Student Study Guide
Chapter 1
The Fire Is Already Falling
Section 1 — Juan and the Twelve Warring Angels
Section One
Juan sat across a desk from a man about to kill him. He had been a gang member since age nine, a marksman by eleven, and by fourteen he had been recruited to run point on gun-smuggling routes across the border - the man responsible for shooting anyone who got in the way. When he told his boss Charles he wanted out, Charles raised a silenced handgun and lowered it toward him. Then something happened. Terror broke across Charles's face. He was staring past Juan, gesturing at something behind him, in a room that held exactly three people.
At that exact moment, on the other side of the city, Steve was alone in his car with no natural reason to be praying urgently - the meeting wasn't even supposed to happen for hours yet. But something surged in his spirit he could not explain and could not ignore. He spoke out loud into the spirit realm: "I loose a dozen warring angels, go right now and protect Juan, in Jesus' Name!" He felt the full authority of it the moment the words left his mouth.
Juan walked out of that room alive. Charles sent a standing order through his entire organization that day: "Nobody touch that young man. God is with him."
This is not a story about Steve. It is a story about what happens when a believer stops ignoring the unexplainable urgency of the Holy Spirit, and speaks with authority into a situation they cannot see.
That declaration in the car - spoken with full authority, aimed at a situation Steve could not see - is a picture of what Chapter 16, "Taking It by Force," will teach in depth: that believers carry real spiritual authority to contend for outcomes, not just to ask and wait.
Where Do You See Yourself?
Steve had no natural information, only an unexplainable urgency in his spirit that he chose to act on immediately. Has there ever been a moment when you sensed God pressing you to pray for someone, right then, without knowing why - and did you act on it, or let it pass?
Your Thoughts
Section 2 — Seven Weeks Saved
Section Two
Steve's own story began May 2, 1986, the day he was born again. Just seven weeks later, still a brand-new believer, he agreed to serve as a youth camp counselor. He pictured teenagers worshiping late into the night. Instead, his cabin openly mocked God with contempt. Broken, he got on his knees during worship and began to weep and plead: "Save them, God, save them!" In desperation he prayed, "God, if You have to take my salvation from me and give it to them, I am willing. Just rescue them from hell."
When the altar call was given that very first night - not the last - Steve's entire cabin ran forward, from a group that had mocked God hours before. Then waves of God's love washed over Steve as he tried to pray for them, and he wept and laughed for hours, unable to walk back to his cabin on his own.
It happened because Steve had travailed. Not because he had performed or figured something out, but because he poured out what he didn't even have - a prayer so desperate it offered his own salvation in exchange for theirs.
Steve calls this "the divinely energized prayer that avails much" - and that exact phrase becomes the title and subject of Chapter 2. If travail like this stirs something in you, Chapter 2 will show you what was actually happening and how to walk in it yourself.
Where Do You See Yourself?
Have you ever prayed with that kind of desperation for someone else - or have you mostly only prayed politely, at a safe emotional distance? What would it cost you to pray like Steve did that night?
My Thoughts
Section 3 — Pride Is Not Your Problem
Section Three
Praying three hours a day and pouring out whole Mondays in the Word, Steve moved in with four Christian roommates who told him he was "too extreme" and needed balancing out. He spent two weeks begging God to show him his pride, and instead sank into a depression he'd never felt before. Then God spoke: "Son, I brought you down here the way I wanted you. Pride is not your problem, but the fear of pride can become your problem. You stay close to Me, and I will deal with the pride." Within two weeks, all four roommates had radical encounters with God and confessed they had tried to extinguish his fire because it exposed their own compromise.
The enemy always comes at the most dangerous people with the same strategy: use their own spiritual sensitivity against them, make their hunger look like pride, make their fire look like imbalance.
Later, driving a church van two hours each way to collect teenagers, Steve preached and prayed with them the whole ride. He led over a hundred of them to Jesus and baptized them in the Holy Spirit on the way home - even though the youth group itself was spiritually dead. One night, pulled from an unplanned prayer meeting by an irritated associate pastor, Steve kept praying in a nearby courtyard instead. Two strangers, independently told by God to "go join him," found him there. The three of them prayed together and felt the breakthrough come. Inside, six kids got saved that night - the only night in fourteen months that a single teen responded to that pastor's preaching. The pastor rebuked Steve anyway: "Don't ever do that again!"
An associate pastor rebuking the one person whose prayer produced the only fruit in fourteen months is a small, personal picture of a much larger pattern - believers working against each other instead of together. Chapter 9, "The Great Divides," will look directly at what causes division within the Body of Christ, and what it costs.
Where Do You See Yourself?
Has anyone ever told you that your hunger for God was "too much," or tried to talk you out of pursuing Him with everything you have? How did you respond - did you pull back, or press in further?
Your Thoughts
Section 4 — Anaheim, 1988
Section Four
At a Morris Cerullo conference in Anaheim, Steve walked into a hallway so filled with God's presence it felt physical - like water rising past his ankles the closer he got to a small worship gathering. Hotel staff stood nearby in a stunned trance. That evening, after Cerullo preached on the baptism of God's agape love and instructed the crowd to pray for a stranger with their whole heart, Steve knelt face to face with a man he had never met.
He collapsed backward and could not move, shaking and weeping on the floor for nearly ninety minutes. When he finally asked God what had happened, the answer came in a single sentence that became the foundation of everything he has done in ministry since: "It was an impartation of My Love."
God's love is not a soft thing. It's not a sentiment. It's the fuel of the D.E.E.P. anointing. Love produces power.
