watchmen Archives - Colin Dye

Watch and pray!

Colin Dye — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:44:14 +0000

Watch and pray!

Today the Holy Spirit is sweeping across the nations of the world as never before in history. More than 110,000 people are added to the Church of Jesus Christ daily. The outpouring is reaching near revival proportions on practically every continent on earth. And this is only the beginning!
We are standing at the edge of the greatest wave of spiritual blessing that has ever been experienced on the earth. The winds are beginning to blow and the flood tide is about to be released. That is why God is awakening his people to the urgent need of the hour – worldwide prayer and intercession. Only when we pray, will the Lord speak to us. Only when we intercede on behalf of our cities and nations will we see God move in power. Everywhere I go in the world I hear the same call of the Holy Spirit, ?Watch and pray!?, and the nations are responding. Ministering in Africa, Asia and South America I have personally witnessed the spirit of prayer that is being poured out from the throne of God.
The same is becoming true of the European Church as we are learning to pray with diligence and fervency. As God?s day for the nations dawns the burning question on my heart is will he find us awake and ready or fast asleep and prayerless?
Satan is trying to lay a comfortable blanket over our churches, seeking to induce a spirit of slumber and complacency, because he knows how much danger his kingdom is in when God?s people become militant in prayer. We must not allow the enemy put us to sleep or we will miss what God is doing.
This is the hour of the Watchmen! Alert to his plans and purposes, they will actively bring about the will of God in the earth preparing the way for what he is about to do. Even if we have failed in the past he wants us to watch and pray now. He is raising us up as a mighty army, enabling and equipping us to be faithful in prayer and intercession.
As you discover the seven biblical functions of Watchmen (pages 8-10) I believe the Lord will open up to you a new dimension in your ministry of prayer and intercession. I am confident that the Lord will anoint and equip you to fulfil your call as a spiritual Watchman.
Could you not watch with me one hour?
We read in Matthew 26:36-46 how Jesus asked Peter, James and John to watch with him while he prayed in Gethsemane. I don?t believe we will ever fully understand what was going on in Jesus? heart and mind at that time. Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God incarnate, is in need. He is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death (verse 38). We stress the divinity of Jesus Christ and rightly so, but we must never forget that he was and is also fully man. Under the shadow of the cross, Jesus feels the awesome weight of responsibility and the full spiritual implications of Calvary. Calling his closest associates together, he asks them to watch with him in this his darkest hour. But those whom he loved, nurtured and painstakingly instructed for three and a half years repeatedly let him down.
The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak
In a certain way that encourages me because if those early apostles had difficulty watching and praying, it explains why I have the same problem. The single greatest difficulty I have in my Christian life is watching and praying on a daily basis. After 40 years I still struggle! It is so easy to be enthusiastic, especially when we are all together in large meetings, but when the alarm clock goes off at 3am for my hour of watch my flesh is very weak! The words of Jesus ring in my ears, ?Could you not watch with me for one hour??
There is always a conflict between the flesh and the Spirit when it comes to watching and praying. It doesn?t come naturally. We need to break through a spirit of prayerlessness into a new level of discipline and urgency by the power of the Holy Spirit.
A new quality in prayer
Everywhere I go in the world, I find the Holy Spirit is bringing a new quality in prayer. People are watching and praying and not just praying the same repetitive prayers again and again. There is a sense of urgency. We are learning to be wakeful and alert in the Spirit, listening to God as well as talking to him. It is only then that we see him bring about the changes he has ordained. Prayers prayed by real God-appointed Watchmen are accurate and powerful. The principle that prayer brings God?s changes is at the centre of Christianity. If we really believed this, we would do it more. It is time that we took up again the chief instruments and weapons that God has given us to bring about his changes in the earth. In a society that is basically founded upon unbelief, we need a praying people who believe that God supernaturally hears and answers prayer. We must become through prayer the real mover and shapers in our world. Jesus is calling you today, ?Watch and pray!?
Jesus our Heavenly Intercessor
The hour of Jesus? trial is finished. He is no longer in the garden of Gethsemane. Crucified, resurrected and exalted, he now lives – forever seated at the Father?s right hand. But what is he doing? Interceding! Right now Jesus Christ is interceding for you.
Christ Jesus, who died – more than that, who was raised to life – is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Romans 8:34
Jesus? ministry of intercession by far exceeds anything else that he has yet done. Thirty years in obscurity, three and a half years in public ministry, and almost two thousand years of intercession – that?s the ministry of Jesus Christ! And he calls you to join him! To help you he has sent another Intercessor to live within you – the Holy Spirit.
The Spirit helps you make intercession according to the Father?s will, so that you can pray God?s will into the earth.
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with Gods will. Romans 8:26-27
The Holy Spirit will help you pray the will of God into reality on the earth. That?s the meaning behind the Lord?s Prayer: ?Our Father in heaven, may Your holy name be honoured, may Your kingdom come, may Your will be done on earth as it?s done in heaven.? Jesus? hour of trial is over, but I sense that there is just as much urgency in his voice as he asks us to watch and pray with him today in this decisive hour in history. Will you stand up and watch with him, or will you fail him as his disciples did in Gethsemane?

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Watchmen Awake!

