New England and The Glory Procession, Part One

I do not recommend driving fourteen hours straight with two preschool-age children. In fact, I probably would have not recommended it before doing it; now, I speak as one with authority. However, when God tells you to to something, you do it, and He gave us the grace and endurance to fulfill the task. He is faithful to help us to complete His assignments.

To be sure, though, we spent over fifty hours in vehicular travel time in the course of the eight days we spent as part of The Glory Procession. We, and especially Judah and Anna June, have learned how to function like first-world nomads, eating from a stash of snacks in the trunk and napping propped against headrests.

Jason\’s family has been rooted in the south, and in Middle Tennessee specifically, for hundreds of years. They are so connected to the land I have wondered if his and my children\’s red-brown skin is a reflection of the very earth of the Cumberland Basin. While I am not, by birth, a native southerner, my father was born in Nashville, and my heart has always lived there. So, for us to decide to drive into the great unknown of New England was not only a stretch of our faith, but our culture, and as we stood overlooking a harbor on our first night in Connecticut, it is safe to say I felt more a foreigner there than in Albania.

But, we are Tennesseans. We are the Volunteer State.

Our desire to join the procession, which was a prayer tour of the thirteen original colonies, had more to do with our heart for the historical roots of our nation than simply a desire to visit places we had never been. We feel called as intercessors to other nations as well as our own. Much of America\’s spiritual inheritance is rooted in its history: it is the great religious freedom experiment. And now, in these places where America was born, freedom for religion has become suppression of religion. The cathedrals and monuments stand, but the light, hope, and truth they represented have been snuffed out.

And many would ask, Why prayer? Why worship? Why prophecy? Why not feed the hungry or restore buildings or lead a VBS? What good is prayer?

Prayer changes people.

Worship changes environments.

Prophecy speaks that which is not yet into existence.

When you release the sounds of prayer, worship, and prophecy, you set in motion a mechanism of lasting change. You thump the first domino that knocks down a path for the work of the Gospel. We want to lend our voices to the cry that clears a way and creates faith to move the Kingdom forward.

Prayer is not sound and fury signifying nothing. It is the till that breaks hardened ground in preparation for a seed.