Lessons of Hopeful and Strategic Prayer
By Matt Lockett
I was standing in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on June 24, 2022. At precisely 10:10 a.m., the Court released its opinion in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Screaming and cursing from an angry crowd filled the air in the passing minute as a stark reality became known.
Roe v. Wade was overturned.
I wasn’t just passing by right at the moment when the Court released the opinion. On the contrary, I had been standing in prayer in front of the U.S. Supreme Court since 2005, when God called me to leave my career in the marketplace to become a full-time missionary on Capitol Hill.
My journey to that moment began with a dream from God that I received in 2004. That dream was about day and night prayer and the end of abortion. Though neither of those things was important to me at the time, God made it known that they were very important to Him. He initiated something in me that pointed to that moment. After almost 18 years of contending prayer, a big part of my dream dramatically came to pass.
Rees Howells, the notable man of prayer used powerfully by God during WW2, wisely observed:
A prayer warrior can pray for a thing to be done without necessarily being willing for the answer to come through himself; and he is not even bound to continue in the prayer until it is answered. But an intercessor is responsible to gain his objective, and he can never be free till he has gained it.1
From the beginning, God made it clear to my team and me that success in this epic battle to shift the nation from death to life would require more than prayer—we would have to become intercessors.
A Sustained Presence
I direct the Justice House of Prayer DC (jhopdc.com), which has a special emphasis on prayer and intercession for governmental matters and revival in America. I also lead a nationwide pro-life prayer mobilization called Bound4LIFE (bound4life.com), widely recognized by the red tape worn over the mouth with “LIFE” handwritten on it.
“It’s not a protest. It’s a prayer meeting,” has been our response since God showed us the Life Tape through a dream and directed us to take a silent, prayerful stand in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. That “Silent Siege” began on October 4, 2004, and lasted for 17 years, eight months, and 21 days. That’s 6,473 days, but who’s counting?
In that time, we had the privilege to preside in prayer over ten nominations and eight confirmations to the U.S. Supreme Court—almost a complete turnover of the nine seats. It has been a high honor to draw close to God in this process while pursuing the righting of the grievous wrong of abortion.
I have attempted to distill years of prayer to end the injustice of abortion into some essential lessons we have learned through experience. Principles emerge that I believe are vital to establishing sustained, focused prayer. Here are a few:
Feel Deeply and Don’t Become Callous
If you want to make a difference, you must allow yourself to feel things deeply. Repeating buzz words or using hashtags won’t suffice. Unfortunately, when you’re dealing closely with dark, violent, oppressive, or unjust things, you risk being affected by them in unexpected ways.
The natural tendency is to put in place barriers and safeguards to protect yourself. That urge will sometimes disguise itself as “self-care.” Friends will encourage you not to take things too far, which can sound like wisdom.
The truth is that we live in a pain-averse culture. We go to great lengths to ensure that we don’t feel bad things, and that mindset spills over into our prayer life if we let it. Think of it as spiritual anesthesia that we secretly hope will allow us to undergo a procedure without feeling the impact.
Jesus invited Peter, James, and John to go a little further with Him in the Garden of Gethsemane when He was experiencing deep sorrow. The point was that Jesus wanted them there to witness and participate in it, but they missed that opportunity.
It should come as no surprise that God would allow us to experience elements of disappointment, frustration, and discouragement as we pray because it serves a purpose. To go through those experiences makes us more effective intercessors by allowing us to identify with the subject of our prayers. It shrinks the gap between you and them.
The Greek word for intercession is partly defined as “a falling in with” or “a coming together.” Jesus powerfully modeled this act of identification:
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin (Heb. 4:15, esv).
Identification is more of an art than a science; it can take many forms. For us, God gave us the dream of the Life Tape. We felt so foolish when we first stepped out in obedience to “do the dream,” but God made it clear that it was His wisdom.
In our forced silence, we understood that God had us identify with the silence of the babies in the womb, who have no voice to defend themselves. Bearing the public reproach of that silence for all these years crafted us into more effective intercessors.
