by Dutch Sheets
I heard a visiting minister in Eaton, Ohio, share this testimony of God's protection in World War II. He served on a ship and every day he and a few other sailors would have a prayer time, seeking God for protection for themselves and the ship. What were they doing? Building boundaries (paga) of protection.
"In one battle," he related, "an enemy plane dropped a bomb onto the deck of our ship. Instead of exploding, however, to everyone's astonishment the bomb bounced off the deck and into the water, just like a rubber ball would!" This minister went on to say that in battle after battle they and the ship were miraculously spared.
Well-Timed Times to Pray
Boundaries of protection! No trespassing! Life in the secret place!
This facet of intercession is not only to be something we do on a general regular basis for our family and loved ones. There are also specific times when the Holy Spirit will alert us to particular situations that need protective prayer. These are what the Scriptures call kairos times.
There are two Greek words for "time." One is chronos, which is time in general, the general "time in which anything is done."' The other word, kairos, is the strategic or "right time; the opportune point of time at which something should be done."6
A window of opportunity would be kairos time.
A well-timed attack in war would be kairos time.
When someone is in danger or about to be attacked by Satan, that is a kairos time.
What time it is would be chronos time.
The Bible speaks of well-timed (kairos) temptations (see Luke 4:13; 8:13). No doubt coincidental temptations occur-a person just happening to be in the wrong place at the wrong time-but there are also well-planned, well-timed temptations. It pays to be alert, both for ourselves and for others. I've had the Holy Spirit prompt me to pray for individuals, especially young believers, with the thought, it's a kairos time of temptation for them. This is what took place in Luke 22:31-32 when Jesus interceded for Peter, praying that his faith not fail him after he denied Christ. It worked.
Is it possible that some who have fallen away from Christ would not have if someone had interceded for them?
The Scriptures also inform us of strategically timed persecution (see Acts 12:1; 19:23). This is usually to discourage, to distract or, in extreme cases, to destroy us. In these references, during times of renewal and success in the Early Church, Satan launched orchestrated attacks of persecution. They failed.
Is it possible that much successful persecution against the Church could be stopped or rendered unfruitful if we were alert and interceded against it?
Often we forget the instruction to not lean on our own understanding, and fail to acknowledge Him in our intercession (see Prov. 3:5-6). We do not wait for or listen to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, usually to our own hurt. We forget that "we wrestle not against flesh and blood" (Eph. 6:12, KJV) and that the "weapons of our warfare are not carnal" (2 Cor. 10:4, KJV). We are so afraid of becoming demon conscious (putting an overemphasis on them) that we become demon unconscious. Sometimes our quest for balance gets us out of balance.
Ephesians 6:18, the context of which is spiritual warfare, says that we are to "be on the alert . . . for all the saints" and "pray at all times [kairos] in the Spirit." He is not telling us here to pray all the time, which would be chronos, but to pray at all strategic times (kairos). In other words, we are in a war and if we are alert He will warn us of the well-timed attacks (kairos) of the enemy so that we can create a boundary (paga) of protection by praying.
Kairos, a Time to Paga
One morning several years ago as I was praying, the Lord gave me a mental picture. Some might call it a vision. Whatever it is called, I saw something: a rattlesnake coiled at my dad's feet. Seemed like a kairos time to me! I spent about 15 minutes praying earnestly for his protection until I felt released from the urgency.
The next day he called me-he was in Florida, I was in Texas-and said, "You'll never guess what happened yesterday. Jodie [my stepmother] went out back to the shed. Before walking in as she normally would, she pushed the door open, stopped and looked down. There where she was about to step was a coiled rattlesnake. She backed away carefully, came and got me and I killed it."
I said to Dad, "Yeah, I know."
Surprised, he asked, "How did you know?"
"I saw it in the spirit," I responded, "and prayed for your protection. You owe me." (No, I didn't really say the part about owing me. I acted real humble and said something like, "Praise God" or "Praise Jesus." You know how we do it!)
