Month: June 2018

Prayer for the Mountain of Education during the Month of Tammuz – Linked to the Tribe of Reuben

June 25, 2018

The month of Tammuz is associated with the tribe of Reuben, who veered from his original intent by committing adultery. Reuben was able to reestablish himself and continue his life with his new redemptive purpose. Our forefathers established schools for the primary purpose of teaching children the Bible. That purpose was abandoned, but as we pray this month, we will pray that God’s redemptive purpose for the Mountain of Education is established in this nation.

• We decree that this month of Tammuz is a month of worship. As ungodliness looms in education, we turn our attention to worship the One True God, who will make Himself known throughout the Mountain of Education.
• We decree that since this is the month to watch our words, we watch our mouths and speak only the best the Lord has for America’s education.
• We say that there is a moral outcry among the leaders of our nation against the “golden calf” that has been built in education. No longer will our children worship idols. We reset, and make adjustments in the Spirit for education to be as our forefathers intended – Godly and moral.
• We speak the redemptive role of education in our nation. We decree that our children are educated intellectually as well as spiritually. They know the Word of God and are led by the Spirit of God.
• We declare shells of deception are broken off Americas schools. Education in America will go to a new redemptive level.
• We decree revelation to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and her team. God will give them insight on new ways to improve education. They will implement change in education.
• We call Godly teachers into classrooms across America, who will accept their call and step into God’s redemptive purpose for them and their students. As teachers are selected for the 2018-2019 school year, we call forth instructors at every level of instruction who have the life and light of the living God in their lives.

The Tipping Point in Education

June 21, 2018

There are approximately 4 million teachers in the American public school system and many of whom are believers. The tipping point, or critical mass, for change would be 200 teachers. That’s not a huge number, but the secret is that this number has to be in complete unity. If 200 teachers all prayed in their classrooms, in one day, the results could be astounding. But teachers are trained to remain secular in their classrooms. They walk a daily tightrope to be politically correct and free of offense to any religion.
In the teaching profession, every teacher suffers his or her share of attacks as a usual routine of events. They assign too much homework and parents complain. They don’t stay after school to tutor those who were having trouble learning algebra. (Never mind that they may offer their services at noon for free tutoring every day.) They get in trouble for expecting projects and homework to be turned in on time because, after all, what has a deadline got to do with learning a subject? If the student did the work, why shouldn’t they get credit, even if it was late? The list goes on and on and every teacher who has ever tried to do his or her best has come under attack. These skirmishes erode the soul of teachers leaving them little energy to fight the big battles that change the system.
Teachers live in fear of being fired for praying over a student or even for putting up Christmas decorations in a classroom. They have no strength for losing a job over something as simple as ministering to a child. Getting a teacher to see the big battle when he or she is fighting multiple little battles every day is difficult. That is why we haven’t seen the critical mass we need to see for the change. A unified core mass is what we need and we need it now.
If Christian teachers unified to such an extent that they could define small actions that would change the system, the tipping point could happen. Malcolm Gladwell in his book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference shares his research into what will make changes in society.53 Gladwell proposes that it is the little things that make a big difference.
Liberal educators make claims that our schools are in such a state of decline because we don’t have enough money for education or because our students are economically impoverished. They say that if we just had more money for new curriculum or if we would just make sure that everyone has money, either through welfare or through giving someone a job, that would be the best way to create better schools. But there is another factor involved that Gladwell calls “The Power of Context,” which states that it’s really the little things that matter.
For instance, the crime turnaround in New York City occurred, not because of a huge war on crime, but because of what has become known as the “Broken Windows Theory.” This theory was the brainchild of two criminologists—James Q. Wilson and George Kelling. Wilson and Kelling argued that crime is a result of disorder. If a broken window in a house in a crime-ridden part of town is not repaired, the result is that more criminal elements will be attracted to that neighborhood and the crime rate will rise substantially. There will be more houses with broken windows. Drug dealers will move into the neighborhood and there is a general feeling that the neighborhood is bad and the crime rate skyrockets. Fix the broken windows, Wilson and Kelling said, and the bad elements will abandon the neighborhood. They believed that crime was contagious.
New York City tipped when the police began to issue citations for broken windows, giving owners twenty-four hours to make repairs. Graffiti also was cleaned up within twenty-four hours of when the artful designers had completed their work of art.
What if educational administrators and teachers began to do little things like pray with students, openly display scriptures in their classrooms, or refuse to call Christmas holidays by the secular name winter holidays? The educational system can tip in the direction of being restored back to a Godly system if enough administrators and teachers would aggressively live out their Christian faith.

Where is the Moral Outcry?

