The Ohio Valley: A Call to Prayer

By Gary and Thelma Hess

The Ohio Valley: A Call to Prayer is a practical and scriptural guide to praying for the Ohio Valley. This is a much-needed resource for all believers who have a desire to pray effectively for the states that encompass the region as well as apply the scriptural principles to your own region. 
This manual, with a harvest prayer focus, gives you an opportunity to pray and cover everyone that lives within this region and even your own if you live outside of the Ohio Valley. They are prayer suggestions of lists of seven states, over 600 counties and over twelve thousand cities and towns.
It has seventeen prayer suggestions to cover the lost, ministers, local congregations and the Body of Christ at large.
The fervent prayers of the Righteous avail much. May we enlarge our prayer vision and see much avail happen for the Kingdom even in these last days.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BooxAi
• Release date: Aug 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9789655783551

Book preview

Chapter One

Answering The Vision’s Call

God's Call

I have called out with My voice,

And asked you to pray.

Today is the day.

Please come and do it My way.

See, behold, the people,

White to be harvested,

Pray for them.

I want them.

Do you want them for Me?

As I wanted you,

as I loved you,

As you were harvested for Me,

Coming out of the darkness.

Yes, as you received

Your awakening of Me,

Awakening, awakening

From spiritual death,

Awakened to eternal life,

And there is no end,

To My awakenings.

So come now! Follow and obey Me,

And you will see,

And you will see.

Shirley Hess Christensen

The Call To Prayer

Acts 10, an exciting chapter, shows us how God chose to answer one man's prayer. Cornelius, a devout but unsaved Roman centurion, prayed to God without knowing Him as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Peter, a member of Jesus' inner circle, also was a man of prayer. In a most dramatic way, God brought these two men together. When the centurion and the disciple met, Cornelius and his household were born again and baptized in the Holy Spirit. As a result of this, Peter realized that salvation was for all men - Gentiles as well as Jews.

In Matthew, Jesus tells us we can ask, seek, and knock (Matthew 7:7). Jesus also tells us that it is God's desire to give good things to those that ask Him (Matthew 7:11). Cornelius and Peter's experience teaches us that prayer is universal and available to both the sinner and the saint. Just as Cornelius and Peter prayed, each one of us can call upon God in prayer.

However, God also is calling us to prayer (1 Thessalonians 5:17). God's call to prayer invites and seeks to persuade believers to join forces with heaven. By faith, we can answer this call (Colossians 4:2). When we take this step of faith and heed His bidding by committing our lives to be His servants, God's call to prayer becomes special. As His call draws us to prayer, and as we feel the drawing, we can give ourselves to prayer on behalf of others. By doing this, we become prayer laborers for the Lord. In these trying times, God needs laborers that will become His yielded vessels to pray for mankind.

As yielded vessels, we receive both general and specific prayer assignments. These prayer assignments answer the immediate needs and those ongoing needs that know no boundaries or time limits. We have been given the Ohio Valley as a portion of our prayer assignment. As you continue reading this book, we hope that you will gain a better understanding of the call and prayer vision we have (Habakkuk 2:2).

We are simply asking you to join us in this special call to prayer by praying for the Ohio Valley. We believe God wants prayer from the people of this area for this region, our nation, and the world.

How We Answered

As an associate pastor of a church in Frankfort, Kentucky, I began doing research on the Great Revival of 1800-1805. My revival studies revealed that praying churches got results, ministers began working together in harmony and unity, and people became hungry for the things of God. When revival broke out in 1800, it gave birth to the Bible belt and changed the lives of countless people. As I shared these things with our Sunday night crowd, I began to preach that local churches needed to reach out to one another and pray for revival in their respective communities and throughout the state.

In 1986, slowly but surely, the Holy Spirit pushed Thelma and me toward the edge of our call. I reached a point in November where God's calling, burning on the inside of me, came to a boiling point. Nothing, not even a cold icy night, could deter me from sharing with our pastors what I believed God was calling us to do. With their encouragement, we soon began traveling throughout Kentucky to bring pastors and others together to pray. Not long after that, we established a Prayer Network that linked pastors and local churches to a regional, state, and interstate prayer vision.

