9. 祷告的盾牌
Extracted from Google Book using Screenshot OCR
When I was teaching personal intercession in my Fuller Doctor of Ministry courses, many of my students became motivated to seek personal intercession for themselves. When these pastors returned to their churches, some had functioning teams of prayer partners activated within weeks, in a few cases within days, where God had obviously already been preparing the way for them. They just needed to know that it was OK. The overwhelming majority of reports I received were positive and enthusiastic. But not all. One of the pastors, who had an especially analytical mind, not only had a bad experience, but also turned that experience into a term paper for my advanced seminar.
This pastor from the Midwest wrote under the pen name of Paul A. Freedman. Fortunately, he had enough personal stability and a high enough level of self—esteem not to be devastated by his negative experience. He was able to think positively, learn from his setbacks, and move forward aggressively on the basis of what he had learned. N o wonder his church was a growing church. Despite his initial disappointment, he did and still does believe that “intercessory prayer is one of the most important elements of successful ministry today.” He affirmed that since hearing of personal prayer partners in my seminar, “1 have come to greatly appreciate and rely upon the ministry of 1-1 intercessors.”
Paul Freedman’s stony vividly illustrates what can happen when the wrong people move into the position of an 1-1 intercessor, and what can change when the right ones are there.
Paul had begun to look for an 1-1 intercessor when he returned home after taking my course, but his church happened to be facing another critical situation at the time. He had previously given high priority to leading a strong prayer ministry in his church; however, as the church continued to grow he found he could give less and less of his time to it. This caused deep frustration, and it soon became obvious that the entire prayer ministry needed to be updated and reorganized.
Consequently, Freedman was happy and relieved when “a dearly loved and well-respected member of the church approached me to tell me that she had been praying specifically for me on a daily basis, and that she saw a great need to reorganize the prayer ministry of our church.” Paul saw this connection as meeting both needs at once. He invited the woman to become an 1-1 intercessor for him and also to take charge of the church’s struggling prayer ministry.
From Doubts to Depression
Bad move! He says, “I was expecting relief and new strength, but things just got worse!”
Since the woman was an 1-1 intercessor, Paul began to share some of his more personal prayer requests with her. He soon noticed that she seemed to differ with him on certain theological points, but he brushed them aside as minor issues. He later found out, much to his dismay, that these had been major concerns in the mind of this woman.
As the arrangement continued, Paul began to notice that his ministry seemed to be less effective. More people than usual were dissatisfied. He needed to expend higher levels of physical and mental energy to get the same results. He was constantly tired. He became angry. The anger led to frustration, and the frustration led to depression. He says, “I was losing my love for the ministry. I knew the Lord was still there for me, but I didn’t want to be there for the Lord anymore. I was angry with God and angry with myself. I just wanted out!”
Then the enemy, having Paul Freedman spiritually and psychologically where he wanted him, unloaded the brunt of his attack. During one week, two women, unrelated to each other, came to Paul for “counseling.” Remarkably, both of them had developed an infatuation for him, and they let him know that they would be available to him any time he had the desire. Fonunately Paul’s internal alarm system went off. He says, “I recognized the spiritual attacks for what they were. I quickly decided to get my wife and get away!”
The couple isolated themselves from the congregation for a month, seeking new objectivity and a renewed relationship with God. The Lord faithfully met them in their need, and He revealed to Paul what the cause of the problems was. Paul suddenly saw clearly that the woman he had selected as an 1-1 intercessor and asked to lead the church’s prayer ministry was not God’s choice. Here is the way he puts it: “She was not submitted to my ministry nor open to my spiritual authority. Rather, she wanted to change me through prayer. She sought to control me by asking God to change me into
something that she believed was correct.”
Meanwhile the woman’s influence had spread. She turned some of the 1-2 intercessors against the pastor and caused discontent, disunity, anger, and even rebellion among church members. Several families left the church as a result.
Once he realized all of this, Paul faced what he anticipated could be his biggest challenge of all. How would he tell this woman what he now knew without causing an explosion and a possible church split? By then, she wielded a tremendous amount of influence in the congregation.
The good news is that God had known all about the situation, and He had gone ahead of Paul to change things. Before the Freedmans had returned from their vacation, the woman and her family left the church, citing “theological differences” as the reason!
