same principle it's a truth it's a it's a kingdom principle that if you influence the Grassroots if you influence the beliefs and you influence the values you are going to see that reflected in the government eventually in the laws government changes first laws change much more slowly so we are in this for the long hul we have to realize that just like Jesus says the kingdom of God expands but it expands slowly there's there's uh great references about how the kingdom of God that its increase knows no end it will continue to increase and that is what we need to expect to see but we need to realize it does happen slowly so these things that I've

shared with you today I I hope they're helpful because as we begin to shift our focus in prayer we'll be less prone to discouragement we will be more strategic we will begin to realize how the holy spirit is moving on the earth in this organic incremental way we will align our prayers with how he is working and as a result I believe we will become even more effective [Music]