From 1987-1990 we traveled throughout Kentucky and also to Tennessee, Ohio, and Indiana to hold corporate prayer meetings. As pastors and people of prayer came together, we prayed for God's will to be done on the earth and interceded for the lost. Also, we prayed for the move of the Holy Spirit and revival; for the five-fold ministry gifts, and for unity and harmony among ministers. We supplicated for the Body of Christ and prayed for our children and youth. From time to time, the Prayer Network brought together a geographical representation of people from across the state of Kentucky to pray together. This gave us the geographical breadth we sought but not the spiritual depth in prayer we desired.

Depth in prayer has two dimensions, a numerical and a result side. More people from many backgrounds and denominations, independent fellowships, and churches need to be involved in prayer that forms bridges of support and unity with one another. We know a depth in prayer will result from unlocking the great financial, human, material, and natural resources within the Ohio Valley for the work of God's kingdom. The goal is a persistent, systematic prayer for immediate needs and long-term results.

Redirecting our steps, in April of 1990, the Lord caused us to move to Indiana and took us into full-time ministry. Over a period of time, He has shown us that the Ohio Valley has a vital role to play on behalf of America's strategic spiritual assignment for itself and the world. Times are such that we can no longer afford to be lukewarm or to allow ourselves to slumber. There is much work to be done in the realm of the spirit and on behalf of sinners and saints in this region. Unless we do what God has called this region to do in prayer, people's destinies and spiritual lives will not be what they should be. Much is at stake for the life of our nation as well as other nations.

Chapter Two

The Greater Prayer Life

When the Lord called us to pray for the Ohio Valley, He showed a number of things we were to do: (1) encourage individuals as well as congregations to exalt and fellowship with the Lord, giving honor and reverence to Him; (2) motivate people unto love and good works; (3) promote leadership to be raised up for service unto the Lord; and (4) help release the financial, material, natural, and human resources within the Ohio Valley for the work of the gospel.

Exalting the Lord

The priority of prayer is praise and worship, the highest form of prayer. Praise and worship allow us to magnify His rank and dignity, honor His power and glory, and declare His righteousness and holiness. When we praise the Father, we extol His mighty works in our midst. Through worship, we love and glorify God for who He is. O Lord, thou art my God; I will exalt thee, I will praise thy name; for thou hast done wonderful things; thy counsels of old are faithfulness and truth (Isaiah 25:1).

By giving the Lord the love He so richly deserves, we set into motion our true motives for exalting Him. We are motivated by adoration, not fear, by desire, not obligation. We worship and love Him because we choose to: give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name... (1 Chronicles 16:29a).

Every time we come into His awesome presence to love Him, our spirit man rejoices that we are a living sacrifice, an offering of worship to the Lord. With joy, we declare, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power: for thou has created all things, and for thy pleasure, they are and were created (Revelation 4:11).

We have spent hours singing in the Spirit, exalting the Lord through praise and worship in the privacy of our own homes. During these moments, there is a realization that a mutual exchange of love is taking place between you and the Lord. Your life absorbs His life in a never-ending process of spiritual joy and communion. You are giving and receiving. He is giving and receiving. As the song says, We are one in the Spirit; we are one in the Lord.

When we fellowship with the Lord, we soon recognize that we want to express our love for Him by serving others. By asking the Holy Spirit for guidance as we seek opportunities to pray for people, our prayer life will travel the path it should take. Then we will truly exalt Him in this important area of our life.

The Corporate Experience

The opportunity for churches to help people experience God through praise and worship in service is unlimited. As a youth, I remember hearing a Scottish woman evangelist sing the song How Great Thou Art. Every time she sang those words, When I in awesome wonder..., I felt the awesome presence of God. Congregations will raise the level of their praise to new heights as they sing with their understanding and in the Spirit, actively seeking the glorious presence of the Lord.

As churches learn to soften their hearts toward the Lord, ignore time constraints, and give and yield their spirit to Him, they will bow their knees to the Father. The key is giving the Holy Spirit the quality and quantity of time He longs for. Only then can we worship the Lord in spirit and truth. Once churches learn to flow in worship, they will no longer be afraid to sit in silence before the Lord. As this happens more and more, the Holy Spirit will be able to move in a greater way.

We desire to see the time when each of the respective Ohio Valley states will have an annual state-wide corporate praise and worship service. Then out of this experience, periodically, all of the Ohio Valley states could come together to praise and worship the Lord. We look forward to the time when the people of the Ohio Valley will raise their voices in unison