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I started teaching the Christians in Pakistan to place a Family Altar in each home in August of 2008.

This was under the unction of the Holy Spirit and the 30 days of preaching in villages and cities the only subject I could talk on was the Family Altar much of which I learned from Pastor John Mulinde of Uganda, Africa. The more I preached the altars the deeper the anointing and the powerful the message became. At the end of one of my sermons in a village a visiting American Pastor stood up at the altar call for those who would commit to putting an altar in their home, looking at me with tears in his eyes he said “Brother Ken, me too”. I visited his church in the spring of 2009 and he told me how the altar had changed his personal life and marriage. I will ask him to write it out for you.

When I returned from my 2008 trip to Pakistan I sat down with my wife and preached the whole sermon to her I had preached for 30 days. She took my hand and we committed to God an altar in our home which is now in its own room. In the last 4 years leading up to my visit to Pakistan we have had multiple murders on our block along with the constant presence of prostitutes and drug dealers. We prayed weekly with neighbors and friends over the condition of our streets. From August of 2007 to July of 2008 there were 6 murders on our block all of them turf wars over drugs.

Our Family Altar was formally placed in our home by my wife and myself in mid September of 2008. Since then we have prayed and had communion at that altar almost every day. In May of 2009 my neighbor began remarking to me how quite the neighborhood has become, no shootings, no drug dealers no prostitutes. I agreed with him but it was not until he mentioned it again in June of 2009 that I began to reflect on what was taking place. Mind you we had over the years always took time to pray over the streets but outside of our personal protection I could see very little progress taking place in the neighborhood. Now I began to pay very close attention to what was taking place. The streets were quite and had been for a while, actually looking back to September of 2008 we could remember no violence taking place on our block. I returned to Pakistan December 24th 2009 and as of that time as I preached the altar again there has not been a single shooting on our block, no drug dealers, no prostitutes and our neighbors are becoming closer to us watching over our property for us. The only change in our prayer life was the presence of the Family Altar were we meet Father God every day before we go to work. Not exactly the only change to our prayer life, we now pray every day over the community and neighborhood - the effect of the altar not only on us but the entire block has been stunning. Why? I asked God, His answer is now He has legal residence on this block, the Altar is dedicated to Him and now He has the right to move through my house and it is His presence that keeps the evil from taking place.

God has never withheld his promises; we have never been connected with Him. The altar connects you to God morning and night every day. Your connection with God is no longer forty-five minutes a week, it is forty-five minutes a day and growing, changing your connection with God from weekly to daily is a huge change in the spiritual realm.

There are many uses of Altars in the Bible and I will touch on many of them in this text.

The first usage we will look at is the use of Altars to mark territory. This is very important in any attempt to evangelize any land or territory. You are going to waste much time and effort if the land you are attempting to take is marked by demonic altars. We will look at Gideon where in Judges 6:25-32 God instructs Gideon to remove the altar of Baal and build an altar in its place to the Lord your God.

Altars are used to mark territory; they mark out who owns the land, who is the God/god of this land. An altar can be any object at all, a small table or rock, even a shelf built on a wall. To a Christian an altar is a place to meet God, a place of communication, worship, or just be in His presence.

Gideon instructed to pull down and altar and to build an altar to God in its place

In the Old Testament God had commanded his people to pull down the altars that belonged to Baal, and that these altars where to be utterly destroyed.

Jdg 6:25 Now on the same night the LORD said to him, "Take your father's bull and a second bull seven years old, and pull down the altar of Baal which belongs to your father, and cut down the Asherah that is beside it; Jdg 6:26 and build an altar to the LORD your God on the top of this stronghold in an orderly manner, and take a second bull and offer a burnt offering with the wood of the Asherah which you shall cut down."

