How do you truly transform your trouble-laden community? Is it outreach? Evangelism? Activism? Discipleship programs?

This past week we celebrated five years of continuous daily prayer in the heart of my hometown. The consistent daily prayer began July 26, 2020, with a countdown of 100 days until Election Day. A group of people had gathered to pray every morning from 6 a.m. – 7 a.m. When November 3, 2020 finally came and went, the realization was even stronger that we couldn’t let off the prayer pedal now. So it continued, every day, and the little group of intercessors grew larger.

Daily communion was administered. Connections were made that led to prayer initiatives in other towns. Most recently, the Lord has orchestrated a mighty initiative of healing and deliverance that is taking place on an almost daily basis, in which individuals and families seek personal prayer and repentance from that which has kept them bound.

Every individual in the prayer circle represents numerous different churches and several municipalities. Some are pastors and some are doctors and some are school teachers and some are tradesmen. There are men and women in their eighties as well as young moms and dads sometimes accompanied by their children.

To commemorate what the Lord has done through five years of daily prayer, Peter and Sharon Ogilvie, who host the prayer at Park Street Chapel, organized a week of fasting, worship, and a time of 24-hour prayer in which individuals could commit to shifts throughout the night. Some stayed the entire time.

The culmination of the celebration occurred Saturday evening, July 26th with worship, followed by nine testimonies.

“Every testimony shared was an impossible case,” Peter observed later.  A former self-described lesbian witch, now saved, baptized, married and who in the last month led her estranged father of 16 years to the Lord and baptized him – all this since September of 2024. A young man freed from the claw of addiction, evangelizing strangers and ministering deliverance to others every week.  A woman who never wanted to step inside the church again because of deep hurt compounded by trauma, now at every single event where the Body is assembled, overflowing with gratitude to Jesus.

“Every testimony was an impossible case.” This person could never be soft and tender toward the things of God. That woman’s knee placement surgery was canceled due to supernatural and overnight healing. That prodigal returned. All of them bearing more fruit perhaps than most lifelong Christians.

And this was only a snapshot of what the Lord has done these last five years.

You can only defeat the devil through prayer

Our small but growing community is rich with discipleship programs in town for marriages and for young people, counseling services of various kinds, a clothing and food bank. But it is prayer that is the centrifuge of all of it.

The public school is the most evident battleground for the souls of our young people. “We got nine solid Christian individuals elected to the school board.,” Sharon Ogilvie observed. “But you can only defeat Secular Humanism through prayer.”

There is much more travail that needs to take place. Our community has suffered the loss of several young people in the last year due to suicide, and vape shops selling the legal opiate Kratom shamelessly continue to pop up everywhere to peddle their destructive wares. Programs alone cannot avert spiritual crises.

Prayer + Obedience = Victory

As I reflected on those engaged in this ongoing prayer, it occurred to me that these are the same faces I see each week giving their time to tutor in the middle school. These are the same faces that I see showing up whenever there is a material need in the community, such as volunteering at the homeless shelter. These are the ones taking the time to talk with young men playing pickup at the park about Christ. These are the same ones holding various public offices to serve our community and the greater region. The prayer warriors are the ones that are courageously standing up to speak for decency in the public schools amid jeers and defamation from the secularists in attendance.

Our prayer is in its infancy. One man in the prayer group received a prophetic word in March concerning our community. He is someone who does not consider himself prophetic, but wrote down what he heard the Lord say. He tested it with some brothers in the Lord, and finally, felt free to release it to the rest of us. This word from the Lord was very specific, and involved revival starting among the young people, and miracles.

How about you? Is there daily prayer being offered in your community? Are you called to pioneer this and invite an unprecedented move of God?