Month: May 2016

A New Path

May 31, 2016

 Life has a lot of different paths we can take, or as they say in Quantum Physics—life has a lot of different realities. It’s true, but as believers we always want to take the RIGHT path. Right? I know I do. Two times we’re told in the Word to “make straight paths for our feet”: (Heb. 12:13 & Prov. 26). Often I think that if I take the right path then my way will be easy. Miracles will happen—circumstances will fall into place, the answer comes immediately and life is wonderful. But I’ve been a believer long enough to know that some paths are difficult, but I’ve found that the end result is as much of a miracle as the times when the path has been short and the miracle appeared instantly. WF3 Tea May 22, 2010 003I have come to believe that a rough path produces faith, character, compassion and  endurance. The major problem with a long path is the tendency to not stick with it until the answer comes. That’s why, I believe, most of us seldom see our dreams fulfilled.

Where did all my pensiveness about paths, struggles, and outcomes come from? It came from a couple of biographies I recently read on Thomas Jefferson—one of our Founding Fathers, the third president of the United States and a molder of our Constitution.

Two months ago, John Benefiel, who heads up (Heartland Apostolic Prayer Network) asked me to do research on Thomas Jefferson and his role in education in our country. While reading my second biography on Mr. Jefferson, I realized how difficult it was for our Founding Fathers to devise the Constitution of the United States, and to implement it throughout a new country filled with rugged individualists. There was opposition on every front– the people opposed, some of the key founders preferred a monarchy and wanted a constitution that allowed for a king, others (the Federalists) wanted a strong central government. Jefferson wanted a Republic with a system of checks and balances and no one part would hold all the power. It was a bitter fight with lots of ups and downs. Many enemies were made through the days of creation of this country. It was not an easy path, but one that emerged through trial and error and struggles that contended for the soul of our nation. Only with God’s hand did we emerge as a nation with a unique form of government that would sustain us through the years. The rough, curvy, dangerous path, emerged to a victory for every American.

I thought of all the times in our lives when we go through trials, we often think that we should emerge on the other side of the trial with no detours along our path and without dark nights along the way. We want to get to where we want to be without all the alternate paths that beckon us as we make decisions along the way.  But we learn from those short paths that take us in the wrong direction—we learn what does, and doesn’t work. When the night is dark and  long, we learn to persevere. When those we trust don’t do what is right, we learn to trust God anyway. Regardless of how dark the night, we hold on to our dreams when they look impossible.

Let us be like David’s mighty men of battle (2 Samuel 23:8-12), who stand in our field of lentils and defeat our enemies. On the occasion of each man’s victory, we are told, “And the Lord brought a great victory.” I suspect that there is a long history between the commitment of each of David’s men and the victory they were responsible for bringing to pass. May we forever look between the lines and realize the perseverance necessary for the Lord to bring a great victory in our lives and in the lives of others.

 

Spiritual Mapping for the Mountain of Education

May 28, 2016

Prayer at Supreme Court 2004 circle of prayerSpiritual Mapping combines data collection, historical research and spiritual revelation that pertain to a particular geographical region, family, or profession. The combination of knowledge enables one to identify the strategies and methods of the spiritual forces of darkness that are in the current state of manifestation in that region, family or profession. In my case, I wanted to know why the American educational system was in such a state of disarray and why it seemly couldn’t change. The ultimate goal in my mapping exercise was the development of a prayer strategy that would address the spiritual root causes that allowed darkness and destruction to continually reign over our schools and our children.

Because I’d spent most of my working life as a junior high and high school mathematics teacher, I knew that the Mountain of Education would be my focus. Another factor that made me interested in education was that seven years prior to my exposure to the Seven Mountain Strategy, C. Peter Wagner (a Christian author, missionary, and teacher) had conducted a retreat in Colorado Springs, Colorado for professionals from different occupations to spiritually map their respective professions.

Spiritual mapping is usually done on geographical regions, so this was a new concept and, to my knowledge, was the first time that spiritual mapping had been done on professions. Wagner had worked closely with George Otis Jr., director of The Sentinel Group, an organization that spiritually mapped geographic regions. Wagner wanted to take spiritual mapping to a new level, asking doctors, teachers, financial planners and other people to look at the history of their respective professions with spiritual eyes.

