Call to Prayer Critical Elements in a Solemn Assembly

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Call to PrayerCritical Elements in a Solemn
Assembly

• P. Douglas Small
• Alive Ministries PROJECT PRAY

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The Five Things that Defile the Land

• The shedding of innocent blood.
• The failure to treat the dead with respect,
  specifically, the despised criminal (implication
  the sacredness of the body).
• The breakdown of the family through the
  proliferation of divorce. With it sexual
  infidelity.
• Sexual deviation, specifically, homosexuality
  (speaks to identity confusion, brings social
  disorder)
• Idolatry, idolatrous altars, worship sites,
  paganism and its priests.

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The Old and New

• In the Old Testament, God called for holy
  places specifically, the Temple, to be in the
  midst of the land and the people as a sanctifying
  influence.
• HOLY PLACES HOLY PEOPLE.
• In the New Testament, the HOLY PERSON, JESUS
  comes to the supposedly HOLY PLACE, the Temple
  and purges it.
• HOLY PERSON HOLY PLACES/PEOPLE.

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7 Critical Elements

• PRECIPITATING EVENT ...
• Common Calamity Drought, Fire, Storm, Crop
  Failure.
• Uncommon Calamity Andrew, Katrina, Earthquake.
• Financial Crisis Haggai Earn Money only to put
  it into a bag with holes. Bank collapse
  precipitated the 3rd Great Awakening.
• Human Caused Calamity 9-11, War (Threat to our
  National Security)
• Moral Crisis Cali, Columbia.
• Health Pandemic Plague, AIDS.
• Political Death of Uzziah. Uganda.
• The Event is an interruption to life as normal
  (localized or national). Some encounter that
  proves overwhelming and instinctively moves our
  eyes toward heaven.

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What is a Solemn Assembly?

• The urgent call of a leader to all the people he
  or she leads to come together
• to repent something has gone wrong, and change
  begins with us.
• to humble themselves, to be broken.
• to seek God's face not merely his hand
  (openness, transparency, to allow him to see us,
  to allow us to see him. Moves us to our face.)
• to fast and pray, to demonstrate that our
  greatest hunger is spiritual.
• to turn from wicked ways, to change the way we
  live.

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What is a Solemn Assembly?

• to go back to the pattern of Scripture often
  meant hearing God's Word read aloud to the group.
• to remove all things and practices from lives
  that might be displeasing to God and frustrating
  his purposes in our lives, our homes, our church,
  our nation.
• to worship God with all their hearts.
• All - to renew the solemn covenant with God that
  has in some way been broken
• To facilitate the groups desire to be a more
  effective instrument in Gods hand
• And to fulfill their specific institutional
  mission.

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WHY hold a solemn assembly?

• Because -
• Of a sense that the city or nation is reaping
  what it has sown, judgment is looming over the
  land, and we his people want to fulfill our
  mission to stand in the gap.
• Of a sense that judgment is immanent or already
  present, the crisis might deepen. And even among
  Gods people, there is compromise and it is
  critical that they redirect their lives.
• Of fresh revelation. Truth from His word has
  been ignored. Now rediscovered, we must change.
• Of the sense that our change, will make a
  difference far beyond us.

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Israel Scheduled Regular Solemn Assemblies

• WEEKLY - Every Sabbath had a Solemn Assembly
  dimension to it.
• MONTHLY - Every New Moon was a call to Assembly.
• SEASONALLY - The Feast Days were the events in
  which Israel gathered to consider their mission
  in behalf of Yahweh.
• ANNUALLY - The Day of Atonement was the most
  solemn of all feast days. It was actually a
  fast day.
• SPECIAL - Then, there were special Solemn
  Assemblies called for specific reasons. Moments
  in which the whole nation gathered to stand
  before a holy God and repent.

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Here is the call to Solemn Assembly by the
Prophet Joel

• "Blow the trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast, call
  a solemn assembly Gather the people, sanctify
  the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the
  children, and those that still nurse the
  bridegroom out of his chamber, and the bride
  out of her closet. Let the priests, the
  ministers weep between the porch and the altar
  Let them say, Spare your people, O Lord, give
  not your heritage to reproach that the nations
  should rule over them saying Where is their
  God?" (Joel 215-17).