Jdg 6:28 When the men of the city arose early in the morning, behold, the altar of Baal was torn down, and the Asherah which was beside it was cut down, and the second bull was offered on the altar which had been built. Jdg 6:30 Then the men of the city said to Joash, "Bring out your son, that he may die, for he has torn down the altar of Baal, and indeed, he has cut down the Asherah which was beside it." Jdg 6:31 But Joash said to all who stood against him, "Will you contend for Baal, or will you deliver him? Whoever will plead for him shall be put to death by morning. If he is a god, let him contend for himself, because someone has torn down his altar." Jdg 6:32 Therefore on that day he named him Jerubbaal, that is to say, "Let Baal contend against him," because he had torn down his altar.

Here God has instructed Gideon to remove the altar of Baal and build a altar to the Lord your God in its place and sacrifice upon it. It is not good enough to remove satanic altars you must replace them with altars to the Lord your God.

Two nations who are now Christian nations used the principal spiritual weapon of placing a Family Altar in the home of every believer. There are over 7 million Family Altars in the nation of Uganda.

In South Korea David Cho began teaching the Family Altar in the 1960s. Today South Korea is over 65% Christian and the center point of Christianity in South Korea is the Family Altar

God said, “I am not telling you a new thing. It has happened in the Bible”. That is the strategy

Abraham used to take the land of Canaan. Today, even if nations fight against Israel, no matter how many come against her, they cannot take the land; because there was a man who went through the land and set up prayer altars; taking the land for the Kingdom of the living God.

God told John “this is the strategy you will use, not only in Uganda but in whichever nation I send you. They too have to use it to purge the land, prepare the spiritual ground and call upon My presence. You will only find success in what you are doing in the physical realm, after you have won the battle in the spiritual realm.” Û Look Reader look and understand!

Now the Lord had said to Abram; “Get out of your country, from your family and from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you. I will make your name great; and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” So Abram departed as the Lord had spoken to him, and Lot went with him. And Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. Then Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people whom they had acquired in Haran, and they departed to go to the land of Canaan. So they came to the land of Canaan. Abram passed through the land to the place of Shechem, as far as the Terebinth tree of Moreh. And the Canaanites were there in the land. Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “to your descendants I will give this land”. And there he built an altar to the Lord who had appeared to him.

We see that God asked Abraham to leave his homeland, and all he was used to, to go to a strange new land. Abraham obeyed and set off to Canaan. When he reached there God told him “this is the land”. The Bible says, “so he built an altar there to the Lord who appeared to him.” In Vs 8

And he moved from there to the mountain east of Bethel and he pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; there he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord

Wherever Abram went, he erected an altar to the Lord or kept the existing ones functioning. In places where he did not build an altar, the spirit of the land2 overcame him e.g. when he went down to Egypt. When he came back in Genesis 13:4,18

Unto the place of the altar, which he had made there at the first: and there, Abram called on the name of the Lord…. Then Abram removed his tent and came and dwelt in the plain of Mamre, which is in Hebron, and built there an altar to the Lord.

Please note that in every new territory mentioned in Genesis 12-14, the Bible is careful to point out the people of the land and their condition. When Abram comes into Canaan the Bible says that the Canaanite was in the land. On their way to Egypt, Abram describes the Egyptians as wicked people who would kill him for his beautiful wife. Again, when they parted with Lot the Bible says of the people of Sodom; the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the Lord exceedingly.

That should teach us that the territories into which Abram and Lot entered had people who were evil and sinners. Their situation was not unique to ours today. The lands where we are have exceedingly wicked people who have practices that are totally against the kingdom of God. Today every thing around us is laced with wickedness. Many Christians do not want to deal with spiritual warfare over their nations and communities because there is no faith that God can change their communities, which are “too sinful.”

Abraham was living among very sinful and evil people in the land. In Genesis 15:16-21 we see how God talked about judging the inhabitants of Canaan when their sin had reached its fullness. The people of the land had their gods and they worshiped them. They had different altars erected in that land, but there a man called Abraham, used that very strategy of erecting altars to the Living God. Abraham was the first man in the land to call upon the name of the Living God Jehovah.

