The Paul who wrote more of the New Testament than anybody else began his ministry – the one he received from God – in an encounter with the Living God on the road from Jerusalem to Damascus. On a mission to arrest followers of Jesus he is struck to the ground by a vision of the Risen Jesus who asks why he is persecuting the Son of God. Jesus then remarks that it hurts Paul to kick against the goads – the revelations of Christ that are transforming the world and directing travelers like himself to their destination in Christ. Paul – known as Saul prior to the Damascus Road – is transformed and re-booted as a man created in the image of God and he never looks back over the rest of his earthly life. In the California Governor’s Prayer Team we always begin our times of worshipping God and praying for His blessings on California with a plea to provide every leader in the state with a Damascus Road experience – beginning with ourselves as we pray.
The Governor’s Prayer Team is an interdenominational ministry with chapters in every state. Its founder and national director is a pastor named Tom Walker who is based in Indianapolis, Indiana; I am the state coordinator for California. Although the state governor is aware of us – and we do pray for him – the governor referenced in the name is the Governor of the world referenced in Psalms 8 and in other scriptures as well.
Our goal is to have coordinators in each of California’s fifty-eight counties; we are presently represented in twenty-seven. Coordinators receive an e-mail from me at least once monthly – often more frequently – in which I share whatever I know about what is going on in our state that could use concerted prayer. We host weekly conference calls and we take a team into the state capitol once each month to pray inside the building – with the blessing of hosting legislators. (Actually, PrayNorthState has been doing this since 2005; I became the CGPT coordinator in 2012.) We teach our people to pray only for blessing and transformation in our state; we exercise Our Lord’s mandate to forgive if we would be forgiven, and we worship and celebrate His Supper at every bend of the road. County coordinators are required only to meet regularly with their own team of praying people and to fold the points in my e-mail in with whatever else they are praying. Each has a history of his or her county provided by Reformation Prayer Network to guide the long term intercession over the county in terms of what God is up to locally. We are, of course, on the look-out for seasoned and trustworthy people to become coordinators in unrepresented counties.
What do we pray for?
We pray God to shape each of our leaders – beginning with ourselves – into the people He intended when He knew us in the womb; that is the meaning of the Damascus Road for us. We pray for the culture and season of repentance that has preceded each of the previous three Great Awakenings of the Body of Christ in America. We include prayer for wise stewardship of our state’s resources and a commitment to justice for all – not just those we deem excluded from it – as legislators allocate those resources in the state budget. We pray that God would cause leaders to fall in love with the limitations placed on their power in our state and federal constitutions. We ask God to shine the light of day on the many scandals plaguing our state and nation. We acknowledge that the condition of society is nothing less than a report card on the state of the Church. When the one is healthy so is the other – and the Church is called to lead in the process.
We do pray over specific pieces of policy and legislation, especially when it concerns the most basic rights to life, freedom of conscience and expression, and the unrestricted pursuit of prosperity for the benefit of our families and communities. These are rights given by God and guaranteed in those constitutions we love. But we do not curse anyone or anything; we simply ask God to transform hearts in whatever terms seem good to Him.
God never asked His people to transform the Roman Empire. He commanded us to become so transformed ourselves that we effectively infiltrate the empires in which we live with the life, the love, and the peace of God. We get it that when we Christians are living God’s life others are attracted. This works fine for us.
James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships and The Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at
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