When dealing with matters of injustice, one of the biggest challenges is not to become callous and jaded over time. When there is a long delay for justice, it will take a toll on you emotionally, spiritually, and sometimes physically.
The test is to keep your heart tender for the long haul—toward God and people, even your enemies. The only way to do that is through prayer.
The more callous you become, the less ability you have to feel things. Allowing callous thoughts and attitudes to creep in is a one-way ticket to cynicism, which is the opposite of faith.
I am so thankful that God has given us grace over many years to maintain softness in our hearts even though we were dealing with the ultra-violence of abortion. It resulted from daily and continually returning to the Lord in prayer to encounter His heart on the matter. Our hearts remained tender because He gave us the tenderness of His heart.
Learn How to Lose
The Church needs to learn how to lose. Does that statement offend you? We indeed win in the end, but the question remains how we get there. I’m convinced that surviving disappointment and discouragement is one of our most significant obstacles.
Please read Daniel 7 carefully:
“As I looked, this horn made war with the saints and prevailed over them, until the Ancient of Days came, and judgment was given for the saints of the Most High, and the time came when the saints possessed the kingdom” (Daniel 7:21–22, esv).
Here is a sweet and precious promise from Scripture: We lose before we win.
Jesus expounded on the time Daniel described, saying, “Many will fall away,” and, “The love of most will grow cold” (Matt. 24:10–12). That thought should trouble us. I believe it points, in part, to how we respond when we lose. We need to have the ability to suffer loss without turning against God in blame.
Learning how to lose invites into your prayer life an important principle presented by Jesus:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24, esv).
There must be death before resurrection, and we are not spared that reality in our intercession. The agony of defeat is an essential part of the life of an intercessor.
Never was this more clear to me than when, after a long string of losses, a pivotal pro-life case came before the Supreme Court in 2016. We were faith-filled and hopeful. Much prayer and fasting went into that court case, and we felt at the time that an overdue win was coming.
We were distraught when it did not go our way in June that year. USA Today featured a photo of me in Life Tape on their front page, depicting my team and me as the national poster children of losers in America. Ouch!
Another newspaper made it even more explicit on their front page with the headline: “Pro-choice Victory, Pro-life Agony.” Under the word agony was a close-up picture of Life Tape.
Agony is a necessary part of being an intercessor.
What Did God Say?
Over and over, we must go back to what God has said. That always revolves around the infallible truth of Scripture but also hinges on specific words and promises God gives in a particular situation. God showed me the end of abortion through a dream in 2004 and how it would come about through day and night prayer. That word—that promise—has been a light to me in many dark times.
Sometimes those periods were long stretches when nothing seemed to happen with the abortion topic. At other times, much was happening, but we repeatedly felt crushing defeat. When everything seemed to fail, I could go back to the Lord in prayer, declaring, “But You said!”
His loving and encouraging response would inevitably come, “You’re right. I did.”
My faith and will became fixed upon an unrealized outcome because, somehow, I had already seen it as a reality. Present circumstances and opposing forces pale compared to an intercessor who has laid hold of God’s will in a matter.
It Is Finished
The victory over Roe v. Wade belongs to no one except Jesus Christ. It is because of His victory over death that any would-be intercessor can stand.
Every time we prayed with Life Tape in front of the Supreme Court, we applied the blood of Christ by receiving communion. In this moment of victory over abortion, we can say that the blood has accomplished its work.
“It is finished” is not a proud statement about the overturning of Roe v. Wade so much as it’s a joyful acknowledgment of the finished work of the cross.
But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem . . . and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel (Heb. 12:22-24, esv).
I’m thankful that we have a blood that speaks a better word than the blood of 63 million aborted babies. The work continues in earnest in states all around the nation. God is looking for intercessors to take their stands. Intercession is the supreme vocation.
Will you answer the call?
1Norman Grubb, Rees Howells, Intercessor (Fort Washington, PA: CLC Publications, 2016), p. 121-122
MATT LOCKETT is executive director of Justice House of Prayer DC and leads Bound4LIFE, a prayer movement targeting the end of abortion and the sending of revival to reform government and culture. He is coauthor of The Dream King and a member of America’s National Prayer Committee.