The Bible may be make one sentence saying “And Abraham built an altar,” but it was not easy. Everywhere it appears, it is a very loaded statement. He was contending with the demon gods that ruled over the land of the Canaan. We shall learn later in spiritual warfare, that the demon gods don’t rule the land unless they have a covenant with the people.

By building altars to the Living God, Abraham was undoing the work of the enemy. He was destroying the system the Canaanites were using in worshipping their gods. When he came back from Egypt after the famine he went on with the ministry of reestablishing contact with His God, or building new altars in Canaan.

^{2
Ref: Transforming Your World – John Mulinde: © 2005 Progressive Vision
Publishing Jerusalem Israel}

When God was speaking to John about this Abrahamic strategy, the word God gave him was from Genesis 1317 “go through the length and breadth of the land for I give it to you. Wherever you go, set up an altar and call on the name of the Lord.3”

Wherever Abraham went he would set up an altar and called on the name of the Lord. That means he contended with the demon gods of that area. Then he would go to another place, and contend with another demon god. Why? One of the effects of raising a prayer altar, as we will see later, brings down the presence of God. Altars give the god you are serving a legal ground to work in the land. In other words when you set up a prayer altar to the Living God Jehovah, you are saying “let Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”.

Abraham went on building and maintaining prayer altars all the days of his life and he also taught his children to do so. Even when Isaac was grown up he also started building altars. We can read that in Gen 26:23-25.

Then he went up from there to Beersheba. And the Lord appeared to him the same night and said, “I am the God of your father Abraham; do not fear, for I am with you. I will bless you and multiply your descendants for My servant Abraham’s sake.” So he built an altar there and called on the name of the Lord, and he pitched this tent there; and there Isaac’s servants dug a well.

The strategy did not stop with Abraham. When Isaac grew up he went on with the ministry of setting up altars. In other words he was sustaining the claim over the land from the gods of Canaanites to the King Jehovah God. Even after Isaac, came Jacob in Gen 33:18-

Then Jacob came safely to the city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan, when he came from Padan Aram; and he pitched his tent before the city. And he bought the parcel of land, where he had pitched his tent, from the children of Hamor, Shechem’s father, for one hundred pieces of money. Then he erected an altar there and called it El Elohe Israel.

This practice went on from generation to generation. They were purging the land and claiming it to be of Jehovah God. They were contending with the demon gods ruling that land as they called on the presence of God to come upon it and stay. They were claiming the land from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God. It was not warfare. Today the guardian principality over Israel is Michael the arch-angel (Daniel 12:1). Abraham had paid a price. Even after more than 4000 years from the days of Genesis, the demon gods cannot overcome the land because it took Abraham Isaac and Jacob many years to purge the land, and cleanse the firmament above it.

Therefore in today’s context, what is an altar? It is a place and time set aside for the purposes of communing with God in worship, intercession and fellowship. It can be anywhere and at any time and as often as is allowed.

^{3 Ref: Transforming Your World – John Mulinde: © 2005 Progressive
Vision Publishing Jerusalem Israel}

So all the guests who were with Adonijah were afraid, and arose and each one went his way. 50 Now Adonijah was afraid of Solomon; so he arose, and went and took hold of the horns of the altar. 51 And it was told Solomon, saying “Indeed Adonijah is afraid of King Solomon; for look, he has taken hold of the horns of the altar, saying, “Let King Solomon swear to me today that he will not put his servant to death with the sword”. 52 When Solomon said, “If he proves himself a worthy man, not one hair of him shall fall to the earth; but if wickedness is found in him, he shall die.: 53 So King Solomon sent them to bring him down from the altar. And he came and fell down before King Solomon; and Solomon said to him, “Go to your house”.

Because of holding on the horns of the altar his life was spared. We come to find mercy in times of desperation and need (Hebrew 4.16)

In 1 Chronicles 21: After David had sinned against God by conducting a census, God asked him to choose one of three evils that would befall him and all Israel. When the plague had hit the people, he erected and altar and sought God’s mercy. God stayed the plague.

