We witnessed a miracle this week after Buffalo Bills football player Damar Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest on the field during Monday night’s game. It was a terrifying moment. An entire NFL football game, critically important to the season, was postponed and ultimately called off. No one complained.

The entire Bills team got down on their knees on the field and prayed publicly, opposing players prayed, the entire stadium prayed and people prayed all over the world. Millions of dollars were given to his small charity to help children. No one knew whether he would live or die. In fact, he had died, basically, and was brought back to life. In that moment, we were focused, rightly so, on one life. Even today we are witnessing what appears to be a miracle in progress as we finally have reports that he is awake and communicating and making a “remarkable recovery.”

Our prayers were answered.

Prayer Under Attack … Though Not So Much This Week

And to think there are those in power who strive to remove prayer from the public square. Yes, even football fields. High school coach John Kennedy had to fight all the way to the Supreme Court after being fired for praying at the 50 yard lines after games. 

Do you realize that without the Supreme Court siding with Coach Kennedy, the foolish laws passed by current leadership in America and continually pressed by the secularists could have every one of those who got down on their knees Monday arrested and fired from their job? Think about that. Everyone in that stadium who prayed could have been arrested. The ESPN sportscaster who dared to pray on air could have been locked up.

Over-exaggerating? England just arrested a woman for praying silently across from an abortion mill. 

Think about the foolishness of the laws that are even now redefining sex and gender and allowing for males to compete as females in competitions, thus destroying what these naturally born women have worked a lifetime for. Look what we are allowing to happen in our schools! How long are we going to put up with this?

The Gates of Hell Cannot Prevail Against a Praying Church

You may say, “Well, James, how do we stop it?”

This week showed us the answer: “The gates of hell cannot prevail against a praying church!”

It’s time to come together in focused prayer for all these different leadership groups I referred to. Pray for every marriage. Pray for families. Pray for every community, every city, every county and every state that God would pour out His Spirit on those people and we would return to Him with our whole heart.

The One who knows what matters and why it matters is God, our Creator. Divine Providence still knows what’s best. If our founders recognized that they had to pray to give wise birth to this nation, if Ben Franklin — a man not known as a spiritual giant by any means — called for prayer at a moment of impending crisis, in the pursuit of freedom’s establishment in the United States, and if men known as deists could call for prayer, why don’t people professing to be Christians call for concentrated, focused prayer?

The Power of Focused Prayer

There has never been a greater need for focused, concentrated prayer. This is a coming together of concerned people of God talking to the one Person, the one Power, and the one Force who can change and correct everything. This kind of prayer moves the power that the gates of hell cannot prevail against. It is moved by the people referred to not only as the family of the perfect Father, our Creator, Divine Providence, but also as the body of Christ, the Church.

God has re-emphasized something to me this week that He revealed to me years ago in my private prayer time. He literally said it almost conversationally:

James, you don’t realize how powerful that illustration is that I gave you. Years ago you shared it, but people may not get it. It needs to capture them. James, you made the reference that focused prayer — concentrated prayer — on the part of people who are literally addressing serious concerns in specific prayers of agreement has the power of releasing a mighty river through a turbine. Enough energy is created in that focused moment that you could light up an entire desert with the power of electricity.

Look at the state of Arizona. Consider the power of the turbine in Boulder Dam and the force that creates that energy. That’s what prayer does. It moves more than mountains. It moves indescribable challenges and problems and difficulties. It changes people. It solves problems. It gives us answers. It gives us miraculous solutions. So now is the time to pray.

Time for Earnest, Focused Prayer

Pray for those in Congress. Don’t be angry that some are defending important issues. Just pray that they will come together at the table of reason for the sake of freedom, for freedom’s future and for the benefit of all the people God loves so much. Remember, He gave His son to redeem us, to give us freedom, life, fullness and fruitfulness in life. Please come together in earnest, focused prayer and release the greatest power that the universe can witness: answered prayer! God says, “I will answer if you call upon Me …” “If you will ask, you will receive …” “If you will seek, you will find …”

You will see miracles because our Father’s kingdom has come, and it’s not only at hand, but in us. We can see God’s will done on His earth, in our lifetime through our Spirit-filled, yielded lives. Please pray for the supernatural awakening that our nation must experience. It can begin right now in answer to focused prayer. It is freedom’s only hope.

James Robison is The Stream’s Founder and Publisher. He is Founder of LIFE Outreach International and co-host of LIFE Today. He’s the author of many books, including Indivisible (with Jay Richards) and Living Amazed.