I’ve had an aggressive and warlike kind of prayer on my mind for the last few days. This is the kind of prayer that that brings down spiritual strongholds and dark power structures like those described by Paul in Ephesians 6.

Forty years ago, SWAT teams were still a new idea. Large metropolitan police departments had teams, but the smaller departments were just considering the concept. At the time, I had left a large urban sheriff’s department in California, where I had trained for several years on a SWAT team. Each month, along with our in-house training, we also trained with FBI special operations teams. When I arrived in Oregon, I was done with that season in my life but offered to help my new smaller department set up what would become the foundation of their own SWAT team.

Part of that development process was getting to meet with arms dealers representing some of the most exotic weapon systems in the world. Many of the weapons were out of our budget and outside of the parameters of our concept. One system was a multi-rifle sniper weapon. The triggers on each of the sniper rifles were electronically linked together. The rifles were designed to fire at the same time when all targets were engaged and all triggers pressed. This enabled a SWAT team to take out multiple terrorists at the same instant.  A sniper might press his personal trigger many times throughout a hostage incident before his weapon finally fired in unison with the other snipers connected to the same weapon system. When the moment to fire finally came, all the targets would be eliminated at the same time.  It took patience, but the results were dramatic and devastating.

Some of you who are part of prayer networks are functioning in prayer like the weapon system I just described. You have been praying and “pressing the trigger” in prayer for a long time wondering why certain cultural scenarios have not changed or why some strongholds still remain in place. What you don’t realize is that you are part of a global strategy of prayer. There are other networks of prayer around the world praying with you working in concert to bring down evil forces that are the equivalent of a group cultural hostage-takers. 

Continue to press your assigned prayer trigger. Be patient and faithful. Keep your assigned target in view and follow its movements making sure it remains in the crosshairs of your prayer effort. God has commissioned you to take part in a moment of history when the world will be amazed at how rapidly righteous change will take place on the world stage. Those who benefit from your expertise and faithfulness in prayer will most likely never see you or even know you were there behind the scene because you were deployed in a secret place known only to those whose calling is intercession.