And behold, the Lord stood above it and said; “I am the Lord God of Abraham your Father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie, I will give to you and your descendants. 14 Also your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth; you shall spread abroad to the west and the east, to the north ad the sought; and in you and in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed. 15 Behold I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have spoken to you.”

Jacob was a sinner, and did not know much about the fear of God. He came into a place and slept. However God was talking to this sinner telling him “even if you are running away Jacob, I have a plan, and future for you. I will make you a great nation. Your generation will spread out to the north, south, east and west. Even if you run away I will bring you back. I will not leave you until I have accomplished My purpose. I will watch over you even when you have run away.”

When Jacob woke up he said, “This is the gate of heaven”. When you pray you find that the portals of heaven are opened because of our prayers. Others may find it hard to breakthrough with situations but as you have that open heaven above you, you are in communication with heaven. Even many years after you have gone, you will have left a legacy and a posterity. God honors it. Sometimes you find that people are drawn to God through you even when you don’t preach to them. There is free access between yourself and the heavenly realm.

Then Jacob rose early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put at his head, asset it up as a pillar, and poured oil on top of it. 19 And he called the name of that place Bethel;

We saw that after Abraham came from Egypt, he re-established contact with God at Bethel. After over one hundred years, there comes his offspring Jacob - a man who did not care for God. He sleeps at Bethel; but because Abraham had stayed and erected an altar, even after all the years, there was open heaven. Abraham had paid the price. Abraham had lived in that place more than 100 years before. Jacob comes, finds open heavens, and says, “This is the gate of heaven.” Altars open heaven. What you are doing today, even your children and children’s children, will enjoy. They will find a very free atmosphere.

Up to this day, no one can take the land of Israel because Abraham and his descendants paid the price. Today, many parts of the western world, even though they claim to be “post-Christian” they enjoy the blessings of God because their first fathers paid the price in seeking God and covenanting the land to Him. A good example is the pilgrims and puritans who settled in America. They worshipped God and dedicated everything to Him.

5. Altars are places of provision. God told Abraham in Genesis 22, “give me your only child Isaac. Give him as a sacrifice on a mountain I will show you”. So Abraham got the child and they set off. When they reached the place they could see the mountain and he left his servants, put the firewood on the head of Isaac and went. They show that even Isaac had started getting the idea of altars. As they went he said “father, I can see the firewood and the fire, but where is the sacrifice we are going to give to God?” And he said, “God will provide. Let us go”. So they went up the mountain. Abraham got Isaac, bound him and put him on the altar. Then he raised up his knife to kill him but God called him and said, “don’t destroy the child. Now I know you love me indeed. You have not withheld your only son”. He provided a ram instead. Abraham called the place “Jehovah-Jireh” to the God of provision.

6. Altars are place where we can offer our best to God. We have seen in the above example, Abraham offered his best. God insisted on the best of the land, the first fruits and the choicest animals for sacrifice. We

7. Altars can stay God’s judgement: One of the things that can stay God’s judgement over an area is setting up altars of unceasing prayer and intercession. David had offended God and God told him to choose three things.

David said, “let us fall in the hand of God” and God hit the land with a plague. When he was enquiring of God the prophet Gad told him “go and erect an altar in Araunah’s threshing floor.” When he did, God stayed the plague

King David counted the children of Israel and God was angry with that. And David went before God and said “I have sinned before you. God had brought a plague. He was told by God to go to the Threshing floor of Araunah (or Ornan in NKJV) and erect an altar for God. In I Chronicles 21:22-23

So David came to Ornan, and Ornan looked and saw David, and he went out from the threshing floor and bowed before David with his face to the ground. 22 Then David said to Ornan, “Grand me the place of this threshing floor, that I may build an altar on it to the Lord. You shall grant it to me at the full price, that the plague may be withdrawn from the people.” 23 But Ornan said to David “ Take it to yourself, and let my lord the king do what is good in his eyes. Look, I also give you the oxen for burnt offerings, the threshing implements for wood, and the wheat for the grain offering; I give it all”

David was at the place saying, “Sell me this threshing floor, to offer sacrifice” as he was instructed, so that plague may stop. Araunah said, “I will give everything freely, the oxen and grain etc”.

