Displaying items by tag: North America

About 500,000 public school students, from all fifty US states, will join the Focus on the Family's Bring Your Bible to School day on 5 October. This is the fourth such annual student-led religious freedom event. Many Christian students feel there is unspoken pressure on them to stay silent about their faith. Others report overt efforts to silence them from presenting their Bible-based viewpoints in class discussions or assignments, even though the First Amendment recognises the rights of students to talk about their faith and read their Bibles outside classroom time. This day gives Christians the chance to show how their faith is an important part of who they are. 356,000 students participated last year, with Alliance Defending Freedom offering students free legal representation if their rights were violated at school.

America’s intercessors are praying for the presence of God to invade the government and lifting Christians in government to His throne room. Examples are Vice President Mike Pence (‘Giving my life to Christ changed everything’) and CIA director Mike Pompeo (‘Pray and stand and fight and make sure that we know that Jesus Christ, our Saviour, is the only solution for our world’). Others are Ben Carson, the secretary of housing and urban development; Kellyanne Conway (counsellor to the President), whose faith plays a minute by minute part of her life; Reince Priebus, White House chief of staff; and Ken Blackwell, the domestic policy chair, who says his faith influences his decisions. The US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, says her faith has a profound impact on her daily life, and that she looks to God for guidance in every decision.

Rich Penkoski, a conservative Christian parent in West Virginia, voiced concern after Jackie Coffin, a middle school teacher, showed her class of 13-year-olds a suicide-prevention music video that featured hip hop music, two male high school students in bed together, and a sex toy. Penkoski told the Christian Post that this was not the suicide-prevention video approved by the school, while Coffin instructed students not to tell their parents that she had played it during class. Penkoski works as a leader of Warriors for Christ (WFC), who have launched a new Christian social media alternative to Facebook called SocialCross.org. So far nearly ten thousand users have joined the new platform. WFC also made headlines and received much backlash when they announced, ‘Anyone posting an LGBT rainbow flag emoji to the Facebook page will be banned by the page's administrators’.

A brother in Pakistan writes, ‘Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif continues to resist being thrown out of government for corruption. He denies the accusations, and is still trying to run the party. His children are bringing court cases and running for office, as is his wife. Pray that the country will not be torn apart. Shahid Khaqan Abbasi is now PM. He received two degrees from the USA and then worked there for several years before working in Saudi Arabia’s oil business. He was formerly minister of petroleum and natural resources. May his years in the US be the basis for good relationship between the two countries. Weeks after he came to office, President Trump delivered his Afghanistan policy, accusing Pakistan of supporting state terrorism. Pakistan has had more military and civilians killed by terrorists than any other country, and the nation took this as an affront.’

Hundreds of thousands of people have been rescued as devastating floods continue to ravage Texas. Many people are refusing to allow it to crush their spirits. Instead, they are courageously choosing to join relief efforts. A Houston pastor took it upon himself to check vehicles stranded on what had been Texas State Highway 288. Although it was dangerous, he waded out to vehicles looking for people trapped inside. ‘He wanted to make sure those cars were empty’, said Brian Roberson, who witnessed the pastor’s bravery. ‘It was so powerful to see first-hand.’ Another man drove his jeep around roads looking for flood victims to save. Many other stories of bravery and the undefeatable human spirit are emerging, even as the floodwaters continue to rise. Good Samaritans are offering boats, water and food to those trapped in flooded homes. See:

Hurricane Harvey has overwhelmed residents of Texas and Louisiana. The situation is unprecedented, and potential impacts are currently unknown. Pray for God's strength and stamina for the local search and rescue teams and the 24,000 National Guard deployed to recover the many thousands trapped in homes and torrential channels of floodwater. Pray for God’s peace and provision for weary refugees who have survived life-threatening winds and flooding, taking refuge in makeshift shelters, many having lost everything. Pray for the officials coping with a unique human crisis that is beginning to unravel; these communities will take years to rebuild. At the time of writing people have been enduring misery for seven days, they are running out of food and water and medical needs are overwhelming. But ‘love your neighbour’ community camaraderie is high - see this week’s Praise article 1.

On 30 August the Israel Rescue Coalition sent members of a psychotrauma and crisis response unit to Houston, to aid those who have been affected by Hurricane Harvey. ‘People need help on the ground,’ said Dov Maisel. ‘They need to be able to wrap their minds around what was lost, and they need assistance figuring out how to cope and where to go from here.’ Maisel’s previous experience includes serving in Haiti in 2016 following Hurricane Matthew, and in Nepal in 2015 after a devastating earthquake. Meanwhile, Donald Trump's administration has not yet decided whether to accept assistance from Mexico to help the victims. The Mexican government expressed its ‘full solidarity’ with the people and government of the US, and said it had ‘offered to provide help and cooperation’ in the wake of Harvey. In 2005, after Hurricane Katrina, Mexico provided soldiers to help serve meals, distribute supplies, and conduct medical consultations.

With the second largest landmass in the world and a very sparse population, it's easy for a Canadian prayer ministry, house of prayer or city-wide worship ministry to feel isolated. ‘Ears to Hear’ responded to this need with a network which for ten years has connected and united the senior leaders of these ministries for mutual encouragement and support. As a result, they have been able to move together when a national or regional need arises, help one another grow, and endeavour to support the emerging expressions of prayer in the nation. Their website says, ‘We’re in this for the Kingdom and for the prayer of Jesus - that they might be one - to be fulfilled in Canada.’ The network meets regularly in video conference calls, praying, discerning and learning from each other.

A tweet by Barack Obama condemning racism in the aftermath of a far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, has become the most liked tweet ever, with over three million people endorsing the sentiment so far. The tweet, quoting the late South African president Nelson Mandela, read, ‘No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin or his background or his religion.’ The former US president followed the tweet with more from Mandela’s autobiographical Long Walk to Freedom: ‘People learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love. For love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.’ Each has had more than a million likes, and hundreds of thousands of retweets.

Guam is a 210-square-mile sovereign US territory and military base in the western Pacific Ocean. 92% of the population are professing Christians. On 10 August North Korea defied threats of ‘fire and fury’ from Donald Trump, deriding his warning as a ‘load of nonsense’ while announcing a detailed plan to launch missiles aimed at the waters off the coast of Guam. This comment caused Trump’s deputy assistant, Sebastian Gorka, warn Pyongyang, ‘Do not challenge the United States because you will pay a cost if you do so.’ Meanwhile Hawaii has started preparing for a nuclear strike, starting with a new educational campaign to help residents and visitors know what to do in the event of a nuclear missile attack and they will start testing a new ‘wailing’ emergency siren on the first workday of each month. Pray for the Guam church to rise up, speaking the hope and faith into their communities that overcomes fear.

http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/36092282/amid-rising-tensions-north-korea-threatens-preemptive-strike-against-guam