Prayer Time

Consider our shield, God; look on the face of Your anointed one.

-Psalm 84:9

There is a group called POTUS Shield.  They have a convocation this week, in Ohio.  

Do you know about the Esther fast for our nation (March 8-11)?  

This is what Lou Engle wrote:

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS

Esther said, “I and my young women will also fast as you do. Afterward, though it is against the law, I will go to the king…and if I perish, I perish” (Esther 4:16)

There are moments in history when a door for massive change opens. Great revolutions, either good or evil, spring up in the vacuum created by these openings. In such divine moments, key men, women and entire generations risk everything to become the hinge of history—the “pivot point” that determines which way the door will swing.

The Esther Hour

Esther is a prototype of history’s hinge—a courageous woman who humbly and artfully spoke truth to power. Facing witchcraft and dark conspiracies at the highest levels of Persia’s power base, Queen Esther found herself providentially positioned (right place, right time) to risk everything for the love of her people and their future. Armed with little more than her dignity and the secret arsenal of corporate prayer and fasting, her courageous actions spared an entire nation from annihilation.

Three years ago in a leaders summit in Fredericksburg Virginia our meeting was sovereignly hijacked as the Lord shifted our focus toward the hidden taproot of strength in the godly women of America. We began to envision something of a million women gathering on the mall in Washington DC, similar to the Promise Keepers gathering, that would be a last-stand breakthrough to hold back darkness in America. Those hours of corporate intercession were as strong and clear as any prophetic moment I have ever encountered in 30+ years of prayer, but at the time we could not see how it could be brought to pass. Habakkuk's statement seemed to be the counsel of the Lord to us, “Though the vision tarry wait for it, it will surely come.”

The Truly Empowered Woman

That moment arrived January 21, 2017, the day after the inauguration of President Donald J. Trump, as hundreds of thousands of women took to the streets with the purported aim of “empowering women.” In the vacuum created by 1) the election, 2) historic women’s injustices, and 3) sadly, President Trump’s past hurtful statements towards women, a pretender movement seized the American stage. Like a false heiress to history, this alternate narrative sought to forcibly reframe our daughters’ and granddaughters’ identity and future. Even so, the truth was immediately plain for all to see: this was about power, not empowerment. To the degree that the Women’s March railed against injustice while refusing to acknowledge God’s exalted view of women and her glorious purpose, it was a misleading, even dangerous attempt, to swing the hinge of history away from God. Hundreds of thousands of women watching the March simply could not identify with the vitriol and radical ideology being shouted from the stage, claiming the right to define womanhood apart from the Bible. Deep in their hearts, women across the country declared, "This is not my revolution!”

Now, like Esther, those same women are rising “for such a time as this.” An instinctive, corporate yearning has gripped the nation for trueempowered women to demonstrate how the meek (i.e. strength-filled humility) possess the earth. It’s time for this corporate Esther to frame a better, more hopeful, God-centered future for our nation by taking her place in the public square like never before. We need an entire generation—a movement—of grandmothers, mothers and daughters to be boldly visible, persistent in persuasion, and to demonstrate the humility of our national appeal to Heaven in prayer.


Fasting through Purim

Shockingly, the Women’s March was only a first shot across the bow. In reality, an alliance of spiritual anarchy is presently being unveiled in full defiance of a “We The People” electoral result and biblical truths that undergird our nation. With a disturbing brazenness (and the consent of the media), the dark underbelly of anarchy issued a global summons to employ witchcraft and curses against President Trump, his cabinet, and those aligned with a biblical worldview. Like a veil being torn so a deeper secret could be revealed, suddenly, the public controversy was elevated to a global spiritual dimension. This made plain what we have known from the beginning: Spiritual battles cannot be won on the playing field of protests and political arguments. Only the Church has the answer to such an unprecedented manifestation of witchcraft. If we do not employ spiritual strategy to overcome this steely-eyed challenge of the powers, the days ahead will be dark days indeed.

Esther gives us clues. According to Derek Prince, the Persian advisor, Haman (the adversary in the Book of Esther), practiced divination through the casting of lots, thus clearly aligning himself with demonic spiritual powers in his plot to destroy the whole Jewish population in the earth. Esther’s response, a 3-day, no-food-no-water fast, was the nuclear option of her day. It was an act of desperate dependence on God, the only thing capable of breaking the dark powers being channeled by Haman’s witchcraft. “Esther and her handmaidens” led the whole nation in an intense period of fasting and prayer for three days leading up to Purim. Amazingly, dark schemes at the highest levels of government were exposed. Esther’s fast effectively reversed the curse and shifted the whole public policy of the Persian Empire in favor of the Jewish people. I cannot stress this enough: we are in a similar day and a cataclysmic battle for the soul of our nation. We cannot live the same way we lived yesterday.

Recently, two women contacted me and asked me to use my influence to call for a 3-day Esther Fast to answer this challenge. Immediately after, I experienced a life-changing dream where I saw a nation-wide Esther movement arising that alone could break a major spiritual power of death. I knew then that I was to take my place as a Mordecai and call for Esther and her handmaidens, even the entire nation, to boldly become the hinge which this hour of history requires. The Jewish holiday Purim celebrates God’s deliverance of the Jews through Esther’s fasting, sacrifice and courage. This year, Purim begins on Saturday evening, March 11th. Therefore, we are seizing this sudden moment for 3-day Esther Fast from sundown on Wednesday, March 8th through the evening of Saturday, March 11th to counter this witchcraft, pray for the President, and contend for this uprising of an Esther movement in America that will, among many things, reverse the decree of ‘73, Roe V. Wade, just as Haman’s decree was reversed and hold back the rising tide of anti-Semitism.

Let the women arise as Esthers for such a time as this and take their place in the courts of heaven and in the public courts of man to shape history in this hour. If your heart burns, mobilize this fast to all your connections. Blow the trumpet in Zion! Call a fast!


Lou Engle
Founder, TheCall, Inc.