Otis defines spiritual mapping as a tool that allows believers to investigate the spiritual dynamics of their communities. It is the process of data acquisition for pastors, intercessors, worshipers and evangelists to analyze, strategize and process their evangelistic efforts.

My dear friends Drs. Mark and Betsy Neuenschwander headed up the meetings which took place in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Approximately thirty people from different professions came together to determine how our profession had arrived at its present state, good or bad. Then we were to devise a comprehensive prayer plan that would enable a novice to pick up our outline and pray effectively for any one of the professions. We were in a war room directing a war in the realm of the Spirit by putting together a spiritual warfare plan that any prayer warrior could use.

As an educator, I knew the educational system in the United States had changed, and not for the better. I’d watched it fail before my eyes. When I was in school, the problems in a classroom were simple—gum chewing, tardiness and occasionally truancy. In the classroom twenty years later, I now dealt with drugs, alcohol, low test scores, disrespect and outright rebellion. I delved back into history to find where the United States educational system had taken turns that led us down the path to a totally different school environment than our parents and grandparents had experienced. It soon became clear what had happened.

The goal of the Colorado Springs group of professionals was to merge the Mountain of Influence teaching with spiritual mapping, then identify the ancient thrones of iniquity and major spiritual influences in our educational system. At that point, we could deal with them in prayer. It’s a simple strategy, yet profound.t were as though a mastermind had led us to the point of destruction. The mastermind is Baal, the false god of the Old Testament. The Greeks had perpetuated worship to Baal, as had the Romans. Later, the salons of France gave new life to humanism, which is a form of Baal worship. Many of our country’s founding fathers, influenced by new ideas circulating in Europe, brought those ideas to America.

Perhaps because the educational system is huge, it looks overwhelming to take on as a prayer effort. For the most part, prayer efforts for education have been to pray for some aspect of the system that influences us directly—for instance, a mother might pray for the school and teachers where her children attend classes. But intercession for the whole of education is seldom done and most likely is a result of intercessors not being summoned and given the tools to know how to pray for the educational system as a whole.

The system is in dire need of revision, revival, and reformation, but how to pray for those changes often  eludes us as intercessors. The result has been that the system has run rampant with limited moral checks and balances. As a consequence, our nation has reaped the negative benefits of godless education administered by those who wish to educate a person’s mind and not his spirit.

Education must be reclaimed as a part of reformation in America. How do we accomplished this? Many of us who are over the age of fifty have seen the American educational system make a steady downturn. Can we take it back? Can we cause a reformation? Can our educational system be turned around? I believe it can. If we will listen to the leadership God has placed in authority over this mountain, things will change. God is unfolding His strategy on how to pray and change education, which will ultimately result in a change in our country.

Jesus said, “How can anyone enter a strong man’s house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man? Then he can rob his house” (Matthew 12:29). In America’s beginnings we had a godly educational system based on godly principles. Over time, godless decisions made allowed that allowed evil to enter, slowly at first, but once it gained a foothold the floodgates opened. And our educational system became corrupt. Many doubt if redemption is possible. As intercessors, we must leave the results of our prayers to God. We don’t know what His answer will be, but we do know God will hear and answer our prayers – if we pray!

Reclaiming our educational system won’t be molding a school system in the image of all Christian schools. Nor will it be to bring about a system like we enjoyed 60 years ago. It is about advancing the Kingdom of God. How do we go about advancing the Kingdom of God in education? Sounds like a lofty spiritual goal, but God does give specific instructions as to how we are to establish His Kingdom on this earth. With over 100,000 (as per the US Department of Education web site) public schools in this country, this is a huge task. However, if we have a plan, we can change the system.

Our assignment is to take back education in America.  Spiritual Mapping allows us to devise a plan as to how and what to pray, then set our course and believe God for transformation.