What was I doing as I prayed for him? Setting boundaries (paga) of protection around him and Jodie.
How did I pray? I asked the Father to protect them. I bound any attempt of Satan to harm them. I quoted a verse or two of Scripture promising protection. Then I prayed in the Spirit.
Gail Mummert, a member of our fellowship in Colorado Springs, shared this remarkable testimony of protection during a kairos moment in Lancaster, Texas:
As we were driving home in threatening weather, my husband, Gene, turned on the radio for a local report. Funnel clouds had indeed been spotted nearby. After arriving home, things grew strangely calm.
In a short while, the wind started to blow fiercely. Trees were bent over and the very walls of the house began to flutter. Windows rattled and hail beat on the car port.
"Get into the hall and close the doors," my husband shouted. "Get pillows, blankets and a flashlight."
"Nana, I'm scared," cried our five-year-old grandson, William.
"Jesus will take care of us. Don't be afraid," I told him.
Suddenly sirens began to go off in our small town. The walls moved as though they weren't anchored to anything. "If we're not in a tornado, we're close," shouted Gene as he ran into the hall.
"Link arms and sit on the floor," I said.
"I love you," Gene said to us as he surrounded us with blankets and pillows, covered us with his body and enveloped us with his arms.
A mighty rushing wind was all around us and sucked us together into a ball. "Pray! Keep praying," he said.
"God Almighty, help us!" we screamed.
Explosion!
Windows shattered, glass flew everywhere. Another explosion. The walls caved in. Debris shot everywhere like arrows toward their target.
"Jesus, help us! You are our Savior! You are our King!" my voice cried. I looked up-the roof was falling on us. A ladder crashed down on my husband's back.
"Now start praising Him," Gene shouted through the wind. The next blast was the worst. There was nothing we could do. Only He could help us. Everything was out of control, but we knew the sovereignty of God. We knew we were at the point of death, but we shouted, "Thank You, Jesus! Thank You, Lord!"
Suddenly, peace filled me like a flood. A sweet voice filled my heart, "I've heard your cry for help. I've bent the heavens for you. No matter what happens around you, I'm here protecting you." Tears flooded my face and I knew Jesus was protecting us. It seemed His arms had surrounded us. I knew we would be safe.
The tornado was over. The rain beat down on us with a force I had never felt before. We were safe. "Mama, I see the sky," little William said.
"William, that's because the roof is gone. We probably won't have any walls, either," Gene informed him.
"I'm so thankful we're okay," our daughter Wendy cried. "Jesus protected us, didn't He?" Though buried under tons of debris, our hair covered with insulation and glass, we were okay. Just a few minor injuries.
Talk about walls of protection! Several people were killed and many injured in that devastating tornado, but the everlasting arms of the Lord protected the Mummert family. Gail was privileged to share her entire story with The Dallas Morning News. The newspaper even printed her testimony about the protection of the Lord.
I had a friend in Dallas several years ago who experienced an interesting answer to prayer in a kairos situation. She had gone early one morning to visit her son and daughter-in-law. The son worked an all-ni
ght shift, so, awaiting his return from work, his wife and mother visited for a while. As time wore on and the son didn't arrive, Mom began to feel uneasy. Something didn't seem right.
Thinking that perhaps he was still at work, they called his place of employment, "No," they were told, "he has already left."
Becoming more alarmed the mother said, "I'm concerned. Let's drive toward his place of work."
She had assumed her son had left work at his normal time and should have been home by then when, in fact, he had left just moments before their call. But the Lord was directing even in that because, though he was not in any danger yet, the Holy Spirit knew a kairos moment was coming for this young man, and He wanted this praying mother there when it happened.
As Mom and daughter-in-law drove toward his workplace on a busy Dallas parkway, they saw him coming from the other direction on his motorcycle, traveling around 40 to 50 miles per hour. As they watched, he fell asleep and veered off the road, hit the curb and flew 40 or 50 feet through the air. He was not even wearing a helmet.
