Sound Strike Force

Prayer Strategies

Strategy #1

Thanks much for investing in this theme.  While the heart is infinitely variegated in cultural terms, there is a common bond every single human has, which is hearing the sound of his or her mother’s heart for months.

There is much to develop here, but we will start with the topic of awe.

We probably had an unnecessarily complex strategy for the Shelby event, but beyond any question of a shadow of doubt, the impact of the awe prayers was over the top, and increased the vitality of everything else.

So for the next couple of weeks, I would like you to just meditate on sound and awe, in two contexts: Biblically and your life.

God used big sound at Mt. Sinai and in Psalm 29.  A still small voice with Elijah.  Tender sound with Mary of Magdala – two syllables to pierce her grief.  Fiery sound on the way to Emmaus.

God told the Creation Story to Moses on Mt. Sinai in one tone.  He told it a very different way to Job.

I think there are eight times in Scripture when God called someone by using their name twice.  What were the results of those significant events?

Read a gospel and try to imagine the tone of voice Jesus used in each situation.  When He raised Jairus’ daughter from the dead, was it with thunderous authority, or off hand casualness, or a gentle, tender tone?

When He told the servants to fill the stone jars with water, what tone did he use?

Then ponder your own journey with sound.  Can you go back and recreate the places and times when God and you met around sound, in a transformational way?

My reason for this extended exercise is this pair of verses.

Solomon said, “Therefore give to Your servant an understanding heart to judge Your people, that I may discern between good and evil.  1 Kings 3:9  NKJV

But God knew more than Solomon about what was needed.  An understanding heart without wisdom, was not workable.  So God gave him both.  But beyond that, God knew he would need “largeness of heart” to be able to contain all that God wanted to give him.

And God gave Solomon wisdom and exceedingly great understanding, and largeness of heart like the sand on the seashore.  1 Kings 4:29  NKJV

This exercise is so that you can move toward a largeness of heart that can contain the rest of the projects we engage in, during this season of preparation.

Strategy #2

One of the mysteries of sound in the Bible is the story of Ezekiel.  It began with big sound.  A whirlwind (tornado) and the overwhelming sound of the wings of the cherubim zipping around with intensity.

Then God’s engagement with Ezekiel sounds harsh.  When He says, “Son of man, stand up!” it doesn’t sound like the joyous greeting between old friends.  More like a Marine Corp drill sergeant.  Then for years, God muzzled him.  He could not enjoy any ordinary social conversation.  His vocal cords were brought back on line when God wanted him to speak, and the rest of the time he was mute.

Why?

Then the valley of dry bones.  We all know he did it through God’s power.  No debate there.  But if God was doing it anyway, why did He command Ezekiel to use his own voice to say into the spiritual realm what God had just said to say?  God made His own voice powerless for a few seconds, and juiced Ezekiel’s voice in a way he never had been before.

Why?

And what about the death of his wife, whom he dearly loved?  Then came the command to take no time off for grief – hugely counter-intuitive – AND the command to keep on preaching two sermons a day, regardless of the broken heart.

Why?

I have no clue whatsoever.  I simply have a deep conviction that God is not random and there was deep significance to all those dynamics.  In a word, they were fiercely strategic.

I find myself in a vaguely similar place.  I had expected to present the Blessing Your Heart content from a place of confident victory, sharing a lot of firstfruits experiences from our wonderful SLG guinea pigs.

Obviously, I have been spending my time elsewhere, not doing active trials, and equally obviously, the loss of my wife of 48 years AT THIS TIME stirs up a lot of emotions that will most assuredly impact the natural and the spiritual tone of what I deliver.

And God absolutely knew all that when He told me last year that it was time for this message to go out.  HIS time obviously.

I clearly have no idea what God has in mind by positioning me for this firstfruits presentation of a theme that means so much to me, at this time.

But just as clearly, I absolutely, positively believe God has a magnificent plan, and my job is to show up, and your job is to pray heaven down to earth for the way my sound comes out, and the way my sound goes into others.