Replacing the False Intercessor
As it turned out, this incredibly smooth solution to such a thorny disaster happened because of positive intercessory prayer. How? Again, before Paul returned from his vacation, God not only removed the former intercessor, but also replaced her with people who eventually became three new [-1 intercessors. None of the three knew either of the other two. But all had been praying fervently and had been keeping journals of what the Lord was revealing to them for Paul. Each of them had been praying for months previously. Undoubtedly, it was the foothold 0f the enemy through the false intercessor that had prevented the pastor from recognizing the three as intercessors sooner.
When the new intercessors got to know one another and began comparing notes, the consistency and agreement in what God had been showing all three were astounding. Remarkably, two of them, according to their journals, had clearly known months previously that Paul would be tempted by “lustful and foolish” women. in his paper, he rightly concludes that “the intercessors having received advanced wamings to pray for me at that time may well have saved my ministry.” Remember that Paul’s “internal alarm system” went off after the two seductive women visited him? What made it go off, when we know of too many other cases of pastors whose alarm systems did not go off in similar circumstances? Personal intercession!
The upshot of all of this? Within a few months, a new prayer ministry was installed and the church began to grow once again. Paul says, “During a three-month period, under the prayers of God’s chosen warriors, our church received into membership the
largest number of new members in our history. We also witnessed average weekly offerings hit an all-time high!”
The risk of making a mistake such as Pastor Freedman did comes with the territory. His was not the first, and it will not be the last. But I believe that we can learn from him and from the experiences of others in order to keep such mistakes to a minimum.
Recruiting Short-Term Pray-ers
None of what I have said so far should lead us to imagine that the only effective prayer that pastors and other Christian leaders need to receive is that of recognized 1-1, 1-2 or 1-3 intercessors. For example, many members of my 120 Fellowship Sunday School
class did not necessarily pray for me on a daily or other regular basis, but they did pray when there was a special need. I considered it important to let them know of my prayer needs in general, and some more specifically. I made a practice of sharing prayer requests every week.
Sandra Gilbreath, who was one of our [-2 intercessors, also headed the prayer ministry of the 120 Fellowship. Sandra gave leadership to the prayer ministry during class time; she identified and recruited those who had a special desire to pray for the people and the needs of the class; she led a pre-class prayer meeting; she processed prayer request slips filled out in class; and she organized prayer chains for special needs as they came up.
For example, when Doris or I, or both of us, went away on some ministry trips, Sandra would organize a prayer and fasting chain. We did not request it for every trip, wanting to avoid its becoming a formality or routine. But when we felt that a certain ministry might be a special target of spiritual warfare, Sandra activated her prayer chain.
Sandra frequently would cut, paste and photocopy pages from a date book that contained spaces for all the days we would be gone, plus one week after the trip. (We had learned from hard experience that often the most severe spiritual attacks would come right after, not during, a ministry assignment.) Sandra would make an announcement in class, and then pass the prepared sheet around. Class members, whether they were our formal prayer partners or not, would fill in their names on one or more days on which they promised to fast at least one meal and pray for us and our ministry. Sandra then gave us a photocopy of the filled-in calendar, and reminded those who had signed up when their day came around.
How did this work? I happened to save my copy of the prayer schedule for a trip I made to Argentina and Brazil, along with some notes I made on it. Each day had at least two persons praying, and some had as many as four. The most visible attacks on me during that trip were physical. There may, of course, have been other attacks that did not come to my attention because my prayer chain headed them off. But I see in my notes that at one point I lost my voice, once I had a stuffed-up head, once I had a serious cough, and once I suffered an acute attack of diverticulitis. Every one of these afflictions was remarkably short-lived, and none became a barrier to my ministry. I believe the enemy was once again frustrated by the prayers of the saints!
Recruiting l-3 Intercessors
There is ordinarily some overlap between what I have called “short-term pray-ers” and 1-3 intercessors. Theoretically there would be no upper limit to the number of 1-3 intercessors who could support a given individual or ministry. The one limitation I am aware of is the ability to keep them informed. Later I want to discuss this in some detail, but here I will simply mention that one way to keep I-3 intercessors informed is through a periodic email to them. If the number gets too large, it becomes more and more challenging to maintain up-to-date email addresses.
Doris and I currently have 85 [-3 intercessors to whom we try to send periodic emails. We would like to have more than 85, and I know that there are an unknown number of others who also pray for us regularly. We try to keep the I-3 list to as high a level of commitment and quality as we can. We do not add names easily or haphazardly. Quite frequently, a stranger will come up to me during a conference, introduce himself or herself, and then say, “I pray for you every day!” This does not automatically trigger an invitation to be an I-3 intercessor. I rely strongly on the Lord telling me what to do at that moment.
