One of my all-time favorite quotes comes from Walter Wink: “History belongs to the intercessors.” I actually include a long except from his book, The Powers that Be, in the footnotes to The Circle Maker.  Wink says, “Intercessory prayer is spiritual defiance of what is in the way of what God has promised.”  Love the idea of prayer being defiant.

Prayer is the way we write history.  In fact, the only way to predict the future is to pray it into existence.  I think prayer is the difference between living reactively and proactively.  Prayer is the difference between fighting for God and God fighting for us. The more I pray the more holy confidence I have.  Prayer is the way I stake claim to the future.

Remember the movie Far and Away starring Tom Cruise (Joseph) and Nicole Kidman (Shannon)? They arrive in the Oklahoma Territory just in time for the land run of 1893.  The movie climaxes when they race their horses and drive their flag into a piece of land that might as well have been the Promised Land. Love that scene.  And I think it’s a picture of prayer.  Prayer is the way we drive our flag into the ground and claim our promised land.