 

 

 

 

Prayer is Doing the Work

May 27, 2016

Praying for a school, isn’t for the faint of heart. No getting around it, prayer is work. That’s because prayer is believing in God who hears and answers us when we call on him. One of my favorite scriptures is John 6:29, “Jesus answered, ‘The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.'” So what helps us do the “work of believing?” I’ve listed four things that it takes to at least get going in prayer.

  • Faith – it takes faith to believe God for change in our schools
  • Knowledge – we must know how to pray targeted, effective prayers
  • Energy – it takes a lot of effort and energy to pray, whether it’s making the effort to get together with a group to pray or to go walk around a school and pray
  • Perseverance – one time prayers, while nice, are not likely to produce the long-term results needed to produce the radical change we need in our educational system.

    Prayerwalkers
    Prayerwalkers

I remember when I first prayed at a local school. As an educator, I had some idea of the battles going on in the classrooms of the schools where we prayed, so thoughts prayer would be simple – but prayer often needs some “warm up” and sometimes requires a “jump-start” to get going. The four things I’ve listed above gives the “warm up” and the impetus to get going and keep going, until we see the results!

God bless you as you engage in His work!

PRAYER

Jesus, you said to pray for laborers to go into the field of harvest. I pray for multitudes of faith-filled believers to come to the forefront of the battles for the minds of our children. I pray they will believe You for transformation and reformation in American education.

CONFESSION

I have the faith, knowledge, energy and perseverance to pray until I see this school transformed from the inside out by the glory of God!

If My People…..

May 26, 2016

So often we think that if we just had a lot of people who would pray, then we could have revival, healings, nations turned around, or whatever else we are believing for. And no doubt, this country needs a cultural overhaul. The past fifty years have marked a sharp decline in the moral consciousness of our nation which is frightening.

Our decline is manifested in the prolific amount of immoral content Hollywood manufactures, On the opposite side of the country in Washington, D.C., we watch our lawmakers and leaders exhibit the same moral fabric of that of filmmakers. When we look at the natural, there is very little to give us faith for change. Our task seems overwhelming and even downright impossible. How can our nation change? After all, there seems to be few of us who truly believe in the Word of God and the principles of Jesus and so many of those who do not. Do we run and hide because we know that moral decline does to a nation? I mean, judgment has to be on us. No doubt we are in a precarious situation and we know it.

We think that there has to hundreds of thousands of us to create a change in the social society, but maybe, just maybe that’s not true.

So, how many people will it take to turn the United States around? Not as many as one might think. Critical mass is determined by taking the square root of 1 percent of the population. According to the 2010 census, the population of the United States was 313,914,040 people. One percent of that number is 3,139,140. Taking the square root of that number, the result is 1,772. According to this, it would take 1,772 people dedicated to a certain outcome in order to obtain the desired result.

Imagine, less than 2,000 people dedicated to prayer for America’s educational system could change America’s schools. The last prayer Jesus prayed for all believers in the Garden of Gethsemane was for unity. He knew how important it was for believers to agree in prayer about one specific goal.

Several years ago, a prominent Word of Faith teacher, Charles Capps, said, “One day science is going to prove that prayer works.” With the discovery of Quantum Physics, came the knowledge of what is known as “critical mass,” science may finally be catching up to what we as Christians have known all along.

 

 

 

 

What is the Mountain of Education?

May 26, 2016

The Seven Mountain theory was first proposed around 1975 by four prominent ministers: Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade; Loren Cunningham, founder of Youth With A Mission; Francis Schaeffer, founder of L’Abri; and Pat Robertson, founder of Christian Broadcasting Network. These ministers concluded that if Christians wanted to disciple a nation they would first have to affect the seven areas or mountains of influence that make up that nation. While other ministers also had a similar understanding of how to change culture, the Seven Mountain discovery became known as the brainchild of Bright and Cunningham. The seven mountains of influence are: Business, Arts, Religion, Family, Media, Education and Government. Each mountain is comprised of all the people who make up that cultural force and while each mountain is significant, the mountain that has always held my attention is the Mountain of Education.