From time to time, but not always, I sense that God is giving me a green light; in that case I simply say, “Thank you. Would you like us to send you information occasionally?”
If the person replies, “Yes,” I offer him or her my business card and suggest that he or she email me and remind me of our conversation. Not everyone follows through; the ones who go to this trouble are probably qualified as 1—3 intercessors, so I invite them.
I could do more. I could distribute response devices at my various speaking engagements for people to fill in with their contact information, indicating that they would pray for us regularly. I could send an email blast urging people to sign up. I could make an appeal on Facebook. This could possibly give me a mailing list of 10,000 over a relatively short period of time. But the commitment level would be sure to drop considerably. Many of these would regard our subsequent emails as just another newsletter and delete them without paying any more attention.
Having said all this, let’s agree that no brhye? is 'wasted. 1 would rather have 100 pastors pray for me for a week or two after a pastors’ seminar than not have them pray at all. So I keep asking people to pray for us. I recommend that pastors also do this week after week from their pulpits. The more personal the requests, the better—at least to a point. Leaders of ministries should include prayer requests in their newsletters. Many pray-ers will respond positively.
Recruiting l-2 lntercessors
I like the formula that Cindy Jacobs recommends for recruiting 1-2 intercessors. She uses Luke 11:9, where we are told to ask and it will be given, seek and we will find, knock and it will be opened to us. Asking, according to the Jacobs Formula, is praying for the Lord to touch the potential prayer partners and prepare them. Seeking is to sit down and make a list of all those who, from general observation or past experience, seem as though they might be praying for you or willing to pray for you. Knocking is then getting in contact with those on the list by email or by telephone.
Cindy says that when she first heard about personal prayer partners, she and her family were going through hard times. Her husband was having unusual problems on the job, the children were experiencing severe harassment, and it seemed that they were barely moving from crisis to crisis. One day Cindy said, “Enough is enough! I have had it with this attack!” So she prayed that the Lord would send personal intercessors. Then she made a list and contacted the people on it, stressing that the prayer requests were to be kept confidential. The letter she wrote, she says, “explained that we would be sharing intimate details that were to be revealed to no one other than our prayer partners.”
What were the results? The response was tremendously encouraging. Within a week, all of the immediate problems had cleared up. Cindy says, “The prayer partners for Generals International are all top-notch intercessors, and we are greatly touched by their labor of love on our behalf. Since they have been praying for us, our ministry has exploded in growth.”
Asking God
Some leaders who understand personal intercession feel that they should not actively recruit [—2 intercessors, but should stop at the first part of the Jacobs Formula and simply ask God for them. This was the policy of Paul Walker, then pastor of Mount Paran Church of God in Atlanta. As I mentioned in a previous chapter, Paul knew of 50 1-2 intercessors in his congregation who prayed for him. They were mostly mature women. Each of them, so far as he could keep track, was directly and individually called of God to that ministry. Paul told me personally that he once had an 1-1 intercessor, and that he would welcome another, but he felt that God should take the
initiative, and he was patiently waiting for Him to do so.
One of the most dramatic answers to prayer concerning [-2 intercessors that l have heard occurred in Kenya. One of my students, Francis Kamau, who was an Assemblies of God pastor, said that he had three close personal (1-1) intercessors, but he had never
thought much about adding another level to his team of prayer partners. He then took my classes and learned my terminology, which fit his situation exactly.
One day, all three I-ls came to Francis and said that God was telling them he needed some more prayer partners, and that God would give them to him. The four of them agreed to pray for 1-2 intercessors for a week. Sure enough, on Friday of that week, Pastor Kamau received no fewer than 22 telephone calls, all from people who said words to the effect: “Pastor, God has told me to pray for you!” [jokingly asked him if he would mind loaning me some of those I-1 prayer partners!
Seeking and Knocking
The second and third parts of the Jacobs Formula, “seek and knock,” also work for some. Jerry Johnson, formerly the executive pastor of Lake Avenue Church, became motivated to recruit prayer partners when he first visited South Korea and spent some time with God on one of the prayer mountains there. When he returned, he increased his own daily prayer time to one hour, and he began asking God for [-2 intercessors. He then made a list and wrote to 40 people, challenging them to promise to pray for him at least one day per week, and asking them to indicate on which day or days they would be praying.
