Jeannie Fuller and Karen Berner are two women who are fully awakened to the love of God. Their anointing in intercession is powerful and hidden. They focus on the face of God and listen for His heartbeat, and then they release what they see and hear in prayer.
Often, the ministry of prayer is not all that popular in your average church. Places like International House of Prayer in Kansas City have spawned other houses of prayer around the world where 24-hour prayer and worship infuse communities with the ever-increasing presence of God.
begins there, intimacy grows as we hear His heart beating through ours, and our lives change the more we spend time in the presence of the Holy Spirit. Prayer changes lives, launches revivals, and rivets the attention of God toward us. Prayer, although the fruit of it remains largely unseen for a time, is very powerful.
Jeannie and Karen’s intercession took an interesting turn one day when they realized that God was calling them beyond intercessory prayer. It was time for intercessory action, and that realization caused them to trust God to provide for a three- year journey to complete a mission to pray in every state of the United States.1 Jeannie and Karen have both shared stories
from their journey with me through the past couple of years. The fact that they actually paid a price to obey God and go where He sent them to do a task that would have no visible fruit astounds me in this day and age when we want to see the results of any funds we invest in an endeavor. But the Kingdom of God is not like our earthly, results-oriented kingdom of this world. Intercession is a hidden work of inestimable value.
Jeannie talked about the beginning of their journey into the heart of God for America:
Our journey began in 2008. While I was in prayer, I heard the Lord say, “Ring the Liberty Bell over the nation and proclaim freedom.” So I took it into intercession. I didn’t think I was actually going to go on an intercessory prayer journey around the country.
Several weeks after my encounter in prayer, I saw online a Chuck Pierce word that seemed to confirm what I was hearing. His word said, “Hear the bells this week! There’s a sound of liberty coming from Heaven. There’s a sound I’m bringing in. Every time you hear those bells of change, decree a new liberty is coming before you, and coming upon you, and that you will enter the fields of freedom.”
Then, my friend Karen Berner and I, right before the November presidential elections, went to pray in Kansas City. While driving down the road we saw a Liberty Bell sign and I thought that was no coincidence. So, I told Karen what the Lord had been speaking to me about the Liberty Bell and we prayed about it. That week, we received an invitation to pray in Louisiana. Just before we left, I decided to see if there was a Liberty Bell in that state. Online, I saw that every state has a replica of the Liberty Bell—usually at the state capital.
On the Liberty Bell itself is the inscription of Leviticus 25:10 [KJV] where the Lord tells the people to declare freedom over all the inhabitants of the earth:
“Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” The bell represents freedom.
Different groups have gone to the Liberty Bell and rang it over history. At one time, after the Civil War, the original Liberty Bell went on tour from state to
state to promote unity and freedom. Abolitionists of the civil war, and later the women’s suffrage movement, latched onto the Liberty Bell as a proclamation of freedom.
Jeannie and Karen prayed in Louisiana together and rang the Liberty Bell at the state capitol at the end of their time of intercession. By then, Jeannie had realized that God was calling her to actually go to each state and pray in person—not just from the comfort of her own home. Karen wasn’t convinced that God was calling her to commit to the journey with Jeannie. During a trip to Israel later that year, Karen brought the matter before the Lord. According to Karen:
It was such a huge commitment to pray for the whole country that I decided I would stay at the wailing wall in Jerusalem until I had an answer from the Lord about going along.
He told me clearly that He wanted me to carry His heart throughout the country and pray into God’s love for Israel and the Jews everywhere we went. He also said that there would be a revelation for the sake of the Church and the sake of the country, about how America and Israel are intrinsically tied together. One cannot come into the fullness of destiny without the other. We were to pray into the political and economic destinies and that the values of God’s Kingdom would come forth.
called Liberty Bell Park and saw a replica of the Liberty Bell that had been gifted to Israel by the United States. It was an immediate confirmation of the word the Lord had spoken to me at the wall.
Karen was in! The two women began planning their trip and as funds came available and their families’ schedules allowed, they traveled from state to state. Jeannie tells the rest of the story:
God showed us that we were to pray for the captives to be set free. We used Isaiah 61 as the basis of what we were to decree and prophesy over the nation. We declared that the captives would be set free and that the people in the land would start receiving Him. One of the things we prayed was that the man-made idols that keep people in bondage would come down. We’ve seen news reports that those structures are being broken down and people are coming back to Him in a really personal way after we prayed in specific states.
The journey was a really transforming experience. I had prayed for the nations but I never saw as clearly how all the people groups around the world are connected and how if one nation is in bondage— especially our nation because we have so much influence—the other nations come into bondage. He taught us about liberty and authority. He opened doors for us to access the bells in some states and go
into the senate and house chambers and pray. The most special ones were the ones that didn’t have limited access. The ones where we could totally ring the bell, the sound that went out was most impacting. We wondered what to do if we could not ring the bell because it was locked or inaccessible, or didn’t have a ringer. So, we brought our own bell. Karen had one of her mother-in-law’s bells that dated back 100 years old. In early days they used to use the bell to awaken the town, to issue the call to meetings or fire and emergencies. It made sense to me that the bell would represent an awakening. So we prayed for revival in each state and to awaken the angels to move throughout the state and release the ministry God wanted to impart. We would ring those bells to wake the angels up in the area and to seal the decree of freedom. In some places, we used our own makeshift ringer.
The stories from each state are really powerful and full of divine appointments with people. In Colorado, I was getting ready to ring the Liberty Bell that was located out in the courtyard of the capitol when this bus pulled up filled with children. They saw us and ran over to ask what we were doing. We explained that we were ringing the bell for freedom. It didn’t have a ringer but we had drumsticks to use and handed them to the kids who yelled FREEDOM! as they struck it.
Because so much of our journey involved driving— like one seven-day drive taking us to 11 states—we really got to see the country and get a glimpse of God’s heart. Driving through these small towns made me realize how much God loves America. He absolutely loves this place and the people in this nation. When you are in prayer, you feel the Father’s heart and He releases prayers through you and you cannot help but fall in love with what He loves.