We have started a new monthly prayer time in response to a sense that the Holy Spirit wants us to ‘gather the intercessors’. As well as gathering seasoned intercessors, we are inviting people who feel the urge to pray for the city but feel they lack experience. We will be learning together and encouraging creative ways to pray. We hope young people will join in too!!
Background
In September 2023 we studied Isaiah 62 about watchmen. Watchmen is a pictorial way of referring to people who have a calling to pray.
6 Upon your walls, O Jerusalem, I have stationed my watchmen.Neither by day nor by night will they be silent. You whose responsibility is to call upon the Lord, give yourselves no rest,7 and also give no rest to him until he restores Jerusalem and makes her renowned throughout the earth.
We sensed God giving us an assignment to gather people who have a calling to pray. We decided to start a new prayer time once a month to create an opportunity for people to pray for the city.
We have continued to ask God how we should approach this time. And in line with the verse that prompted us, we are calling people together in order to keep watch on the walls.
Keeping watch
In some translations of Isaiah 62:6 we get the word sentinel – a solider or guard whose job is to stand and keep watch.
The natural role of a watchman is to stand, to watch for danger, to call attention to it.
The supernatural role of a watchmen is more. The rest of the verse (Isaiah 62:6) gives instructions beyond the military application. Looking at a range of translations we get:
- never be silent; never be still; never hold their peace; speak out day and night without resting.
- pray to the Lord; call on the Lord; remind the Lord of his promises; commemorate in the presence of the Lord; profess the Lord; make mention of the Lord.
After spending time praying about this in our community meeting, we have some ideas on what it means to be keeping watch. We are always wanting to be like Jesus, when He said ‘I only do what I see the Father doing’. This is our stance. So as we keep watch we are watching for what God is doing.
Summary of keeping watch
- to take notice of what God is doing in the city
- to remind God of his promises and declare them over the situations we see
- to wait expectantly for God to move, for the arrival of Jesus into our city and situations
- to persist – quite literally, day and night
We are meeting on the third Friday of each month, from 8pm to midnight at Kings Church Lordswood, 414 Coxford Road, Southampton SO16 5LL. You don’t have to stay for the whole of the time.
As is often the way in 24-7 Prayer, when doing something new, we consider it an experiment. We try things out and learn. We aim to keep discerning how the Holy Spirit is leading us. Would you be part of this journey with us?