Called and anointed to be peacemakers
In the past week the news from America has been dominated by reports of a wave of protest and riots that has swept across the nation in response to the shocking killing of a black man, George Floyd, in Minneapolis, by a white policeman on May 25.
The protests against police killing of black Americans have been turning increasingly violent — especially at night — exacerbating already raw divisions in the nation ahead of elections scheduled in November.
Watch the video below, which was posted by global worship movement Burn 24-7, for testimonies of the power of worship and prayer in the midst of darkness — and of what happens when Jesus-followers step into their divine calling as peacemakers.
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In the video, Pastor Ali Ferrell of the Resting Place House of Prayer in New Jersey drops in on a virtual meeting between Burn leader Sean Feucht and JT Thomas and his Civil Righteousness group in Ferguson, Missouri, and shares what happened when he gathered a group of about 50 worshipers to join a justice protest in New York yesterday.
The worshipers headed for the 9/11 memorial in New York to spend some time worshiping the Lord and releasing hope in the city before the lunchtime march nearby. Police at the memorial, who were not expecting the worshipers, admitted them to a closed area where they worshipped the Lord exuberantly for about two hours. More and more police officers — about 90 in all — gathered around them and curious reporters interviewed the Christians. Then the visibly-moved police insisted on escorting the worshipers to join the secular protest march.
“We marched with people, prayed with people. It was the most peaceful and anointed protest — thousands of people. I just got weeping when we got there to see different races standing together there and saying: ‘Not on our watch’
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“You know, I’ve been around tons of unity gatherings in the church and it was nothing as powerful as that. We just went to release songs of hope and life and it was so powerful just to see the cops’ hearts being softened, allowing us to minister prophetically over them and people were just coming and watching.”
In the video below, JT Thomas makes a powerful call on believers to take to the streets — especially in 60 cities affected by unrest — and to worship and pray at police stations, courthouses and places that have a history of division.
He says: “We the Church, have been commissioned to finish the great work of reconciling to Christ of all things to Him, through Him, and we have left our post in the culture and now those who do not have a conviction for justice that is compelled by love but rather are compelled by rage — they have owned the language and have shaped this current activist generation.”
Thomas also shares a powerful testimony of worshipers and intercessors changing the atmosphere of a protest gathering and paving the way for the Holy Spirit to minister during a time of unrest in the US six years ago after a white policeman in his city, Ferguson, fatally shot a black man, Michael Brown.
He says it is a tipping point time in which God is looking for believers to step into the crisis engulfing the nation as peacemakers.
He says Christians have the divine authority to make peace and God is asking them to take their worship into “the centre of the plague and help us to ascend the mountain of the Lord”.
“There is a breaker anointing on those who will step into the midst of the chaos,” he says.
Endorsing Thomas’s call, Feucht says: “We need to stand up for injustice but the weapons of the world are different to the weapons we use and we cannot sink to the level of anger so many are expressing.”
He says protests are being hijacked all over America and so much of it is demonic.
“Part of me is grieved by the response of so many in the Church. We are the ones who are supposed to control the narrative and I feel an urgency, like the narrative is slipping away from us . Lets engage — in social media, in what we say and where we gather — in a spirit of meekness and humility and unity.”
See video of media interview of worshipers in New York yesterday morning:
