Displaying items by tag: Bosnia

The Royal Rangers, a Christian scouting programme focusing on developing outdoor skills and a child’s relationship with God, begins the camp season on 26 June. Camps for children, teens, and adults will continue to the end of July. Pray for God’s Spirit to move in the hearts and minds of all who attend these camps. Pray for an anointing over the campgrounds, speakers, and workers. May these camp experiences expose campers to a new understanding of who God is and who they can be through Christ. Father, please reveal Yourself to each person as Your Spirit covers each camp and moves freely through Your spoken Word. We also ask you for spiritual and physical protection over every leader, teacher, facilitator, child and adult who attends these summer camps. May each one demonstrate and grow in your love. We ask that this camp season be a catalyst for revival and renewal in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Zenica city in central Bosnia has a small growing community of believers among the 115,000 Bosniak Muslims. Zenica’s large iron factory provides work for thousands, and the university and other businesses attract people from the surrounding communities. Praise God for both foreign and national Christian workers, who are spreading the good news there. In a city known for iron works, we pray for God’s truth shared through believers to remain sharp as iron and penetrate the hearts of many. Some smaller villages are isolated with zero witness among them. Pray that as the community gathers in Zenica, those who are believers would be put into contact with those open and ready to hear the good news. Proverbs 27:17 says iron sharpens iron and one man sharpens another. Father, we ask that believers sharpen one another in spirit and truth and are in such unity that Bosnians will know that it is by Your power they live, move, and find their being.

Livno is a small town in western Bosnia, an hour-and-a-half from the coastal city of Split, Croatia. Pray for spiritual seekers in Livno. Recently, a worker connected with two potential believers through a social media ministry and started reading the Bible with them. They were excited and wanted to read more until their Catholic priest told them to throw out the ‘Protestant’ Bibles, which they did. Pray that the priest will encourage these seekers to read God's Word from a ‘Catholic’ Bible, and that God will continue to draw them to Himself and to reveal Himself, no matter what version they read. Pray that the worker who was reading with them will be encouraged to continue to walk this journey alongside them. Pray that, ultimately, they will know Jesus and be joined with others in the body of Christ.

Evangelical churches across Bosnia and Herzegovina will be putting on a series of camps for children, teenagers and young people across the country. Ask God to bless, strengthen, and protect the adults who have cleared spaces, prayed over them, and sought blessing for the young Bosnians. Pray for unity through these efforts, as well as much fruit. Pray for God to move in the young people, and for Him to raise up disciples who in turn also make disciples. Pray that the Holy Spirit would give the adults insight into how to pray for the youth coming to the camps. Pray that Jesus would move powerfully through His people. Ask Him to give the average church attender a desire to join in these prayer camps and that there would be unity in the Evangelical church.

Bosnia's political class has failed to short-circuit its dysfunctional governance. Serb strongman Milorad Dodik is raising ghosts of the past. UK ambassador Matt Field’s recent blog condemned deep-seated corruption, ‘consequence-free’ politics and the way powerful individuals could steal public money, block reform, praise war criminals, manipulate elections, and deny justice. Relations between Bosnia and Serbia turned critical last July when the outgoing high representative, an Austrian with roots in former Yugoslavia, banned the denial of genocide. A foreigner passing laws outraged the Bosnian Serb leader. He ramped up separatist rhetoric and stopped cooperating with the national institutions of which he is part. Christian Schmidt, the high representative, said Bosnia is gripped by the ‘greatest existential crisis of the post-war period’, and Dodik’s threat to turn his armed police into a revived Bosnian Serb army risked a return to war.

Bosnia has three presidents. Each one represents a particular ethnic group, and the fragile multiethnic government faces its greatest crisis since the Balkan wars. Serb nationalist leader Milorad Dodik is threatening to tear Bosnia apart by withdrawing the Serb territory he leads from Bosnia. He has stopped meeting the other regional presidents and vowed to withdraw from the armed forces and tax agency in favor of his own agencies. Political rivals and foreign diplomats say recent scandals suggest his rhetoric is to deflect corruption allegations. But in a region where the war shadow is everywhere, Bosnians fear their country’s peace is threatened. ‘It will not be peaceful,’ warned Sefik Dzaferovic, one of the three presidents. An opposition party leader said, ‘He hates stability because he then has to explain why we are living like we do. He plays on people's emotions regardless of the consequences.’ The UN called it ‘the greatest threat’ to Bosnia’s survival since 1990.

Over 50% of Bosnians are Muslim. Muslims visit Christian neighbours at Christmas, and vice versa during Ramadan. It is difficult to differentiate between Muslims and Orthodox Christian women as both wear headscarves. People’s faith is more noticeable during religious months. Pray for a revival of prayer in the local church, and that Christians will come together and lift honest cries to God. May prayer become a unifying factor among local churches. Pray against timidity keeping believers from sharing Jesus with their friends, family, neighbours, and co-workers. Pray that believers will seek opportunities to love and share with Bosnians, Serbs, Croats and others from the Balkans. Ask that every believer will be equipped to make disciples who make disciples, and that they will live by God’s Spirit.

The season of Ramadan, when Muslims set aside time to fast and seek God, has now ended. We can ask Father God not to let that time of intentional seeking go to waste. Pray for the Muslims who may have encountered Jesus in this season. Ask God to connect them with Christians, whether local or expatriate, that they may hear the good news of the gospel from them. Ask God to release the Holy Spirit to move powerfully amongst the ‘not yet’ believers as they return to their daily routines.

Bosnia is a transit country for migrants trying to get to the EU, but the border is currently closed. This has left thousands of migrants stranded like Salman and his brothers, sleeping rough in abandoned buildings, makeshift tents and even in old freight wagons. Winter temperatures are way below zero. Some of Salman’s fellow-travellers developed mental health problems on their journey from Pakistan to Bosnia. Middle-class families save thousands of euros to send their sons to Europe. They have been stranded for 18 months, with no way forward, no way back, crushed by the guilt of having failed their families back home. They have tried several times to cross the Bosnian-Croatian border, without success. The local authorities refuse to open a migrant camp in the region. NGOs have stepped in to offer them a place to get warm. Many are economic migrants from Pakistan or North Africa.

Churches Led by the Holy Spirit - Before Jesus went up to heaven, he told his disciples to wait in Jerusalem for the promise of the Father - the Holy Spirit. They did, and it was by the power of the Spirit that the very first movement to Christ began. 3,000 were baptized in one day, with believers added daily.

Again and again throughout the book of Acts we see the Holy Spirit initiating, empowering, and leading the early church. By the Holy Spirit, the disciples proclaimed the gospel fearlessly. They were empowered by the Spirit to speak boldly in the face of imprisonment, courts, opposition, and even death. Yes, and it was through the leading of the Holy Spirit that the church sent out the first people to take the gospel where it was not known.

Likewise, as we pray for a movement in Bosnia of disciples making disciples, we long to see churches following that very first model of being led by the Holy Spirit.

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.  Acts 1:8

Going Before the Father:

• Pray for the Holy Spirit to stir and convict souls in this nation— and that the result would be commitment to Christ.
•  Pray for those who know Christ and those who will soon come to him, that they will live empowered and emboldened by the Spirit in their daily lives.
•  Pray that obedience to the Holy Spirit would be central to new churches as they form.