Many of us are at that place where we don’t want to create a fellowship and relationship with God. We are unwilling to pay that price of time, space and energy. We say, “Pastor pray for us, intercessors pray for us”. What did David say? V24.

Then King David said to Ornan, “no, but I will surely buy it for the full price, for I will not take what is yours for the lord, nor offer burnt offerings with that which cost me nothing”

It takes a price to institute altars. David insisted on the full price. He insisted on giving everything to set up an altar. God is calling us on a personal basis so that He can get legal ground to work from. We are not in the Old Testament days where the priest went on behalf of the people to God. God wants you to enter in your priesthood and stand in the gap. Today all people who believe in Jesus Christ and follow His whole Word are priests unto God.

Altars bring the presence of God, they are places of mercy, provision, they open up heaven, and they are places where we can offer the best. David said, “I insist on paying the full price”. God is looking for people like that. That is why He said of David, “He is a man after my own heart.” Though he had failures, he could run to God and return to that fellowship.

As we go into a time of prayers, God knows we are born in selfish nature, but one thing, even when we offend God, He is looking for fellowship. Can you come back? As you create fellowship He will be slowly cleansing you and taking away that sin, weakness, wickedness, as you avail yourself God works in your life. Don’t look at your mistakes, guilt and condemnation. When you offend God, go back and cultivate your fellowship and relationship.

Let us cry to God to give us grace to start altars in our hearts, families, churches, ministry, and

business wherever we are. Let us pray that God will give us a burden for prayer and intercession. A burden to gather those who are around us in a prayer altar. God says in His Word “a time is coming where the earth will be filled with the presence of the Lord as the water covers the sea.

Your heart is the first place of communion between yourself and God. Then the altar grows within the context of a family, a fellowship in the workplace or school or other social place. It can become a church altar, a community altar where more than one churches or fellowships meet, and it can grow to a city or national altar where people meet at specific times and season for the purpose of raising prayer and intercession corporately.

God told us, “Get every Christian family to become an altar. Let the families come together and pray together because I want to meet My people there.” Let the church come together every day maybe in the morning and/or evening and cry to the name of the living God. Then He told us to have community altars; maybe one meeting every month, which we call a prayer tower. Here, different people from different churches come together and they pray and call upon the name of the Lord. As we raise altars to God from individual to corporate level, God works with us in the context of each level. You find that as you begin, God will deal with issues that affect you individually. As you meet in the family context, God begins to reveal and deal with issues at the family level. It goes on to church, community and national level as each group meets often. Soon individuals, families, workplaces, churches, communities and the nation will begin to be impacted as we win spiritual battles and things are manifested in the physical realm as answers to prayer.

We decided to put this Abrahamic strategy in practice in Uganda. It was very tough and we were very few and unknown. Today you find that in Uganda, it is every easy to pray; not because we are powerful or so many, but because we have humbly accepted the call and all its requirements. We have a prayer altar every year that calls the whole nation and all nations to prayer - the AfriCamp Prayer conference that is an international prayer altar. (www.worldtrumpetmission.org)

God is calling us tonight. Where does the altar begin? God wants to make a personal altar in your heart. True prayer and worship starts in your heart. Your heart should be the first altar to call upon the name of the Lord. But as we saw, when Abraham was calling on the Lord, he was contending with other gods in the land. In our hearts we find other gods have been squatters. There maybe so many idols of anger, bitterness, unforgiveness, jealousy, love of worldly things etc. These make us crowded inside. It is first a changing of your heart. God was telling us, “You must be the first praying moving altars. Work must start within your life. As you yield your hearts then you can pass on the fire to others.

