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Jon Quesenberry, Director of the Charlottesville House of Prayer, shares the “Principles of Engagement” his team used when standing and worshiping in the midst of recent rioting in their city.

The Charlottesville House of Prayer is a Presence-based community. Our intention is to pursue God as a first commandment priority. We meet every Friday night to participate in worship, wait upon the Lord, and then share together what we hear God showing or saying to us. We are committed to walking in intimacy and obedience to the Lord.

There are a few principles that have assisted us in learning how to participate with God in our community. We are not particularly focused on spiritual warfare as a primary activity. We don’t focus on inquiries about what the enemy is doing in our city. Our primary interest in prayer has been to discover God’s love, His purposes for us, and His purposes for our city. Our response to these discoveries moves us to participate with passion as He directs. With our focus on seeking God for what He is doing, we are able to take our eyes off the darkness and place them on Jesus.

We approach God in faith. True and active faith involves giving primary attention to SEEKING God! If He truly is all-knowing and all-powerful, then we cannot be effective unless we regularly and genuinely seek Him (Heb 11:6).

In the months preceding August 12 we were asking God for His heart and His purposes for our city. Knowing the heart of God is what prepared us and then empowered us to participate with Him in this assignment. Knowing the heart of God fills us with His unlimited compassion and enables us to respond properly. Information about what to do must come out of His compassion. Like Mary of Bethany, we must refrain from distractions and choose “the better thing.”

We cultivate the fear of the Lord. As we grow in relationship with Jesus as King, we begin to understand the immeasurable depth of BOTH His love AND His justice. As we grow in relationship with Him, a respect for His courts and for His spoken word grows. This intimacy produces a disposition of humble gratitude and a holy fear.

We are learning to “inquire of the Lord” as people in the Bible did. We open our hearts to ask Him questions, fully expecting to hear and fully expecting to walk in obedience to what He says. We write down everything that we hear in prayer. We record God’s communication with us out of immense respect and love for Him (2 Peter 1:21).  Our journal entries become much more than inspirational thoughts. They are whisperings of love and power that enliven us and give us specific operational directives for an overcoming life. This is what Jesus described to His disciples: “The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life (John 6:63b.)

We engage in spiritual reconnaissance. Spiritual reconnaissance is gaining insight from God by exploration — going places and doing things as the Lord directs. Three weeks prior to the rally, I had a compelling dream. I saw an “angry torch” coming down upon an aerial view of our city. I sensed that the torch had to do with the Emancipation Park rally, so I went to the park and walked around. I was led to a portion from Isa 32:17, “The fruit of righteousness will be peace…” God spoke to my heart about how focusing on Him alone (righteousness) would be our source of peace for engagement. The previous day the Lord gave me the word “lawlessness” so I wrote it down in my journal. Clarity about the focus for our assignment was coming into view. A torch of lawlessness was coming to Charlottesville and our assignment was to stand in the place of worship and prayer in agreement for God’s purposes, rather than the widespread influence of the lawlessness that was coming.

We get clarity on the plan. In the context of corporate discernment and prayer, it became clear what we should do. The confirmation of the Lord was strong in that other intercessors and worshippers seemed excited about joining in. We would gather in a circle and worship (as we had done on several occasions) to worship and pray, keeping our eyes on Jesus and making declarations in agreement with heaven from 10:00 to 11:30 a.m. We were not going to protest in agreement with the agenda of other people. We were going to stand in the place of prayer to find agreement in heaven.

We take a unified group. Two days before the rally, 24 people had indicated they were coming to worship and pray. On the morning of the event, 11 of us showed up at the House of Prayer to go down. In retrospect, the group that showed up on Saturday morning was exactly who was supposed to be there. I have heard Intercessory leaders emphasize that it is important to take only seasoned intercessors to events such as this. In our case, it was clear that the most important things were passion and focus on God, agreement on the plan, and the unity of the team. Confidence in God and in His strength was the common thread of all who came. We had not gathered around a doctrine or an idea. We were there to gather around a Person. In doing this we saw God shift the atmosphere to deliver our city from an overwhelming torrent of violence.

We keep our eyes on Jesus. It is easy to get distracted in the midst of all the voices competing for our attention. We knew it was essential to maintain our focus on Jesus. We did experience some fear. Like Peter, we looked around at the wind and the waves and we began to sink! As we kept our eyes focused on the Lord during this spiritual assignment, we began to gain insight into what was going on around us. Because our eyes were on God, we were able to reflect His glory in our countenance. We could sense the pleasure of the Lord rise up within us.

We do not alter the discerned plan. Without the proper fear of God, we could be tempted to change the plan based on reasoning. We felt very clearly that God was calling us to participate against the spirit of Lawlessness by gathering in a circle to engage in worship and prayer from 10:00 to 11:30 a.m. only. We were to stand in a circle and keep our attention on God in worship and prayer. We were not to engage other people but to engage heaven. So that is what we did.

With the first word of worship, the air immediately shifted and when we stopped at 11:30 we knew the assignment we were sent to do was completed. We left the event safely, just 10 minutes before as state of emergency was declared.

We give God the glory. The final principle is to selflessly share the testimony of the Lord. The enemy is defeated because faith rises up against doubt and fear in response to the testimony of the Lord. When we partner with God and see Him do mighty things, it is essential to allow people to see the purposes and power of God without people standing in the way to block His view. Our testimony is that we saw God ruin the plans of the enemy in our city.

“And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death” (Rev 12:11).

–Jon Quesenberry can be reached at [email protected] or their website at www.charlottesvillehop.com