Of the 40 people on JeiTy’s list, 31 responded, and several of them committed to pray for him on more than one day per week. Jerry later reported to me that the number
This pastor from the Midwest wrote under the pen name of Paul A. Freedman. Fortunately, he had enough personal stability and a high enough level of self—esteem not to be devastated by his negative experience. He was able to think positively, learn from his setbacks, and move forward aggressively on the basis of what he had learned. N o wonder his church was a growing church. Despite his initial disappointment, he did and still does believe that “intercessory prayer is one of the most important elements of successful ministry today.” He affirmed that since hearing of personal prayer partners in my seminar, “1 have come to greatly appreciate and rely upon the ministry of 1-1 intercessors.”
Paul Freedman’s stony vividly illustrates what can happen when the wrong people move into the position of an 1-1 intercessor, and what can change when the right ones are there.
Paul had begun to look for an 1-1 intercessor when he returned home after taking my course, but his church happened to be facing another critical situation at the time. He had previously given high priority to leading a strong prayer ministry in his church; however, as the church continued to grow he found he could give less and less of his time to it. This caused deep frustration, and it soon became obvious that the entire prayer ministry needed to be updated and reorganized.
Consequently, Freedman was happy and relieved when “a dearly loved and well-respected member of the church approached me to tell me that she had been praying specifically for me on a daily basis, and that she saw a great need to reorganize the prayer ministry of our church.” Paul saw this connection as meeting both needs at once. He invited the woman to become an 1-1 intercessor for him and also to take charge of the church’s struggling prayer ministry.
From Doubts to Depression
Bad move! He says, “I was expecting relief and new strength, but things just got worse!”
Since the woman was an 1-1 intercessor, Paul began to share some of his more personal prayer requests with her. He soon noticed that she seemed to differ with him on certain theological points, but he brushed them aside as minor issues. He later found out, much to his dismay, that these had been major concerns in the mind of this woman.
As the arrangement continued, Paul began to notice that his ministry seemed to be less effective. More people than usual were dissatisfied. He needed to expend higher levels of physical and mental energy to get the same results. He was constantly tired. He became angry. The anger led to frustration, and the frustration led to depression. He says, “I was losing my love for the ministry. I knew the Lord was still there for me, but I didn’t want to be there for the Lord anymore. I was angry with God and angry with myself. I just wanted out!”
Then the enemy, having Paul Freedman spiritually and psychologically where he wanted him, unloaded the brunt of his attack. During one week, two women, unrelated to each other, came to Paul for “counseling.” Remarkably, both of them had developed an infatuation for him, and they let him know that they would be available to him any time he had the desire. Fonunately Paul’s internal alarm system went off. He says, “I recognized the spiritual attacks for what they were. I quickly decided to get my wife and get away!”
The couple isolated themselves from the congregation for a month, seeking new objectivity and a renewed relationship with God. The Lord faithfully met them in their need, and He revealed to Paul what the cause of the problems was. Paul suddenly saw clearly that the woman he had selected as an 1-1 intercessor and asked to lead the church’s prayer ministry was not God’s choice. Here is the way he puts it: “She was not submitted to my ministry nor open to my spiritual authority. Rather, she wanted to change me through prayer. She sought to control me by asking God to change me into
something that she believed was correct.”
Meanwhile the woman’s influence had spread. She turned some of the 1-2 intercessors against the pastor and caused discontent, disunity, anger, and even rebellion among church members. Several families left the church as a result.
Once he realized all of this, Paul faced what he anticipated could be his biggest challenge of all. How would he tell this woman what he now knew without causing an explosion and a possible church split? By then, she wielded a tremendous amount of influence in the congregation.
The good news is that God had known all about the situation, and He had gone ahead of Paul to change things. Before the Freedmans had returned from their vacation, the woman and her family left the church, citing “theological differences” as the reason!
Replacing the False Intercessor
As it turned out, this incredibly smooth solution to such a thorny disaster happened because of positive intercessory prayer. How? Again, before Paul returned from his vacation, God not only removed the former intercessor, but also replaced her with people who eventually became three new [-1 intercessors. None of the three knew either of the other two. But all had been praying fervently and had been keeping journals of what the Lord was revealing to them for Paul. Each of them had been praying for months previously. Undoubtedly, it was the foothold 0f the enemy through the false intercessor that had prevented the pastor from recognizing the three as intercessors sooner.