So when I received an invitation to attend a weekend seminar by C. Peter Wagner on “How to Spiritually Map Your Profession,” I was excited. My first assignment was to read the history of the educational system of America and look for historical events where significant turns occurred that changed education from Christian to Humanism. I read with new eyes and with a fierce determination to develop a prayer strategy for my profession: education. That was the beginning of the book I just published: Taking the Mountain of Education: A Strategic Prayer Guide for American Education.

In my research, I found, that throughout history there have been those who held great distain for the powerful Christian concepts taught in our schools. Because of their humanistic belief that man was god, they embarked on a mission to replace Christian education with humanistic teaching. Most of the changes they implemented were imposed on our schools through our legal system. Sad to say, it appears that the humanists have succeeded and today we have a failed educational system.

Currently nineteen percent of our high school students graduate from high school unable to read.[i] Public schools run a continual ticker tape of incidences of classroom violence. The crimes that make the headlines are usually gun/death related, and the thousands upon thousands of assaults on teachers, assaults by teachers, thefts, incidents of vandalism, rapes by teachers, rapes of teachers, rapes of students by students, and so on are never revealed to the general public.

We already know that the situation is dire, but we secretly hope that it isn’t as bad as we think. It would be over simplistic to attribute plummeting test scores, and all the instances of violence to bad teachers, guns, ADHD, emotional disturbances, overworked teachers, crowded classrooms, drugs or the many other issues our public schools face. To deal only with these issues is to deal with symptoms. As an intercessor, I wanted to dig deeper into what is happening and deal with the spiritual darkness that is the root cause of chaos in our schools.

At the memorial service for a 45-year-old mathematics teacher killed by a middle school student in Sparks, Nevada, Julia Rubin, a community leader from Reno’s Temple Sinai said, “We pray after we have mourned and comforted each other we can take steps to address the root cause of violence and gun use by children throughout our country.”[ii] Yes, Rubin has the correct prayer—that we address the root cause of violence and gun use by children.

How do we as believers address those root causes and redeem our educational system? We know we have authority over the spiritual darkness that has encompassed the Mountain of Education, so why do we not see more results? Perhaps it is because we have not had a comprehensive prayer strategy to deal with the spiritual forces that influence the entire Mountain of Education.

In the past, the bulk of our prayer efforts have focused on local schools. The rest of the mountain is virtually left uncovered in prayer, yet the decision makers for education reside within the top 3 to 5 percent of those who are in leadership positions in educational institutions across our country. A new prayer strategy is needed and Taking the Mountain of Education is that strategy.

In Taking the Mountain of Education three strategies are outlined that will help anyone who is interested in transforming prayer for schools.

  1. Ten Historical Entry Points – Ten historical entry points are defined along with their significance that led American education in a downward spiral toward the implementation of a national humanistic religion.
  2. Strategic Prayers – At each entry point, strategic prayers are given as well as prophetic declarations that can be used as prayer points.
  3. Identification and Prayers to Bind the Spiritual Forces that Reside over Education – “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12).

This is a book of war—war in the realm of the spirit for those who choose to intercede on behalf of our nation and our children. Strategic prayer will enable us to push back the forces of darkness, reveal the roots that have held us in bondage, and allow the institution of education to be set free. The results will be that our children will be educated not only in knowledge but in Godly spiritual principles.

 

Nancy Huff

Teach the Children International

TeachTheChildrenInternational.com

To Sign up to Pray for Education go to: TeachTheChildrenInternational.com/signup

Paperback and Kindle copies are available through Amazon.com

To contact Nancy: ContactTCI@aol.com

 

 

 

[i] Information was taken from the Statistic Brain web site, from research done by US Department of Education, National Institute of Literacy, research date April 28, 2013, available from http://www.statisticbrain.com/number –of-american-adults-who-cant-read.

 

[ii] Quote taken from an article by Scott Sonner (AP), Las Vergas Sun, “Nevada school shooting probe looks at bullying video,” available from http://www.lasvegassun.com/news;2013/oct/24/nevada-school-shooting-probe-looks-bullying-video.

 

Posted on web site September 1, 2015