Hi, my name is Sandy Bates and I’m a lifelong resident of Georgia currently living in a suburb south of Atlanta. I have been married to my amazing husband, Jim Bates, for 33 years, and we have three awesome adult children: Ashley, Rebecca, and Kaleb, along with one very loved cat, Suzie.
Even though I had a couple of encounters with the Lord in my early years, for the most part I did not have a relationship with the Lord growing up. However, I was radically born again at the age of 18 in a large, charismatic church in a suburb of Atlanta, GA during a youth service. This was a precious turning point in my life, and I have been running hard after God ever since! Even though I was in leadership in the youth ministry at my first church, I was more drawn to the older ladies who knew how to pray and get into God’s Presence; I would rather hang out with them back then than the people in my age group because of my deep hunger to know God. I guess you could label me an “intercessor” because those are the groups and individuals that I have always been drawn to, along with my love for prayer. However, even though I love to pray and intercede for people, I am really addicted to the Presence of God, which is the biggest reward of prayer!
My love for this nation began for the most part during the Obama presidency when I began to see our nation slide towards anti-Christian policies and began to see communist/socialist type philosophies being slowly introduced to the public. Red flags were raised in many of us who pray, and that began my prayer times being focused more on our nation than in past times. In November of 2012, I heard myself boldly declare in prayer, “As For Me and My Nation, We Will Serve the Lord!” This was the beginning of a vision that God began to unfold to me of the important role God’s Church in America and around the world would play in helping to birth and steward one of the biggest governmental and spiritual reformations that we have seen in our lifetimes. In fact, the Church as a whole will begin to move in our Kingdom assignments and take territory for the Lord in a much larger way than we have seen in the past. We are truly in an Esther moment and it will be epic!
Probably equal to or more than my love and passion to see our nation transformed for the glory of God, is my love and passion to see the Church (God’s Bride) transformed to the beautiful Body of Christ that God has designed us to be. The enemy has tried to scatter us, weaken us, and silence us to keep us from being the “more than conquerors” that we are meant to be. This will be a time where we grow into our destiny of ruling and reigning and walking in the mantels our Father God has placed over us. These are exciting times, and we are privileged to have been born “for such a time as this!”