When the new intercessors got to know one another and began comparing notes, the consistency and agreement in what God had been showing all three were astounding. Remarkably, two of them, according to their journals, had clearly known months previously that Paul would be tempted by “lustful and foolish” women. in his paper, he rightly concludes that “the intercessors having received advanced wamings to pray for me at that time may well have saved my ministry.” Remember that Paul’s “internal alarm system” went off after the two seductive women visited him? What made it go off, when we know of too many other cases of pastors whose alarm systems did not go off in similar circumstances? Personal intercession!
The upshot of all of this? Within a few months, a new prayer ministry was installed and the church began to grow once again. Paul says, “During a three-month period, under the prayers of God’s chosen warriors, our church received into membership the
largest number of new members in our history. We also witnessed average weekly offerings hit an all-time high!”
The risk of making a mistake such as Pastor Freedman did comes with the territory. His was not the first, and it will not be the last. But I believe that we can learn from him and from the experiences of others in order to keep such mistakes to a minimum.
Recruiting Short-Term Pray-ers
None of what I have said so far should lead us to imagine that the only effective prayer that pastors and other Christian leaders need to receive is that of recognized 1-1, 1-2 or 1-3 intercessors. For example, many members of my 120 Fellowship Sunday School
class did not necessarily pray for me on a daily or other regular basis, but they did pray when there was a special need. I considered it important to let them know of my prayer needs in general, and some more specifically. I made a practice of sharing prayer requests every week.
Sandra Gilbreath, who was one of our [-2 intercessors, also headed the prayer ministry of the 120 Fellowship. Sandra gave leadership to the prayer ministry during class time; she identified and recruited those who had a special desire to pray for the people and the needs of the class; she led a pre-class prayer meeting; she processed prayer request slips filled out in class; and she organized prayer chains for special needs as they came up.
For example, when Doris or I, or both of us, went away on some ministry trips, Sandra would organize a prayer and fasting chain. We did not request it for every trip, wanting to avoid its becoming a formality or routine. But when we felt that a certain ministry might be a special target of spiritual warfare, Sandra activated her prayer chain.
Sandra frequently would cut, paste and photocopy pages from a date book that contained spaces for all the days we would be gone, plus one week after the trip. (We had learned from hard experience that often the most severe spiritual attacks would come right after, not during, a ministry assignment.) Sandra would make an announcement in class, and then pass the prepared sheet around. Class members, whether they were our formal prayer partners or not, would fill in their names on one or more days on which they promised to fast at least one meal and pray for us and our ministry. Sandra then gave us a photocopy of the filled-in calendar, and reminded those who had signed up when their day came around.
How did this work? I happened to save my copy of the prayer schedule for a trip I made to Argentina and Brazil, along with some notes I made on it. Each day had at least two persons praying, and some had as many as four. The most visible attacks on me during that trip were physical. There may, of course, have been other attacks that did not come to my attention because my prayer chain headed them off. But I see in my notes that at one point I lost my voice, once I had a stuffed-up head, once I had a serious cough, and once I suffered an acute attack of diverticulitis. Every one of these afflictions was remarkably short-lived, and none became a barrier to my ministry. I believe the enemy was once again frustrated by the prayers of the saints!
Recruiting l-3 Intercessors
There is ordinarily some overlap between what I have called “short-term pray-ers” and 1-3 intercessors. Theoretically there would be no upper limit to the number of 1-3 intercessors who could support a given individual or ministry. The one limitation I am aware of is the ability to keep them informed. Later I want to discuss this in some detail, but here I will simply mention that one way to keep I-3 intercessors informed is through a periodic email to them. If the number gets too large, it becomes more and more challenging to maintain up-to-date email addresses.
Doris and I currently have 85 [-3 intercessors to whom we try to send periodic emails. We would like to have more than 85, and I know that there are an unknown number of others who also pray for us regularly. We try to keep the I-3 list to as high a level of commitment and quality as we can. We do not add names easily or haphazardly. Quite frequently, a stranger will come up to me during a conference, introduce himself or herself, and then say, “I pray for you every day!” This does not automatically trigger an invitation to be an I-3 intercessor. I rely strongly on the Lord telling me what to do at that moment.
