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One of my favorite books of the bible is Nehemiah, and one of the crucial highly effective and noteworthy components of the e book is the account of Jerusalem’s residents gathering to listen to the prophet Ezra learn the books of the Law, which in flip led to all of the folks confessing their sins as a nation.
The account reminds us to not make religion a small factor.
All the Israelites who returned from exile gathered, remembered, and returned to the Lord. Our context is after all very totally different. Yet maybe many within the UK church in the present day have misplaced the sense that we can also collect, bear in mind, and return as a folks not simply as people; as a Church, not only a assortment of church buildings.
Together, on a nationwide stage, we can provide thanks for a way as a nation and Church we now have been blessed in so some ways. But we will additionally collect to hope for a breakthrough, for provision, safety, and an actual sense of hope throughout the land. Indeed, gathering, remembering, and returning to the Lord is probably what He longs for us to do on this season.
And we’re getting into a brand new season – a season in determined want of intercession and divine intervention.
October sees Parliament coming back from political convention season. We have a brand new Government, and a House of Commons the place most MPs are model new. Every one in all our elected politicians, nationwide and native, skilled or new of their function, want our prayers for the season forward.
The issues we now have earlier than us appear huge. From riots to monetary blackholes, from struggling public providers to humanitarian crises arising from armed battle, there appears a unending checklist of insurmountable issues.
And the temptation is that we both ignore the brokenness or grasp false hope; to belief solely in ourselves, our idols, and our tribe or to hunt distractions and hope the issues go away – or that another person takes care of it.
But now just isn’t the time to show away from the brokenness. Simply denying or condemning evil just isn’t the Jesus approach. When confronted with insurmountable odds I’m not paralysed – I pray. It is prayer that retains me within the area the place I’m conscious about how and why some many issues are damaged however have hope that issues can and can change.
Therefore I’m satisfied that prayer, alongside gracious love in motion, is what we’d like proper now.
Charles Spurgeon as soon as wrote that “prayer is the slender nerve that strikes the muscle of omnipotence”. We and our prayers are certainly slender nerves, and these are nervous occasions, when we have to cry out to the all-powerful muscle.
Individual prayer is a privilege, and praying with mates in twos, threes, as small teams or church buildings is an excellent encouragement and might be immensely highly effective. But think about what a nation at prayer may obtain. It may change that nation. Not simply encourage the answer to political, financial or social challenges, however heal divisions, change hearts in addition to minds, and be the catalyst for actual sustained change.
It is the shared perception within the want for us to cry out to the Lord in prayer and the assumption that the all-powerful muscle can obtain immeasurably greater than we will ever think about that has impressed many nationwide ministries and leaders to come back collectively and name for a nationwide week of prayer from the 12-20 October.
I imagine that the National Week of Prayer is a motion introduced collectively by the Holy Spirit, united by the imaginative and prescient that God might do exceptional issues if we come to him humble, repentant, and praying for lives to be remodeled by Jesus.
Information concerning the National Week of Prayer might be discovered on a devoted web site (www.nationalweekofprayer.org) the place there’s data on how one can get entangled, sign-up to occasions, and different sources that will help you be a part of one thing that could possibly be really exceptional and particular.
As Chief Executive of CARE I’m proud that we’re absolutely behind the week, providing sources for individuals who wish to pray for the nation’s leaders and supporting the opposite occasions that shall be happening throughout the week. And I’ve been humbled by how so many have come collectively so rapidly with a way of the necessity and hope of what God would possibly do by means of this second. Join us in taking a step of religion to alter a nation.
Ross Hendry has working in and round politics for the final thirty years, and is at present CEO of CARE (www.care.org.uk) who’re supporting the National Week of Prayer from 12-20 October. Ross Hendry is a planning committee member for the National Week of Prayer.