We have seen how Abraham started building altars, and generally what the prayer altar means in this context. You cannot tell others about prayer when you don’t practice it. You cannot lead others where you have not been. We need to cultivate our hearts as the first prayer altars (Romans 12.1-2). As we pray to God He will make us effective in the land. In that, we can be effective in leading others in the same position we are in because we wont just be giving them head knowledge but a life that we are living.

Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord, till he comes and rains righteousness on you.

God needs ploughed ground in order to come and soak in His anointing so that you may be people who will accomplish the purposes of God in your nation. How do you attract the pillar of His presence into your life so that it goes through the firmament and you have open heavens at all times? You have to keep your fellowship and relationship with God unbroken.1

Today we continue to examine more closely, the family (or corporate) altar. After cultivating your heart so that it becomes an altar, you have legal ground for God to affect the land. Before revival can take over a nation, it has to start in your heart. As each person yields their heart to God they become a praying, moving altar. Wherever you are, you have fellowship with God; that unceasing prayer bubbling out of your heart thus fulfilling the scripture “pray without ceasing”.

Solid food is for those who are mature who have trained themselves to recognize what is right and wrong and then do what is right.

As we work out our salvation, we can train ourselves to be in constant worship and prayer so that even when we are interacting with other people, our spirit is in constant bubbling deep within like a running motor. When a situation arises which requires prayer action, we immediately counter it without having to be “warmed up.” Can you imagine what happens if a number of people with this kind of heart attitude toward prayer come together in fellowship? The scripture will indeed show results that say, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I will be in the midst of them. Whatsoever they bind on earth it shall be bound in heaven. Whatsoever they loose on earth it shall be loosed in heaven.

When you lead such a prayer lifestyle, people who interact with you will notice the difference, at your place of work or at home. In every situation you get involved, things start to change. In your family, you must bring change. It is not just a coming together to say some short routine prayer and read a psalm or two or praying with the children when they go to sleep. We need to cultivate a real prayer atmosphere in the home. This is very vital. People around us, must experience the presence of the living God. We shall see how this is effected as we study the Importance of the Family Altar.

God wants us to create family altars. Families come together for meals or to watch TV, but when it is prayer time, God wants us united more than ever. As you come together the presence is not only upon your life, it comes on the whole family. The pillar of fire covers up your entire household and it can even affect the neighbors. In this, even spiritual warfare becomes easy because you have a bigger area of influence compared to when you are praying individually.

The church and the nation start with the family. In one congregation, you can be from different families however under that church umbrella you are also one big family. The family, as God intended i.e. one husband, one wife and their offspring (if God has blessed them with any) is a very fundamental unit for two great entities – The nation and the church of Christ. That is why the devil is busy destroying God’s definition of the family. If he can destroy the family, he can destroy the church and then destroy the nation –that is his agenda; to steal, kill and then destroy.

1 Effective Fervent Prayer © Michael Kimuli – Published by New Wine Press 2003

The strong family foundations have influenced Strong and successful society set-ups. Deterioration and breakdown of society has been traced to dysfunctional or broken family foundations.

When there is no effective fervent prayer in the family, you have lost the church of the next generation. The church is only one generation away from destruction. When you do not do your part to raise up the next church generation in your family, you are part of the destruction of the church in the next generation.

Many people are busy trying to give their lives to God but they leave their children and families behind Moses said to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 6:6-9

And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes, and thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.

Train up your child in the way that he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.

And ye fathers provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord

God wants us to fellowship and pray corporately as a family. Your children are the pastors of tomorrow, the prophets of tomorrow, the presidents of tomorrow. They are the ministers of tomorrow, and the national and spiritual leaders of tomorrow and the policy makers of tomorrow. The devil has blinded us and we have not trained them in the admonition of the Lord, thinking that, when they grow up they will decide for themselves. Meanwhile, the devil is having a hay day with the children today.

We can go to church today and it is okay, but where is the church of tomorrow? When we travel to different nations in the world, we cry a lot for the church there. Most of them have cultivated nothing for their children in spiritual things. When you go to church you find all people are old. When you go to a church you wonder, “Where is the future church?”