From time to time, but not always, I sense that God is giving me a green light; in that case I simply say, “Thank you. Would you like us to send you information occasionally?”
If the person replies, “Yes,” I offer him or her my business card and suggest that he or she email me and remind me of our conversation. Not everyone follows through; the ones who go to this trouble are probably qualified as 1—3 intercessors, so I invite them.
I could do more. I could distribute response devices at my various speaking engagements for people to fill in with their contact information, indicating that they would pray for us regularly. I could send an email blast urging people to sign up. I could make an appeal on Facebook. This could possibly give me a mailing list of 10,000 over a relatively short period of time. But the commitment level would be sure to drop considerably. Many of these would regard our subsequent emails as just another newsletter and delete them without paying any more attention.
Having said all this, let’s agree that no brhye? is 'wasted. 1 would rather have 100 pastors pray for me for a week or two after a pastors’ seminar than not have them pray at all. So I keep asking people to pray for us. I recommend that pastors also do this week after week from their pulpits. The more personal the requests, the better—at least to a point. Leaders of ministries should include prayer requests in their newsletters. Many pray-ers will respond positively.
Recruiting l-2 lntercessors
I like the formula that Cindy Jacobs recommends for recruiting 1-2 intercessors. She uses Luke 11:9, where we are told to ask and it will be given, seek and we will find, knock and it will be opened to us. Asking, according to the Jacobs Formula, is praying for the Lord to touch the potential prayer partners and prepare them. Seeking is to sit down and make a list of all those who, from general observation or past experience, seem as though they might be praying for you or willing to pray for you. Knocking is then getting in contact with those on the list by email or by telephone.
Cindy says that when she first heard about personal prayer partners, she and her family were going through hard times. Her husband was having unusual problems on the job, the children were experiencing severe harassment, and it seemed that they were barely moving from crisis to crisis. One day Cindy said, “Enough is enough! I have had it with this attack!” So she prayed that the Lord would send personal intercessors. Then she made a list and contacted the people on it, stressing that the prayer requests were to be kept confidential. The letter she wrote, she says, “explained that we would be sharing intimate details that were to be revealed to no one other than our prayer partners.”
What were the results? The response was tremendously encouraging. Within a week, all of the immediate problems had cleared up. Cindy says, “The prayer partners for Generals International are all top-notch intercessors, and we are greatly touched by their labor of love on our behalf. Since they have been praying for us, our ministry has exploded in growth.”
Asking God
Some leaders who understand personal intercession feel that they should not actively recruit [—2 intercessors, but should stop at the first part of the Jacobs Formula and simply ask God for them. This was the policy of Paul Walker, then pastor of Mount Paran Church of God in Atlanta. As I mentioned in a previous chapter, Paul knew of 50 1-2 intercessors in his congregation who prayed for him. They were mostly mature women. Each of them, so far as he could keep track, was directly and individually called of God to that ministry. Paul told me personally that he once had an 1-1 intercessor, and that he would welcome another, but he felt that God should take the
initiative, and he was patiently waiting for Him to do so.
One of the most dramatic answers to prayer concerning [-2 intercessors that l have heard occurred in Kenya. One of my students, Francis Kamau, who was an Assemblies of God pastor, said that he had three close personal (1-1) intercessors, but he had never
thought much about adding another level to his team of prayer partners. He then took my classes and learned my terminology, which fit his situation exactly.
One day, all three I-ls came to Francis and said that God was telling them he needed some more prayer partners, and that God would give them to him. The four of them agreed to pray for 1-2 intercessors for a week. Sure enough, on Friday of that week, Pastor Kamau received no fewer than 22 telephone calls, all from people who said words to the effect: “Pastor, God has told me to pray for you!” [jokingly asked him if he would mind loaning me some of those I-1 prayer partners!
Seeking and Knocking
The second and third parts of the Jacobs Formula, “seek and knock,” also work for some. Jerry Johnson, formerly the executive pastor of Lake Avenue Church, became motivated to recruit prayer partners when he first visited South Korea and spent some time with God on one of the prayer mountains there. When he returned, he increased his own daily prayer time to one hour, and he began asking God for [-2 intercessors. He then made a list and wrote to 40 people, challenging them to promise to pray for him at least one day per week, and asking them to indicate on which day or days they would be praying.
Of the 40 people on JeiTy’s list, 31 responded, and several of them committed to pray for him on more than one day per week. Jerry later reported to me that the number