"IT SEEMED THAT THE HOLY SPIRIT GAVE ME THIS PRAYER…"
'Lord, give us leaders such that it will be for Your glory to give us victory through them.'
Thus spoke o
ne of my teachers, Derek Prince.
During WW II the British army in North Africa was being beaten, badly.
The result was a 700 mile retreat – from a place in Tripoli to El
Alamein, about fifty miles west of Cairo. Here the British forces dug in
for one final stand.
In the desert, Derek said: "I had no church
or minister to offer me fellowship or counsel. I was obliged to depend
upon the Bible and the Holy Spirit. I early came to see that, by New
Testament standards, fasting was a normal part of Christian discipline. I
set aside every Wednesday for FASTING AND PRAYER.
During the
long and demoralizing retreat God laid on my heart a burden of prayer,
both for the British forces in the desert and for the whole situation in
the Middle East. After a while, it seemed that the Holy Spirit gave me
this prayer:
“Lord, give us leaders such that it will be for Your glory to give us victory through them.”
I continued praying this prayer EVERY DAY. In due course, the British
government decided to relieve the commander of their forces in the
desert and to replace him with another man. The man whom they chose was a
general named W.H.E. “Strafer”:Gott. He was flown to Cairo to take over
command, but he was killed when his plane was shot down.
At
this critical juncture the British forces in this major theater of the
war were left without a commander. Winston Churchill, appointed a
more-or-less unknown officer, named B. L. Montgomery, who was hastily
flown out from Britain.
Montgomery was the son of an evangelical
Anglican bishop. He was a man who very definitely fulfilled god’s two
requirements in a leader of men. He was just and god-fearing. He was
also a man of tremendous discipline. Within two months, he had instilled
a totally new sense of discipline into his officers and had thus
restored the confidence of the men in their leaders.
Then the
main battle of El Alamein was fought. It was the first major allied
victory in the entire war up to that time. The threat was finally thrown
back, and the course of the war changed in favor of the Allies.
Without a doubt, the battle of El Alamein was the turning point of the war in North Africa.
Two or three days after the battle, I found myself in the desert a few
miles behind the advancing Allied forces. A small portable radio beside
me was relaying a news description of the scene at Montgomery’s
headquarters as he had witnessed it on the eve of the battle.
He
revealed how Montgomery publicly called his officers and men to PRAYER,
saying , “Let us ask the Lord, mighty in battle, to give us the
victory.” As these words came through that portable radio, God spoke
very clearly to my spirit, “THAT IS THE ANSWER TO YOUR PRAYER.”
I believe that the prayer which God gave me could well be applied to other situations, both military and political:
******“ Lord, give us leaders such that it will be for Your glory to give us victory through them.” ********
Lance adds: We saw a Lincoln emerge out of nowhere prior to the Civil
War. Dr. King emerged and advanced the stalled progress of Civil Rights.
Both men emerged as an answer to prayer.
I feel we are
VERY CLOSE to seeing our PRAYERS ANSWERED. Now just a little more "push"
in intercession and some NEW FACES with NEW VOICES will arise out of
the shaking!
God bless America and help it to fulfill its divine purpose.