Steve calls this encounter "the seed of everything in this book." Chapter 8, "The Price of Love," picks this exact thread back up and asks what agape love actually costs, and why every other chapter in this course - the sword, the tongues, the praise, the unity, the taking-it-by-force - is powerless without it.
Where Do You See Yourself?
Have you ever longed for a tangible, overwhelming sense of God's presence and love the way Steve describes it here? What would it mean to you right now if God met you like that?
My Thoughts
Section 5 — The Decade of Extremes, and Travis
Section Five
On December 28, 2019, driving to cover a friend's pulpit, a spirit of prophecy fell on Steve: "Tell My people that the decade of the 20's will be a decade of extremes... They must look to Me." Weeks later, COVID began to shake the world exactly as the word had described.
Around that same time, Steve felt God highlighting a young man named Travis - a former millionaire drug dealer who, in unbearable physical pain, cried out the name of Jesus seven times. On the seventh cry, the pain shook out of his body instantly and he saw Jesus standing in a brilliant light. Travis later manifested a demon during prayer with Steve's son James - "like a twenty-five-pound demon being lifted completely off of him" - and afterward declared, "The spirit world is real. I'm all in."
God then supernaturally aligned a text message from Steve about a China trip with a word Travis received in a worship service on the very same evening - forming what became their two-person Divinely Energized End-Time Prayer Strike Force Team.
Travis and Steve's partnership, introduced here, is not a side story. Chapter 18, "Hidden Together," the final chapter of this course, will return to it as the book's closing revelation: that God's greatest works have almost always been released through two people bound together, not one person alone.
Where Do You See Yourself?
Travis went from millionaire drug dealer to a man who gave away everything he owned. Is there a testimony of radical transformation in your own life, or someone close to you, that you rarely talk about?
Your Thoughts
Section 6 — The Fire Is Already Falling
Section Six
When Steve and Travis's China trip was cancelled - one of the first US flights to China ever cancelled - it looked like their entire partnership had collapsed before it began. Instead, God showed Steve a vision of a demonic spirit rising from Wuhan with two demons in its mouth: the virus itself, and a global spirit of fear. "The fear will do far more damage than the virus will ever do."
Fleeing a California lockdown, Steve and Travis were on the road when a trailer tire caught fire on Easter Sunday. With no fire extinguisher and only melted ice in a cooler, nothing worked - until Steve remembered the communion grape juice they had been using daily since Passover. He poured a small amount onto the raging flames and prayed, "Lord, put this fire out." It went out completely, instantly.
The daily communion, the clear voice of the Lord, crazy prayers of faith with immediate results, disaster turned into testimony - this became the pattern of the Divinely Energized End-Time Prayer mandate that has carried Steve and Travis into over fifty nations since.
In the years since, God has told Steve, "You are going to be more known for your prayers than your preaching" - a statement to a man who had already preached to hundreds of thousands. Jesus is coming back to His Church before He comes for His Church, and the final great outpouring on this earth will be a prayer outpouring.
Every story in this chapter is one expression of a single anointing that this entire course is going to unpack, piece by piece: a Divinely Energized End-Time Prayer anointing. Chapter 13 carries that exact name and will show you what actually made all six of these stories work. Everything from here forward builds toward it.
Which Story Is Still With You?
Of everything you just read in this chapter, which single story affected you the most, and why? What is it about your own life right now that made that particular story land the way it did?
My Response
In My Own Words
| Story From This Chapter | What It Awakens In Me |
|---|---|
| Juan and the twelve warring angels | |
| Seven Weeks Saved — travailing for a cabin of unsaved teens | |
| Pride Is Not Your Problem — the roommates and the van ministry | |
| Anaheim, 1988 — the impartation of God's love | |
| Travis's deliverance and radical transformation | |
| The Easter Sunday fire and the communion juice |
One More Line
| Before This Course | What I Want By The End Of It |
|---|---|
| Describe your prayer life honestly, in one sentence, right now. |
Personal Prayer Journal — First Entry
Write an honest prayer to God right now, telling Him what you long for as you begin this eighteen-chapter course - and asking Him to do in you what He did in Steve, in Juan, and in Travis.
Personal Prayer Awakening Inventory
Not a test — a mirror
Chapter 1 is built entirely from true stories, not facts to memorize, so there is nothing to be quizzed on here. Instead, use this closing inventory to look honestly at where you are in your own prayer life right now, and to respond to whatever God may be stirring in you as you begin this course.
Part A: Which Story Grabbed You?
Of the true stories in this chapter, which one struck you most?
Why did that story affect you the most?
Part B: Where Am I Right Now?
Rate each statement honestly, from 1 (not true of me at all) to 5 (very true of me). There are no wrong answers - this is just for you.
1. I have a consistent, personal prayer time that I protect and value.
2. I have sensed God's urgent, unexplainable leading to pray for someone, the way Steve did in the car for Juan.
3. I have contended in fervent, travailing prayer for someone else's soul the way Steve did for his cabin.
4. I believe there is a level of God's tangible presence and love that I have not yet personally experienced.
5. I am genuinely hungry right now for a more powerful, supernatural prayer life like the one described in this chapter.
Part C: Reflection Prompts (completion credit)
1. What do the stories in this chapter reveal about the kind of prayer God is looking for - and is that the kind of prayer life you currently have?
2. Steve says the enemy's strategy is to "make their hunger look like pride, make their fire look like imbalance." Has that strategy ever worked on you, or someone close to you?
3. If God spoke to you the way He spoke to Steve in the car, in the depression, or on I-75, what do you think He might be waiting to say to you right now?
Part D — Your Prayer of Commitment
This book is about a prayer anointing "that is real, that is available to every believer right now." Write a short prayer telling God you want it - whatever "it" looks like for you at this point in your walk with Him.