With the information age, leaders and policy makers are getting increasingly younger and younger. Information is power and the youth are at the cutting edge of acquiring it. They increasingly advise and direct affairs of today in every aspect.

All marketing is geared to the younger generation. What kind of policies and decisions are they making today? Are they building Godly foundations? Today the unadulterated Bible truths are being twisted and bent diluted and simply ignored to fit into the way of today’s thinking; whether in animistic or humanistic direction. However our God who in times past redeemed the family and society, is able to do it again in our generation.

This journey will prepare your generation and the generation to come. When you pray you are helping children who come after you to find the work easier. We need to pray in our family. God wants to visit your family. A Christian who comes to church on Sunday uses only an average of two hours in the 168 hours of the week. If the pastor takes some extra time, he gets tired, walks out. He spends another 166 hours waiting for the next 2-hour dose of spiritual sustenance. If he is diligent he makes a little two or five minute snatches of prayer and worship or attend a midweek cell group meeting. How will he be effective in the land? How can he work with God in such a lifestyle? God wants to meet you where you spend a big chunk of your time.

After a good church service we say we have been in the presence of God. God is asking you “In whose presence are you at home or at your place of work?” Many people don’t really think about it that way. The minute they leave the church door they think the presence of God is left behind.

“Again I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them

God is looking for unity. Many families live together but inside they are divorced. They are not in unity. They don’t draw the fellowship and relationship with God in their house. Today we are increasingly hearing the call for the church to come in unity, but unless it starts in the family, how will the church be united?

Some think the church is the remedy. Some come to church after fighting at home and say, “Let me come to church and sing and praise God, because that is where the presence is,” but God wants to come to your family. “A family that prays together stays together”.

As children come in His presence their calling and gifting are cultivated at an early stage however, today most Christian children, are the ones who bring trouble in their nations. Brothers and sister go back and start family altars.

When we started the family altars in Uganda, we saw many breakthroughs coming in our nation. God was telling us “every Christian home is a prayer altar”. Two years ago, we have around 7 million who were born again Christians. How much more powerful would the effect of such a large mass be, if all their families come before God every evening and/or every morning and call on the name of the living God, on behalf of themselves and their communities? There would be chaos in the kingdom of darkness!

God is calling us also to start cell group altars. These in turn come together in a church altar, which consists of different families coming together. From every level of society that we come, we enter greater levels of authority in the spiritual realm. There are certain demon gods you can contend with as a family, especially those that come against you from your family lineage. However as a single-family unit, you cannot come against a spirit ruling over a village territory unless you are united in a cell group with other families or members of the neighborhood. Once we come together, there comes upon us a corporate anointing to reach a greater level of authority.

Today, the devil will fight two things. The first is prayer. Many churches have program from Monday to Sunday except prevailing prayer. Even when church comes together on Sunday service, people can praise for one hour but when it comes to prayer, they do it for two minutes and then they go to the next thing on the agenda.

The second thing is the Word of God. Today people don’t want to hear long sermons. Within two hours most congregations will have 15 or 20 minutes of God’s Word, unless the speaker is giving them a message that will tickle their itchy ears!

Many people will argue, “Do we have to pray only? Is that all that we need to do?” No it is not. As I said earlier, everything we see in the physical is a manifestation of what has happened in the spiritual realm. If immorality and demonic activity and kingdom of darkness is overcoming in the physical realm around you, it tells you who is prevailing in the spiritual realm over the land. All things begin in the spirit before they are manifested in the physical. The destiny of your family, your nation is in your hands and it must be won in the heavenlies first before it begins to be manifested. Prayer is the only communication way of communicating from the physical realm into the spiritual realm. (Ref. God’s Watching Priesthood – Michael Kimuli)

After prayer has broken through, then people will have opening to push for other physical agendas in the nation. Otherwise, the world is full of physical strategies and many of the nations from where these strategies are emerging are moving further and further away from God and His purposes. If you don’t pray, God will have nothing to do in your nation. The destiny of the nation is in your hands. You can let it to go or take it and pray through.