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Israel Had A Number of Specially Called Solemn
Assemblies

• II Chronicles 121-8 Rehoboam King
• II Chronicles 151-19 Asa King
• II Chronicles 201-29 Jehoshaphat King
• II Chronicles 29-31 Hezekiah King
• II Chronicles 34 Josiah King
• Ezra 107-9 Ezra Priest
• Nehemiah 8-9 Nehemiah-Civil Leader
• Joel 1-2 Joel Prophet

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Key passages to be read would include the
following

• II Chronicles 6
• II Chronicles 71-22
• II Chronicles 151-19
• II Chronicles 201-29
• II Chronicles 29--31
• II Chronicles 34
• Ezra 107-9
• Nehemiah 8--9
• Joel 1--2
• Psalm 80
• Deuteronomy 301-20
• Psalm 51 (Personal sin)
• Ezra 9 (Corporate sin)

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7 Critical Elements

• In examining the Special Solemn Assemblies
  there are a number of common elements. They are
• A PRECIPITATING EVENT ...
• 2. A Discovery of Limitations
• 3. A Shared Sense of Desperation
• 4. A Discerning Process, bathed in Prayer, in
  light of Scripture.
• 5. Deep, Genuine Contrition.
• 6. A willingness to change Direction.
• 7. A rediscovery of Mission of Destiny.

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7 Critical Elements

• PRECIPITATING EVENT ...
• 2. Discovery of Limitations
• Eternal Realities break into time-space
  dimensions.
• Human frailty is again in view.
• 3. Shared Sense of Desperation
• Not exasperation, but a deep yearning for Gods
  intervention, renewal, something lost.

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7 Critical Elements

• 4. Discerning Process
• What went wrong?
• Why did this happen?
• Analytical search process, including, the
  personal, the internal.
• What does the Bible say? Find ourselves coming up
  short.
• Willingness to accept responsibility.
• Deep Contrition
• Not only over the calamity, but any personal
  contribution to it. And especially over sin.
• There is brokenness. Tears. Reverence for God.
  Respect for his moral laws.
• Acceptance of our share of responsibility with
  repentance and change.

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7 Elements

• Direction
• This is the watchword of the prophets Turn. We
  must change.
• Symbolic action - fasting, acts of obedience,
  sacrifice, sackcloth and ashes, vows,
  rededications, reconciliation is all aimed at
  renewing the damaged relationship with God.
• Destiny
• Clear sense of mission. God has a purpose for us.
  We are on the edge of missing destiny, purpose
  for us and our children unless we purify
  ourselves.
• Sincerity deepens. Passion returns. Ownership of
  mission becomes personal. The renewed
  relationship with God is as important as the
  mission.

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The Movement
Created to be Image (Relational)
PRECIPITATING EVENT
Discovery of Limitations
Shared Desperation
Destiny
Deep Contrition (Attitude)
Direction/Do (Action)?
Discerning Process
At any point, the process can break down!
Called to do (Vocational)
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TWO Discovery

• God, we stand in a moment in which we realize
  that we are no match for our present dilemma.
• We have been far to self-reliant, and too little
  dependent upon you.
• We need you, not merely your hand.
• We confess, that without you, we are empty
  believers, woefully inadequate for the task in
  the present moment
• We cannot do what you have called us to do,
  alone. We cannot be what you want us to be
  without renewing our relationship with you at the
  altar of sacrifice.

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TWO Discovery

• We are fighting against unseen forces that no
  mere human can subdue.
• Our solutions fail us. Our formulas will no
  longer work. Our programs are inadequate. Our
  cisterns are dry. We need resources,
  particularly, spiritual power, wisdom and
  discernment.
• We have tried to do divine work with human skill.
  We have tried to carry on a holy mission with
  soiled hands. We have failed not merely the
  nations around us. It is us, O God, in need of
  your grace.

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THREE Desperation

• God we ask you to break our hearts.
• Bring us to a place of deep dependence upon you.
• We confess our inadequacy for the task.
• We acknowledge our frailty.
• We submit to your sovereignty.
• We ask not to be brought to a place of
  exasperation, but a place of deep yearning for
  you. Not just for your help, but for you!
• We repent of being casual over eternal issues. We
  repent of dry eyes. Of prayer that is more talk
  than tears.
• Give us the grace to move beyond prayer to cry
  out to you.

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FOUR Discernment

• We cautiously ask you, to show us our condition.
• Why are we failing at the task at least here in
  America? What has gone wrong with the harvest?
• Why is the church lukewarm?
• Before you, with the help of the Holy Spirit,
  lead us into honest self-examination in the
  light of the Scripture.
• Let the prophets speak again. Bring a cultural
  change to us, to the church, to the nation.
• Help us see again, a clear vision for what you
  want us to be your representative people, holy.
  And what you want us to do reach the world with
  the gospel.