Colin Dye — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 09:30:02 +0000

This is a prophetic word, I believe, for the season we are in: “Watchmen, awake!” Jesus is standing at the door of our cities, and prayer and intercession is the key to open the gate for Him to enter. The enemy wants to bring a spirit of slumber to our churches but we must wake up, watch and pray!

Watchmen awake!

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Growing rumours of war between Israel and Iran: Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem!

Colin Dye — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 10:25:17 +0000

Speculation over a possible military strike on Iran by Israel continues as latest reports suggest Israeli Cabinet ministers previously opposed to attacking Iran have changed their minds.

Every day in the news we hear of violence and atrocities in the land of Israel. In modern times this conflict has been ongoing, beginning with the return of Jews to their homeland at the end of the 19th century. It has continued during the British rule in the 1920s, the division of the nation into separate Jewish and Palestinian states in 1948 and the Six-day war of 1967. As rumours are growing that Israel is about to launch an attack on Iran, I invite you to pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
Isaiah 62:2-7
“The Gentiles shall see your righteousness, and all kings your glory. You shall be called by a new name, which the mouth of the Lord will name. You will also be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. No longer be termed Forsaken, nor shall your land be any more be termed desolate; but you shall be called Hephzibah, and your land Beulah; for the lord delights in you, and your land shall be married. For as a young man marries a virgin, so shall your sons marry you; and as the bridegroom rejoices at the bride, so your God rejoices over you. I have set watch-men on your walls, 0 Jerusalem; they shall never hold their peace day or night. You who make mention of the name of the Lord, do not keep silent, and give him no rest till He establishes and till He makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth”.
A Chastening
When I visited Israel the Lord began to chasten me in my spirit. This chastening has been a pleasant experience though. The Bible says, ‘Don’t be like a mule or a horse that needs the bit and bridle to pull it into subjection.’ He wants to guide us with his eye. The Holy Spirit was so gentle with me, so revelatory and so repetitive; there was no mistaking what he was saying to me, and I confess that in the last ten years I have sinned before the Lord and before his people. My sin has been one of neglect. When we read about watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem, we think first of our own Jerusalem. What is our Jerusalem? London, but we have no right to claim the blessings for our ‘Jerusalem’ until we’ve understood God’s purposes for His Jerusalem. This is what the Holy Spirit chastened me about, and I have responded and repented.

Israeli President Shimon Peres reiterated last Sunday that an attack on Iran is becoming increasingly likely.

The Jew First
We are not wrong to take these blessings for ourselves but we must remember that they are not ours, they are the blessings of God’s covenant people and that we have been brought into them. The Gospel is given to the Jew first, and the covenants are for the Jew first because God chose the Jews to reach the world – and that includes us
When we read the scriptures we take these passages and apply them to ourselves – and they do apply to us -instead of reading them first in their original context, remembering that God’s purposes to bless the world begins with God’s purpose for Israel.
Watchmen for Jerusalem
When the Bible talks about Israel, it is not a symbol – it means the land of Israel and Jerusalem means the city of Jerusalem. But because we are so far removed from the land of Israel we apply these Scriptures only to ourselves. That is not wrong but in our praying we must begin by being watchmen for Jerusalem.
Our primary concern must be to see the Jewish people come to recognise their Messiah. One Rabbi said in a lecture about Christianity and Judaism that he knows the Messiah will come on the Mount of Olives, and on that day he will stretch his arms out towards Him and ask ‘Is this your first or second visit?’ So sure was he that much of what the Bible teaches about the coming of Messiah has already been fulfilled.
Why is it that God wants to see this happen in Israel and Jerusalem? Look again at Isaiah 62:2-7. This prophecy is going to be fulfilled, because the salvation of Israel is the salvation of the nations.
Pray for Jerusalem
So God said, pray for the peace of Jerusalem, pray that Jerusalem will become a praise in all the earth. Pray that Jerusalem’s righteousness will go forth as brightness and her salvation as a lamp that burns. In Romans chapter 11 we read that a blindness has come upon Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles. And if the hardening and the falling away of Israel were the means by which the Gentiles came into the blessings of the Jews how much more will their fullness be. What is this fullness? It is life from the dead. The restoration of Israel is part of God’s purpose for the end time harvest and end time evangelism for all nations.

Jerusalem view from the mount of olives

Some say that if you going to pray for the peace of Jerusalem what about the Arabs and the Palestinians? And what about the Europeans, the Africans the Americans and the rest of the world? God’s purpose is to take this nation, Israel, and through it bless the whole world. He has already done that through the Bible – which was written by inspired Jewish men of God. Through Jesus who of earthly decent was Jewish, who died on the cross in Jerusalem, and who is coming back again and when he does the first place feet shall touch is the Mount of Olives.

This does not mean that we all need to become Jewish, neither do we need to turn the Jews into gentiles in order for them to be saved.
So, in your watchman hour, pray for the peace of Jerusalem
Father in the name of Jesus, I come before you and I ask your forgiveness for my neglect of something so clearly revealed in scripture and in my enthusiasm to reach the gentile blessings I have at times neglected your heart for Israel. I thank you Lord for your freedom, for your cleansing and I thank you for the release of your blessing through repentance and restoration in Jesus’ name.

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