14 Saved Through Prayer on Streets in AustraliaCarla Harding - 10 May 2010

“24-7 prayer is going great guns here in the Southern Australian Territory of The Salvation Army.” Writes 24-7 Coordinator June Knop.  “The last 6 months have been incredible.”

I was first in touch with June and others in the Salvation Army back in 2007 when they decided to create a chain of prayer that would span their region and fill a year with unbroken prayer.  It has been amazing to read the reports from groups, some of whom never thought they could manage 24-7.  It seems that extreme prayer was so impacting that 365 days was not enough.  Almost three years after they started the vision is still growing…  

“We’re still praying!  We have 162 churches across Australia (not including New South Wales and Queensland as they are the Eastern Territory of the Salvation Army) and 150 participated this year in 24-7 Prayer. 42 of them did it for the first time!
 
Several corps have committed not just to 24-7 but to a regular time of 24 or 48 hours a month. The Melbourne 614 corps prays for a few days several times a year. Last September they were having so much fun that they just kept going and did 9 days straight! At the moment they have been praying since the middle of April AND THEY WEREN'T EVEN SCHEDULED ON THE ROSTER!
 
Some of our churches are really small, especially in rural locations.  Many are combining with other small Armies nearby and doing their time 'together' or are combining with other churches in the area to do a community time of prayer.
 
Little Ulverstone corps in Tasmania of about 30 people initiated and worked with every church in their town to fill 40 days with prayer prior to Easter 2009… The officer/leader there said that 5-15 people were at every session and it turned the united Church, that had been experiencing problems, around.”
 
I love the way that 24-7 Prayer can unite Christians across denominational differences. It’s great to hear about places like the above and others like Noarlunga Corps; they have a permanent 24-7 Prayer Room, which they fill with 6 other churches in their area.  It sounds to me like the passion for prayer is spilling out of the Salvation Army and affecting other Christians.  June even tells us that they’re going out from their prayer rooms and taking their prayer onto the streets…
 
“Last November, as part of our commissioning weekend, when we ordain our new officers/ministers, the Salvos had a big public display in the centre of Melbourne.  They asked those of us organising 24-7 Prayer to run the Hope tent. I approached our commissioner about doing 'prophetic prayer' at the event and he said yes…
 
It was amazing!  I had no idea what to expect, as I'd never done anything like this before. I am not a prophet; although I do have predictive and prophetic dreams and visions very occasionally.... nothing that I could depend on to do something like this.  I set about building a team and found 14 who had the gift and we went to work.

We were inundated. For the four hours we were there, we prayed for 60 people. 40 were Christian and 20 were not. Of that 20, 14 came to faith!  It was staggering; we were all amazed.  One of my team was the officer at the corps I attend in Camberwell and he was so encouraged by the results that a smaller team now goes and prays at a monthly market nearby.”

June Knop and her team don’t have an end date currently for all this prayer and with new groups still discovering 24-7 it doesn’t look like they’ll be stopping any time soon!