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We Ask You For the Grace to Weep

• We weep for the murdered babies.
• We weep for 40 years of public school education
  without a Bible.
• We weep in the face of rising teen suicide,
  pregnancies, and drug addiction.
• We weep over our increasingly hostile and violent
  society.
• We weep over our shamelessness, the loss of our
  ability to blush at sin.
• We weep over the plague of pornography, a symbol
  of our national search for satisfying love.

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WE WEEP

• We weep over the hollowness of commitment and
  displaced children, wounded by the divorce of
  their parents.
• We weep over the absence of fathers - godly men
  who would dare to be boldly Christ-like.
• We weep over the moral vacuum of our nation, the
  silence, if not the absence, of godly leaders in
  government who have the moral courage to call us
  back to our roots.
• We weep over the rewriting of history, to script
  out the existence of Christ and the influence of
  God and the Bible in our early American history.
  We weep over the lie.

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WE WEEP

• We weep over the loss of a Creator God, and the
  replacement of a godless philosophy called
  evolution that reduces our value by making us a
  product of chance, when we are a special creation
  of God.
• We weep over the banning of the Bible and the
  repression of Christian speech.
• We weep over the rise of cultists and
  astrologists, over the concept of pluralism, when
  Christ himself proclaimed that he was the only
  way.
• We weep over the spirit of deception that grows
  more powerful each day, whose tentacles seem to
  threaten the church itself.

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WE WEEP

• We weep over the demise of the traditional
  family.
• We weep over homosexuals and lesbians, whose pain
  is manifest in anger at those who remind them
  that the scripture calls homosexual behavior sin.
  
• We weep over those who have innocently, and not
  so innocently, contracted AIDS.
• We weep ... over what might been, over what was
  at one time, over what is threatened, unless God
  sends a powerful national revival.
• We weep over America, many nations, divided and
  bitterly torn, without a shared consensus of
  values, no longer under obedience to God and his
  word.
• We weep!

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AND WE PRAY ...

• And, we pray - "Spare thy people!"
• We are the salt and the light. If there is decay
  and darkness, we must accept the blame. We have
  failed.
• We have not been the people of God that we need
  to be. Judgment must begin in the house of the
  Lord. It is the church that must repent for the
  condition of the nation.
• We pray, that we will not be a reproach and the
  nations will not reign over us. We pray that they
  will not say, "Where is their God?"
• We pray for a church in danger of becoming a
  reproach. We pray for a Christian people, more
  influenced than we are influencers.

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FIVE Deep Contrition

• Break our hearts.
• First, with the recognition that we have sinned.
  Second, that we have failed you.
• May we not cover and conceal.
• May we deal ruthlessly with our own sin.
• May we be deeply aware that we have fallen short
  of Gods glory.
• Change us. Change the Church. Change the Nation.
• Rend our hearts.

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SIX New Direction

• Redirect us.
• Renew us. Fill us with the Holy Spirit.
• Help us to redefine our relationship with you as
  the representative people of God.
• Make us hungry for private, personal encounters
  with you.
• Help us to rekindle our passion for the lost.
• Make holiness more than buzz word. Bring
  integrity, authenticity back to your people.

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SEVEN Destiny

• PERSONAL ...
• You called me ... Let me fulfill my destiny.
  Dont let me die with promise in me. Let me have
  something to lay at your feet.
• Let the character of my life be as important as
  the practical work in my life.
• Let me glorify you with my life itself.
• You created us to be with you.
• You called us to work for you.
• Let my relationship with you be as important as
  my vocation for you.

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SEVEN Destiny

• CORPORATE ...
• You founded our church. You birthed it. Let us
  see it as more than a building to which we come
  for worship.
• Let us fulfill our destiny.
• Renew our movement. Restore our vision. Fill our
  pastor and his peers with the Holy Spirit. March
  through your Church around the world with a
  mighty revival that renews the missional DNA of
  your Body.

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The Movement
Created to be Image (Relational)
Destiny
Discovery
Desperation
PRECIPITATING EVENT
Discernment
Deep Contrition
Direction/Do?
At any point, the process can break down!
Called to do (Vocational)
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CRITICAL ELEMENTS IN A SOLEMN ASSEMBLY

• P. Douglas Small
• Project Pray
• www.projectpray.org
• All Rights Reserved