ELECTING TO BLESS
CONVENTIONAL WISDOM SAYS THAT ELECTION SEASON IN THE U.S.A. is about hard-ball tactics, political calculating and candidates saying or doing whatever it takes to get elected.
But what if candidates lived by Kingdom principles instead?
A glimpse of this can be found in Hawaii, where candidacies operating in such principles are generating both positive voter experiences and something infinitely more lasting - changed lives.
Hawaii custom requires that for 3 to 4 months before elections, candidates and their supporters must spend two to three hours every morning and evening along a major highway holding signs and waving at voters. This ensures that all candidates get an equal base of "face time" with voters.
One such candidate running for the State Legislature decided to turn his waving exercise into a "Prayer Wave". As he and his supporters stand roadside, they pray for every driver that passes by, asking God to bless, guide and speak to each one.
This same candidate then went a step further and developed a strategy to pray blessings over each home in his district. As he and his supporters walk the district - 10,000 homes in all - and leave campaign material, they pray blessings over every house. By Election Day on November 2nd, they will have physically prayed over each of those 10,000 homes two or three times.
In the course of the door to door visits, God has opened the way to pray for even a few to be delivered from sickness, family troubles, adversities and addictions. The visits have sometimes turned into an opportunity to counsel the residents on how to seek God, read and understand His Word, beginning with the Gospels, so that they encounter and come to know Christ and grow in a personal relationship with Him.
The new mindset is not confined to just one campaign either - other Christian candidates, aware of the extraordinary opportunity to minister to an attentive constituency, have also begun integrating ways to use prayer evangelism in their activities.
What other than God's Kingdom can take the competitive world of politics and reshape it into a vehicle to bless a community?
If you're eager to join the movement of blessing instead of cursing, speaking peace where there is discord and bringing God's hope where hopelessness has reigned, please
join us by clicking here and help open new avenues for changed lives.