Prayer sustained the early church in Acts of the Apostles. The Bible says, in Acts 242-47 everyday these people came together and prayed. They broke bread in every house. And as they did that God added to them those who got saved. Moreover they came to church or temple everyday. In Acts 3 it says, as it was the 9th hour John and Peter were going to temple for that was the time of prayer when the lame man was healed. This is not something new, it sustains revival.

As the family altars are set up and the network of prayer began to take shape, villages started receiving transformation. One of our missionaries, David gives the following testimony:

Our town is 17 miles from Kampala. As you enter the town, there are two mosques on each end that act like entrances to the town. These people would wake up every morning and call their demon gods. They did that every day until one day, we got spiritual anger and said, “This will not happen when we are here”. So when we came to church altar, I told my brothers and sisters what I had in my heart. I said, “We have to come against this spirit. We will wake up at 5 am and call upon our God and call on Jesus Christ in our families and He bring turbulence so that when they call on their god, they find that the firmament is messed up.

We went to our family altars, we repented of covenants and sacrifices made to the demon gods and when we came together as a church, we started to come against that spirit because we had legal ground to attack it. Within one week up to today, their speakers don’t speak again. Another week on Sunday we saw one Maalim (teacher of Islam) coming to church. We wondered, “What has he come for? A fight? But as we welcomed the visitors we asked him to greet us. He said, “I have come here not as a visitor. I have come to stay.”

We knew we have done something in the spiritual but we did not give up there. Once a week we resist that spirit and continue to pray for sustained victory. The Muslims are coming to Christ, not because we have gone to preach to them, but because the strong man was overcome. With our God all things are possible. We need to win battles in the spiritual realm and the physical will manifest our success.

We need to pray informed prayers. That is knowing what to pray for. That is what kind of prayer we have to pray. Know what you are praying for. That means you have spiritual mapping of the land to know “where is the name of my village/city coming from? You might find out it is a rock somewhere and there was sacrifices taking place there in the past. You need to know all the altars in the land. God does not want these altars to be in the land. That is why Elijah had to contend with them; so you need to pray informed prayers.

You need to pray united prayers. Unity is needed to pray for revival because with unity we have corporate anointing. People coming from different ministry and churches, as we come together, we have new level of authority. From now we can contend with these powers. The fewer we are, the harder the area. The more we are the less the work. Had Elijah got some other people to help, it would not take all the years he took. Today, God is calling for unity. We need to be united with people as prayer partners so that we pray united prayers.

Also, you need to pray focused prayers. We need to have a focus not just praying anyhow. That is why we need prayer Captains. Today we are praying for our nation so that we know what direction to take. Through this prayer we know what we have accomplished. We need to have people with objectives who say, “after such a time we shall accomplish this. Let us not beat about the bush it will not be effective”.

Have unity for a purpose. Not just coming together and praying without a purpose. Many churches are united when a powerful preacher is coming and when he goes, the unity goes with him; we go back in our small zones and kingdoms. Can’t we learn that our power is in unity?

I encourage you today; if you have not bought the Transformations 2 videotape or DVD, please buy it. You will see how the church altar and the family altar work and how God worked in the nation of Uganda. People have come to know that “wherever God has placed me, I am an ambassador.” During AfriCamp Prayer conference we hear testimonies of what God has been doing in the nation and other nations where people have been learning about prayer and community transformation.

There are some offices where the pastors have no access, but you have access because you work there. You are the pastor there. Begin to pray for your place of work and with time God will honor your work. Wherever you work, you are an ambassador. You are not there to get money or have a position. God in that place does not identify you by your job description. He identifies you by the ministry He has place upon you in that position. If he has called you as the prophetic voice in that office, or the pastor or the teacher in that place or whichever position He has for you there, it is what He looks at and wants you to be a good and faithful steward. Begin to seek God for what He wants you to be and to do in that place of work.