Daily Devotional for Sunday November 21, 1999

Unity - The Game Plan To Victory

(John 17:21)

One of the most challenging passages of scriptures to me and one that has shaped my entire ministry, is found in Jesus' words to His disciples just hours before His death on the cross. In the great prayer found in the 17th chapter of John, we find a prayer that still has not been totally answered. Think about this the next time you complain about your prayers not being answered. Here is a prayer from our Lord and Savior 2000 years ago that has still not been answered. In that 21st verse, Jesus prays that the church would be one. A unified body. As we unfortunately know, that has really never been the case, as since the early days of the first church there have been divisions in the body of Christ that still exist to this day. Especially here in the United States, we take for granted the incredible freedoms we have to worship as we please. Some of our friends in other countries that we minister to each day can attest to the fact that in many places in the world today, unity is imperative for survival. It doesn't matter if you are Baptist, or Methodist, or if you do or don't believe in speaking in tongues. Christians must be united just to survive.

As many of you who have read my personal testimony know, I spent several years in Federal Prison in the late 80's for insider trading. It was during that experience that I rededicated my life to Christ and devoted the balance of whatever time I had left to serving the Lord. In that prison experience, those who were believers weren't concerned about denominational affiliation or some of the fringe doctrinal issues that divide the body today. We were just followers of Christ who helped and strengthened each other through a difficult time in our lives.

It was from these experiences that I have made a huge part of my ministry these last 9 years, the importance of Christians to be unified. We have been able to do so much as the people of God, yet how much more can we accomplish when we stand united. If you look at various movements that have had an impact on our society, like the Promise Keepers movement for example, their success has been due in large part to the fact that they have been able to cut through the denominational and other divisive elements to unite Christian men to take a stand for God. Here at Liveprayer.com, we are not concerned about your church affiliation or stand on various doctrinal issues. Our goal primarily is to pray for people in their hour of need. If there is one issue that the body of Christ should be in total unity on, it is the power of prayer and helping hurting people know that there is hope in Jesus Christ.

Several weeks ago, I did a series of devotionals on "Spiritual Warfare." In one of those devotionals, I told you that to win a war you must have a battle plan. For the last 48 hours, I have spent a lot of time alone with God praying about His battle plan for Liveprayer.com. I want to share with you what He has shown me and how you can be part of His plan as Liveprayer.com prepares to not only get back on the Internet, but have even a greater impact.

The Lord showed me that the key to success would be in unity and numbers. America Online has basically done whatever it wanted on the Internet due to the fact they have a membership base so large they can dictate what they do and how they do it, with no opposition from anyone. Liveprayer is a lightning rod for any anti-Christian element on the Internet because we are actively reaching out to people via the first site on the Internet to actually broadcast LIVE 24/7 as well as the over 200,000 daily devotionals that we email to people worldwide 7 days a week. Unlike most sites, we don't sit passively by, but are actively reaching out to hurting people, telling them there is hope and there are answers through Christ. Our long-term survival and success is going to be from amassing a base of unified Christian people from every part of the Body of Christ that won't and can't be ignored!

As the Lord laid this out to me, He showed me that there were to be several key people to come forward and take an active part of putting this infrastructure together. These would be a couple of key people He would call forth to take an active roll in amassing this unified army of believers.

First would be a mighty prayer warrior who would oversee the job of consistently posting to newsgroups and bulletin boards the Liveprayer.com website to let people know there is a place on the Internet to go, 24/7, where someone will pray with them and encourage them. The anti-Christian forces use these posts in newsgroups and bulletin boards effectively to mobilize their forces, and it is time for God's people to fight back!

Second is a person who will oversee a continual assault on the chat rooms to let people in those chat rooms know that if they need prayer they can go to Liveprayer.com, have a live person there talk to them and pray with them right on the spot. There is nowhere else in the world someone can go 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to find a Godly, live person that you can see and hear to pray for you. We need to bombard chat rooms of all kinds and let them know if they are hurting, in need, tired of living the way they are, or just need prayer at that very minute....they can go to Liveprayer.com.

In addition, God has showed me how each one of you can and must have a role in this important battle we are in.

First is prayer. Keep Liveprayer.com in your prayers each day. Everything we have accomplished in these first 11 weeks has been because of the prayers of God's people.

Second is to help promote the site. Use the great creativity God has given you to do your part in letting others know about the great spiritual resource on the Internet Liveprayer.com is. It is a great witnessing tool to let someone you know who is going through a difficult time, that they can go to Liveprayer.com for prayer.

Third is to help us get as many people as possible signed up for the daily devotional. Our most effective form of impacting lives for Christ is through the words inspired by the Holy Spirit that we email worldwide every day. As you know, this daily devotional is not to take the place of your personal time with God but to enhance it. It is not to take the place of going to church, but to encourage you to be more active in the fellowship you belong to. My ultimate goal is to give you sound Biblical direction on the real life problems we all have to deal with day in and day out. Just as AOL cannot be ignored because of the tremendous numbers of members they have, God showed me that when Liveprayer.com gets to a point where we are sending a million plus daily devotional worldwide each day, there will be a unified group of believers whose voice cannot and will not be ignored. One of the easiest ways to help us add more names to our list is to get people in your church with email to sign-up. You could put together a list and then email that list to me and we would add them. If each one would send in a list of just 50 email addresses from your church, we would have a powerful group overnight. Of course signing up friends and family members would be a way also. I would encourage you to pray and get God's direction on the most effective way you could help make this happen.

Pray, promote the website, and help us add people to the daily devotional list....those three things each one of you can do to help us in our fight.