As the boy was moving through the air, Mom was praying, "Jesus, protect my son!" She continued to pray as they turned around and drove back to him. A crowd had already gathered around him, and they ran to the scene, wondering what they would find.
They found a miracle! No injuries-no bones broken, no lacerations, no internal injuries. Just a dazed young man wondering what had happened.
Paga happened . . . Kairos paga happened! Boundaries happened. A mother picked up on the warning from the Holy Spirit and was therefore in the right place at the right time.
Does this mean that if you weren't there praying when someone you loved had an accident, you're to blame for their injury or death? Of course not. If we all played that guessing game, it would drive us insane. It simply means we must be alert, and when warnings do come from the Holy Spirit, we must respond by praying-building some boundaries.
I heard a guest lecturer at Christ for the Nations in Dallas, Texas, tell another interesting story involving not a kairos moment, but a kairos season of building boundaries (paga) of protection.
He had a vivid reoccurring dream, which he felt strongly was a warning from the Lord, of his married daughter dying. In the dream he was not shown how her death happened, but he felt strongly that Satan had a well-laid plan to take his daughter's life. So as not to alarm her, he told only his son-in-law and the two of them began to intercede (paga) daily for her safety. They were building boundaries (paga) of protection around her.
This minister related how several times a day-while he worked, drove his car, walked, whenever it came to mind-he would bind Satan's plan to take his daughter's life. "How would he do this?" some might ask. "What did he say?" He probably said things like:
• "Father, I bring my daughter to You." That is creating a "meeting" (paga) with God.
• "I ask You to protect her from any trap Satan has set for her. You said You would deliver us from the snare of the trapper" (see Ps. 91:3). That is building "boundaries" (paga) of protection.
• "Thank You for laying this prayer burden on me that I might lift off and carry away from her (nasa) this assignment of death." That's having someone else's burden or weakness "laid on" (gaga) us.
• "Satan, I bind this plan of yours and break any hold you may have gained in this situation. Your weapons against her won't prosper and you're not going to take her life." That is "meeting" (gaga) the enemy to break.
• "I do this in the name of Jesus!" That's basing all our prayers on the work Christ has already done. It's representing Him . . . administering what He has already accomplished . . . enforcing His victory.
About a month later-remember, I said this was a kairos season and I said he prayed daily-his daughter received a promotion at work. With the promotion came a life insurance policy that mandated a physical exam.
At one point in the process, after a blood sample had been taken, a doctor addressed her in a near panic with the question and comments, "Lady, what have you been doing in your diet? We can find no potassium in you at all! You should be dead. There is no reasonable explanation as to why you're alive. When this deficiency occurs, a person normally feels fine but suddenly drops dead. We must get you to the hospital immediately and begin to replenish the potassium."
She lived, of course. She had been on a strange diet for several weeks, during which she had eaten only one or two kinds of food. Though there was no reasonable explanation as to why she lived, we know the spiritual explanation: a boundary (gaga) of protection built in the spirit through prayer.
Under the Shadow of the Most High. Keep Out!
Perhaps the most amazing example of kairos-timed intercession in my life happened on one of my journeys to Guatemala. I was one of 40 to 45 individuals traveling to a remote place on the Passion River in the Peten Jungle. Our mission was to build a combination clinic and outreach station on the river. We were to be constructing two buildings as well as doing a little preaching in the nearby villages.
It was an amazing trip. We ate monkey meat and boa constrictor. We killed huge tarantulas, a nine-inch scorpion and a coral snake in our camp. I was attacked by ants that, unbeknownst to us, had taken refuge in the lumber we were hauling and sleeping on as we traveled all night up the river. We flew in old, rickety army planes and landed on fields from which goats had to be cleared prior to our arrival. (None of this has anything to do with prayer, but it lets you know how incredibly brave I am and how much I've suffered for the cause of Christ.)