June 20, 2018

Convinced of the importance of religion in the lives of America’s new settlers, our forefathers refused to entertain any suggestion that the people who lived in this nation would be better off without Christianity. In 1794, humanists Thomas Paine, penned an anti-Christian book, The Age of Reason, there was a moral outcry among the citizens and leadership of colonies. Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, as well as prominent Christians of the day refused to recognize Paine or his writings. While people may have read the book, because those of influence rejected the content, the book was not well accepted. When Paine passed away, no cemetery would give him burial space. He was buried in a cow pasture. The moral outcry of the people at all levels of education day refused Thomas Paine’s anti-god book. As a result the book had little effect on the beliefs of the people.
Almost 200 years later during President Reagan’s first term in office, a poll revealed that 85% of Americans were in favor of prayer being a part of a child’s school day. President Reagan, thinking he had grassroots support, secured a majority of votes in the House and the Senate to get the measure permitting prayer in school passed. He was stopped when the courts ruled against his efforts. Justice Antonin Scalia spoke out against the decision to not allow school prayer. Justice Scalia felt striking prayer out of school would please a few to the detriment of the majority. Justice Scalia also spoke out against abortion. He is credited with making the remark to a group of friends, “Where is the moral outcry against abortion?” Justice Scalia was asking: Where are the Christians who will do more than give a nod against evil?
A look at America’s Educational system today reveals how different our schools are from 200 years ago. Educators have led us down a path that has almost destroyed our culture, our religion, our families and ultimately our future. Yet, there is little moral outcry among those who hold to strong Christian beliefs.
I pray God gives each of us insight on how to participate in the moral outcry that is necessary to change this nation – in particular the Mountain of Education. No matter where we are or what station we hold in life, we can begin to take a stand against the tide of evil that has flooded our schools. Let every one of us participate in the outcry against the ungodly agenda in the American Mountain of Education!

Pray for America’s Schools Like You Would Pray for a Sick Friend

June 17, 2018

Many people are very concerned for the future of our children and our schools but feel that it is only a matter of time until our educational system will fail. The educational system is so bad that, “well, why even bother to pray for education?” The next comments that usually follow are about how the Lord’s return is so near, and after all things are just going to get worse and worse before Jesus comes back to earth and rescues us. End of discussion. They continue to worry and look for the rapture. In my opinion, the negative comments and the steady look for redemption in the form of rapture are a cover-up for lack of faith and prayer.
I agree that our educational system is in need of great help. It is sick. But how would those of us who are supposed to be faith-filled believers react if we had a good friend who was in sin and because of that sin he was sick? What if that person had turned his back on God? What if that person had done a lot of good deeds in the past and was trying to get well? What if you knew that if that person regained his health he could change this nation? What if that person’s friends had all turned against him and refused to pray? What if that person had been exploited by people who had taken advantage of him? What if that person had provided for the education of hundreds of thousands of children throughout the world and would do so again, when he recovered? What if you knew that friend, when recovered, would engage in even greater humanitarian acts than he had ever done before? Would you pray for that friend? Yes, every one of us would pray for such a friend. America’s educational system is that friend who needs our prayers for health and healing. Now is not the time to turn against our schools and the education of our children and watch the educational system go downhill – Now is the time to rise up in faith and believe God for her healing!

The Creation of a Perfect storm in Education

June 15, 2018

Prayer for Protection from DisastersOver the past 20 years, school shootings have almost become common place. Most of the shootings fade into the distant past as a new shooting takes place of the last as the worst in history. How did we get here? What happened in America that over the last two decades school shootings have become common place? Who broke that dam of evil? And more importantly, how do we stop the killings?

Below I’ve listed three historical events that led us to this place:
1. The Theory of Evolution Introduced in Education—In the mid 1850s Herbert Spencer proposed that education should draw on new scientific principles to make teaching more efficient as well as pleasant for the child. He proposed that learning was subject to the same laws that shaped the evolution of human beings from simple organisms could be used to shape the development of each child from the earliest moments in life to adults. Out of these concepts, came a new branch of science called child psychology. New discoveries in child learning techniques should give helpful information on how to be a more discerning and caring parent or teacher. The problem with this new branch of science was that it was founded in Darwinism/evolution. Learning disabilities in children began to take names. Eventually, the medical community came up with a myriad of diagnoses for those disabilities, which leads us to the next issue—that of drugs.
2. Drugs—What came in the 1960s and onwards were a plethora of new drugs on the streets of our cities as well as through the pharmaceutical industries. The street drugs appealed to those who desired to check out of a materialistic culture. The pharmaceutical drugs treated children’s psychological issues as well as learning disabilities. We became a nation that medicated her children.
3. We lost our moral compass. Meanwhile the school curricula was steadily undergoing a major shift with the removal of the God of the Christians from the classrooms. With no concept of a creator and therefore no accountability to a higher power, no value is placed on life. When life is cheap, killing the innocent becomes prevalent. When children who grow up deprived of knowing God as a creator are legally drugged there is a recipe for disaster.

These “winds” are some of the strongest influencers that created a “perfect storm” in our educational system.

