Worldwide Prayer Meeting

Mar 20, 2024 | by Lt. Colonel Allen Satterlee

Lake Aspen - Colorado

Prayer Focus - USA Western Territory

Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! This weekend we will celebrate Palm Sunday when our Lord entered into Jerusalem in triumph. How we sometimes wish we could stop the clock on the gospel story and just watch humanity increasingly come and accept Jesus as Lord. But instead, the crowds turned against Him, and events led to His death. But we needed that death of His more than we needed the shouts of praise or the waving palms. Our salvation came through the blood. We still shout “Hosanna!” but not because of His entry into a city but because how He left the city to take a temporary place in a tomb. Palm Sunday means something because Easter was coming.

Prayer

Dear Lord, As we draw nearer to Holy Week help us to not rush through it. You spent eternity preparing for those moments. You incarnated Yourself in a body like ours as the vehicle for sacrifice to settle once and for all the great offense that sin was to Your holiness. I can’t begin to understand the why of it all let alone how it all worked but I am so grateful for what You did for me. I know there was no shred of hope, no possibility of any good outside of what happened during that week. Help me not to take Your cross for granted or to smooth its splinters into some lovely gold jewelry so that it isn’t so ugly. While I can’t grasp everything about what You suffered, help me to grasp some of it, enough to help me feel again my debt to You, how tender is Your mercy, how beautiful is Your grace. Prepare me in these days to experience Your passion so that I might love You more dearly. In Your precious name I pray. Amen.

Background of the

USA Western Territory

            The USA Western Territory covers not only the western half of the continental United States but Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, and the Pacific countries of the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and the Northern Marianas. As such, it covers one of the largest geographical areas of any Salvation Army territory in the world. It spans 16 time zones, stretches from the equator to near the North Pole, from deserts to lush jungles, and includes ultra-modern megacities to villages where electrical service is erratic.

            The western United States was sparsely populated until gold was discovered in California in 1849. The resulting gold rush not only led to hordes of adventurous spirits pouring into the west but resulted in a series of wars where the emerging United States wrested control of large expanses of territory from Mexico. There were also prolonged conflicts with the Native American population that resulted in them being resettled in reservations.

            The western states were not only valued for gold but for the vast land suitable for cattle and agriculture, a staple of many of the states to the present day. Because of the conditions that were often harsh and challenging, people of the West developed a reputation for fierce independence and hardiness and a distinct Western culture. All of this gave rise to the idea of the “Wild West.”

            In more modern times, the West has become widely diversified from the high tech industries of California, to the agriculture of the plains states, to the oil fields of Alaska. Politically, it ranges from liberal in states like California, Oregon and Washington, to very conservative in states like Utah, Wyoming, and Montana with other states falling somewhere in between. The film industry, based in California, is tremendously influential throughout the world and represents one of America’s largest exports.

            The Salvation Army: The Salvation Army, because of its distance from the eastern part of the country, had a semi-autonomous existence early on with its own edition of the War Cry. Its adventurous Salvationism produced characters such as Joe the Turk and innovations such as the Christmas kettle.

Facts, Stats and Leadership of

the USA Western Territory

• Total population to fish and disciple: 78,685,297
• 564 officers, 2 auxiliary-captains, 19 envoys, 24 cadets, 7.046 employees
• 499 retired officers
• 228 corps, 3 outposts
• 16,312 senior soldiers
• 3,968 adherents
• 3,217 junior soldiers

Leadership

Territorial Commander – Commissioner Douglas F. Riley

Chief Secretary – Colonel Eddie Vincent

Territorial President of Women’s Ministries – Commissioner Colleen R. Riley

Prayer Requests for the

USA Western Territory

• We thank God that He is alive and well in our territory. We thank Him for the blessings He pours out and for what the future holds for His Kingdom.

• Pray for continued movement of the Holy Spirit through the territory. In every program, ministry, corps, and division, we want the Holy Spirit to continue to guide us in every way.

• For God to continue to bring men and women as officers. We had a beautiful Future Officers Fellowship weekend, and we praise God for commitments made. We believe God is continuing to call and we are asking that hearts be open to that calling and His leading.

• We ask for prayers for our remotest ministries in Saipan, Chuuk, Guam, Pohnpei, Majuro and the islands, as well as the remotest places in Alaska. May God continue to bring resources for the ministry there. And we ask for prayer over the officers and ministry leaders in these areas, that they would remain safe and well and uplifted by the prayers and encouragement of others.

• We believe that revival is here in this territory. We can sense it, and we ask for prayer that this would continue, and that men and women and girls and boys would come to know Jesus as their personal Saviour. And that those who know Him would grow deeper in their faith.

USA Southern Territory

Prayer Requests

• The family of Major James Deuel, Sr., who was recently Promoted to Glory
• Major Ed Lee, Officers’ Health Services Secretary, Personnel
• Music Department
• Jay Strickland, Property/Air Conditioning Maintenance, Property
• Tim Wall, Senior Systems & Network Administrator, Information Technology
• Molly Murphy, Chief Accountant, Finance
• Commissioner Barbara Howell, Assistant Principal, School for Leadership Development, EBC
• Major Jay Spalding, Divisional Candidates’ Secretary, North & South Carolina Division
• Lt. Colonel Margaret Davis, National Secretary for Social Services and Public Policy, NHQ
• Majors John & Cristina Murphy, officers, beneficiaries, employees and volunteers of the ARC Command
• Emergency shelters
• Anonymous prayer request for homeless people, whose stories we do not know but we could have been where they are; asking for prayer for family and that we pray for each other

Something to Consider

“Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus…” (Philippians 1:1)

George MacDonald wrote, “I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been thought about, born in God's thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest and most precious thing in all thinking.” It was a similar thought that caused Paul to identify himself and Timothy as “servants of Christ Jesus.”

Paul could have easily gone another direction. As he said later in the letter, he was a “Hebrew of the Hebrews,” since he could trace his pure lineage back through the centuries. Or he could have spoken about his superior education at the feet of the esteemed teacher Gamaliel. He could have spoken about being a Roman citizen with all its privileges and protections. Instead, he chose to call himself a servant, more properly, a slave.

In the Roman Empire slaves were of no account. An early Roman Church Father named Chrysolgus wrote, “Whatever a master does to a slave, undeservedly, in anger, willingly, unwillingly, in forgetfulness, after careful thought, knowingly, unknowingly, is judgment, justice and law.” Many of those who were slaves were captives of war, and so a slave might have originated from a higher social status than his or her master. Regardless of their background, in the Roman Empire social stratus slaves occupied the lowest rung of the ladder. The significant difference for Paul was, servanthood was the position he chose for himself, rather than having such imposed.

This submission represented his glad abandonment of status so that he could serve, first Christ Jesus and then the people of God. In writing to his friends in Philippi he constantly returned to this theme of abandonment to the lowest place of service so that he could glorify God in the highest. Every blow he took, every hour in prison, every slander, every arduous exertion for the grateful as well as for those who betrayed him were acts of a self-appointed slave in service to Jesus Christ.

If I am a slave of Jesus Christ, there is no one I refuse to serve, no task beneath me, no effort I am unwilling to make. But to be in the service of the Great King! What could be better? How can I give less to He who gave His all?

Benediction

May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen. (2 Corinthians 13:14)