Levant: Building Day and Night Prayer in Crisis

We are in that season again in the Levant where we are preparing to host our spring 50 Hours of continuous prayer and worship! This year, we will host it in-concert with six other locations across the 10/40 window, which is pretty exciting. We’ve hosted these 50 Hours gatherings in the Levant since 2018. Since then, we’ve gotten to work with many indigenous believers who have encountered the power, love and presence of Jesus in these gatherings. In the last few years, we’ve seen a House of Prayer planted with a desire to host prayer and worship daily. Although this will be about the seventh time we have hosted a spring 50 Hours in the Levant, we are more expectant than ever before. 

Over the years, governmental and economic crises have plagued this nation and now wars and rumors of wars surround us. Honestly, being surrounded by such turmoil can make prayer feel the least important. In fact, in my language class, I was speaking with my indigenous teacher (who is Muslim) about the war in the south of our country and she asked me “what are you doing with the influence you have as an American? Praying is not enough!”. It was a question I pondered. I went into the prayer room later that day to just sit before the Lord, wondering if what I was here for was actually making a difference. I’ve been a part of prayer rooms, and prayer and worship communities for 12 years now. I believe in the effectiveness of prayer and worship, but her words were resounding in me. Her words thrusted me into prayer and the Bible.

I flipped through the pages of my Bible and read the historical accounts of what God did when a nation was in turmoil and crisis. Each time He would invite a people to seek His face on behalf of their nation. God would respond not because humans had great strategies or ideas, but because they asked Him to intervene in the chaos that we humans created. Actually, many “revivals” in the scriptures began with people returning to the Lord, seeking His face and restoring the place of worship. What I encountered reading the Bible filled me with faith and my answer to her question was “prayer and worship is my response”. My passport-country is not what makes me effective or gives me a voice, it is the God and new family I've been born into because of the shed blood of Jesus. 

As we’ve hosted these 50 Hours of worship and prayer, especially in crisis, we have had many people ask if we can do this more often. Others have said “it's been so long since I was in a worshipful place” or “I felt the presence of God in a tangible way”. We are currently in the beginning stages of building out a daily rhythm of prayer and worship and some of the locals have joined us in the prayer room to play, pray and sing. God is building His House of Prayer in the midst of crisis by igniting a desire for worship through events like 50 Hours. People are getting a vision for a place where they can find God's presence and being filled up to go back out to their neighborhoods. God is using 50 Hours to bring churches and ethnicities together to worship and exalt His name even when they don't all agree politically. He’s giving the people in the Levant a vision for “on earth as it is in heaven”. In these 50 HOUR worship events, everyone who is there comes with the same purpose: to adore, exalt and seek the name of Jesus. Denominations, ethnicities and cultural differences all bow as we come together under Jesus’ name. We are expecting that this 50 Hours God will continue to draw men and women into His House. We are expecting God will give the church in the Levant a “Psalm 132 longing” to see God get a resting place. We are expecting that in our crisis God will pour out His precious Holy Spirit on us and awaken revival across this land. We believe that this 50 Hours, though familiar, will be marked with an “on earth as it is heaven” cry from the Levantine Bride!