The answer lies in prayer, but not just a blanket prayer that says, “our thoughts and prayers are with you.” The answer lies with those who know God and the power of the Name of Jesus. Now is the time for believers to come together in unity, in order to pray targeted, strategic prayers that will turn our educational system and consequently our children back to God. Jesus said, “If you believe, all things are possible to him who believes.” Let’s come together in agreement to take the Mountain of Education!

Are we all animals? Funny you should ask….

June 13, 2018

In the history of America, the period of 1880 to 1933 were pivotal for this nation’s education. New theories of how to educate children were being birthed at ivy league colleges that would gradually trickle down to be taught in every school room in America. It was a time of great change—and not for the betterment of our children in our schools.

One of the more prolific change agents was Edward L. Thorndike. Mr. Thorndike graduated from Harvard in 1897. While at Harvard, he began investigating instinctive and intelligent behavior in chickens. He wrote a dissertation for his degree in education on “Animal Intelligence.” In 1911, his work was published as a book. His theories still stand today as a benchmark in educational psychology.

Edward L. Thorndike believed in evolution and wrote in his book, “His [man’s] instincts, that is, his inborn tendencies to feel and act in certain ways, show throughout marks of kinship with the lower animals, especially with our nearest relatives physically, the monkeys. His sense-powers show no new creation. …” Dr. Thorndike wrote concerning teaching, “The best way with children, may often be, in the pompous words of an animal trainer, ‘to arrange everything in connection with the trick so that the animal will be compelled by the laws of his own nature to perform it.’”

The theory of evolution, applied to the mind, was used by Thorndike and other evolutionary psychologists as a basis for building a new theory of learning by conditioning. This method of teaching completely omits any consideration or training of the spiritual component of a child. Score one more huge win for humanism in American education! The truth is, if our children are trained as animals, we should not be surprised when they are without a moral compass and act accordingly.

The School Alarm is Sounding!

June 11, 2018

In school, I never remember an emergency that triggered a school alarm. Today school is a different place. School shootings, fights, fires and lock downs are commonplace. The school alarm is going off in the natural, but there’s also a school alarm going off in the Spirit as well. The question is: will the intercessors heed the sound?

On April 20 1999, Eric Haris and Dylan Klebold went on a shooting spree at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. When it was over, the two boys had killed 24 students, one teacher and wounded numerous others. One month later, the community hosted a grief meeting that gave students, teachers, parents and local pastors a platform to express their feelings.

A friend of mine and I drove to Colorado to attend that meeting. As each person came to the microphone to speak, the underlying theme—almost without exception– was that each one had felt something was about to happen. No one had any clue what it was, but felt God told them there was some impending catastrophe on the horizon. One pastor related how he had se
en the boys dressed in their Gothic attire and knew God was telling him that the boys were planning some horrible deed.

Even though many people knew that danger was coming, not a one mentioned intercession as a means to avert a disaster. The deaths were laid at God’s feet but He was not given credit for possibly giving a way out by prompting those who knew Him to heed the alarm that was going off inside of them and pray that the calamity would not happen. We not only need prayer that will deal with education’s past and present, but we need preemptive prayer that will disengage the enemy in future events.

From that Columbine meeting, there were three ways God had given warning:

1. An inward alarm went off while in the presence of the perpetrators.
Many saw Haris and Klebold and sensed the evil. Both boys were avid fans of death centered video games and heavy metal music with lyrics of death and destruction. The boys carried the evil with them and those astute in the Spirit could sense danger.

2. An inward alarm sounded as they entered the school building. They “knew” danger was near.
Some of the speakers, on walking into the school building, knew that something was going to happen.

3. Alarming dreams were given—of being in a dangerous situation at school.
The signs were there but ignored. I don’t think the praying people in Columbine were oblivious to the prompting of the Holy Spirit, but rather, they simply didn’t know how to intercede. Intercession is quickly becoming a lost art as not many are taught how to pray in situations where, without God’s intervention, disaster will happen. It’s time for the church to take up the mantle of Elijah and pray for our schools to not only avert danger, but change the entire structure of the Mountain of Education. We can see things change—if we pray. (Read more on this at takingthemountainofeducation.com)

Give it 10 minutes
I suggestion that you give the alarm you are sensing ten minutes of focused prayer as quickly as possible. See what the Holy Spirit speaks to you during that time. The burden may lift and that’s all that’s needed, but perhaps you’ll get direction on how and what to pray at a later time.

Often if we think something will require hours on hours of intense prayer, it will never get done. The task will look too overwhelming. It’s better to be instant in prayer. Hearing God’s voice takes time and practice and it is best not to let the task look too big in the beginning.

Intercession is an absolute act of faith – Faith in the ability of God to change the future is the driving force behind intercession. If anyone ever tells you that that kind of faith that changes circumstances, nations and hardened hearts is easy, they would be lying. It’s like a muscle that isn’t used very much and at first it’s extremely difficult but with continual use, it does get easier. That’s why it’s called “exercising your faith.”

“But you, dear friends, build yourselves up in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit.” Jude 20