Our leader, Hap Brooks, had me leading songs from the front of our long dugout canoe as we journeyed up and down the river. His favorite was "It's a Good Life Livin' for the Lord." He also made me utter my famous Tarzan call, which was incredibly good and would reverberate across the river and into the jungle. Natives from the villages would stand on the banks and listen. Having never seen or heard of Tarzan, of course, they were not terribly impressed-in fact they sort of had that "who is that idiot?" look on their faces. That is, until the animals in the jungle began to come to me! They had the same expression. (This has nothing to do with prayer, either, but it lets you know how incredibly talented I am.)
Back to the purpose of the story. Prior to leaving for the jungle, we spent our first night (Friday) in Guatemala City, the capital of Guatemala. We had arranged months earlier for the Guatemalan airlines to fly us the following day into the jungle. On our arrival at the airport Saturday afternoon, we were informed that they had changed their plans and would fly us to our destination not that day but the next.
Feeling an urgency to go as scheduled due to the limited amount of time to accomplish our mission, our leaders pressed the airlines for three hours to honor their original agreement.
"No," the manager said in his broken English, "we take you tomorrow."
"But you agreed months ago to take us today," we argued.
"We have no pilot available," they countered.
"Find one," we pleaded.
"What is your hurry? Enjoy the city," they encouraged us.
And so it went for three hours, in and out of offices, meeting with one official, then another. Finally, in exasperation, one of them threw up his hands and said, "Okay, we take you now! Get on that plane-quickly!"
We all ran to the plane, throwing our bags and tools into the baggage area ourselves. We wanted to leave before they changed their minds.
That night, while we were 250 miles away, an earthquake hit Guatemala City and killed 30,000 people in 34 seconds! Had we stayed in the city one more night-as the airlines wanted us to-some of our team would have been killed and others injured. We know this for certain because on our return to the city we saw the building we had stayed in the night before the earthquake-and would have been staying in again had we not left on Saturday-with huge beams lying across the beds.
The connection between all this and our subject is that an intercessor from our home church back in Ohio had received a strong burden to pray for us on the second day of
our journey. For three hours she was in intense intercession for us. Can you guess which three hours? Yes. The three hours that our leaders were negotiating with the airline officials.
We didn't know that our lives would have been in jeopardy had we stayed another night in Guatemala City, but God did. This intercessor didn't know it either. She only knew that for some reason she had a strong burden to pray for us. She was alert, as Ephesians 6:18 instructs us, and perceived the kairos time. There isn't a doubt in my mind that she helped create the protection and intervention we experienced.
There is a life in the secret place, but it's not automatic for believers. Although we are promised protection from our enemy, we have a definite part to play in the securing of it for ourselves and for others. The intercessor knows this and leaves nothing to chance, posting signs for all the forces of hell to see: "Under the shadow of the Most High. Keep out!"
Questions for Reflection
1. How is the connection between paga and protection made?
2. Is all protection automatic for Christians? Is everything that happens to us allowed by God, or do our actions and prayers have a part in it? Explain.
3. Comment on consistency in prayer as it relates to protection.
4. Explain the difference between chronos and kairos and how this relates to intercession.
5. Have you posted any "No Trespassing" signs lately?
C H A P T E R S E V E N
BUTTERFLIES, MICE,
ELEPHANTS AND BULL'S-EYES
A Happening by Chance
I was riding high, literally. About 200 feet high, as a matter of fact. I was parasailing in Acapulco.
My wife, Ceci, and I were on the last day of our three-day vacation in this tourist hot spot. I had been watching this activity all week, seeing the boats pull individuals from off the beach, up into the air and across the beautiful waters. These airborne sailors would soar effortlessly for 5 to 10 minutes, enjoying their freedom from the bonds of the earth, and then be swung back onto the beach. To the amazement and cheers of us less-adventurous earthlings, they would land softly and accept our applause. They didn't even get wet.