So please come into agreement with me that whatever God was thinking about this in heaven when He wrote the scroll of my life, was replete with love and power and wisdom and all manner of good things.

Then we will pray the Lord ’s Prayer by faith, “Your Kingdom come, your will be done, in Columbus, through Arthur’s carefully curated sound.”

We don’t need to understand.  We don’t need to control me.  We simply need to move all the competing sentient creatures out of the way, and destroy all the filtering and distorting filters that people bring in with them, so whatever God wants to accomplish through the tone and timber of the spiritual and natural sound, WILL BE ACCOMPLISHED.

Strategy #3

We are now less than a month away from the Blessing Your Heart event.

I woke up this morning with a drastic shift in my spirit, feeling the anger in God’s spirit.

The first commandment is the least controversial of all the Biblical truths.  I know of no church split over whether we should try to love God or not.  However, it is one of the most challenging commandments to fulfill.

I have approached this from a principle point of view – what principles can we leverage in spirit and soul in order to facilitate love’s emergence from our inner man?  And the presentation will still be heavily bent that direction.

But today, God took my attention away from human effort and onto the devil’s investment in blocking people who are profoundly willing to love God, from doing so.  God’s anger against the enemy was front and center and should color our intercession for a time.

So please make a list of ten people you know who have made credible investments into their spiritual journey, seeking to love God, connect with God, hear God, feel loved by Him, or any other aspect of our journey, but who have received a very low return on investment for their efforts.

I know well their pain, because they have poured out their hearts to me many times.  But once you have identified those people in your life, ask God to show you HIS anger over their righteous investment in transformation which is being frustrated by HIS enemy.

My personal instructions are to focus on my breaker anointing, and to prepare to shatter the tools the enemy is using to build structures and strongholds that block people from fulfilling the first commandment.

You should ask the Lord how He wants you to pray, when you have felt His anger against His enemy.

Strategy #4

In two weeks, we will be live in Columbus.  Two prayer foci for the short time left.

First is fifth head communication with the venue personnel.  Without going into details, they have been really tough to deal with – everything from dishonesty to stonewalling.  Usual business junk.  There is no way of knowing whether this is because their staff is horribly overworked and doesn’t have time, or whether they are trained in a culture of duplicity, or whether it is critters involved.

But we do know God has no staffing issues, no culture issues and no critter issues.  So if you would press in for all the junk on time, in the land, in the buildings and in the human culture to be subordinated to heaven’s law and heaven’s order, that would be wonderful.

Pray specifically for Joyce’s connection with the specific onsite person for Saturday.

Second, is what people hear.

There is a classic line in Catherine Marshall’s book “Christy.”  The firebrand pastor had scorched his congregation on Sunday.  On Tuesday, the village doctor who had the respect of the people came to talk to the pastor about it.  He pushed back saying that the doctor had not been in church on Sunday, so he had no firsthand knowledge of what the pastor had said.

The doctor replied that this was true, but that the doctor had a very clear idea what the people had HEARD.

And what people hear makes all the difference in the world.

I am actively going through my notes editing them down.  I had enough information there to make the wheels of a locomotive go out of round.  There is technical information, lifestyle challenges, spiritual warfare prayers and sundry other things.

But what people need to HEAR is God.  I have had a more intimate, nuanced walk with God these last few months than ever before.  I bring some significant, fresh intimacy deposits in my spirit and soul.

That REALLY is the most important thing for people to hear, not the technical.

I am no stranger to God preempting my sound.  People have come up to me at the end of a live event to celebrate how one particular illustration about the blue bike set them free from a lifetime of trauma.  I explain that there WAS no illustration about blue bikes.

They push back with the detailed story of when I was riding a bike in Omaha, and a dog rushed out, and, and, and, and.

I reply I have never been in Omaha, there was no bike, no dog, no nothing.  THIS was God speaking to you privately, powerfully, persuasively, while you were sitting in my seminar, being magnificently blocked from hearing what I was saying.

THIS is my God.

I would be thrilled if no one heard a word I said, but each person received their own seminar from the heart of God while there on June 24th.

Pray it in, please.

Copyright by Arthur Burk