We thank God for our annual prayer conference at Swanwick in March and the wonderful people who stood with us waiting on God. It was (yet another!) important historical week for the nation when a substantive vote was held in parliament and the government suffered a second significant defeat on Brexit. We prayed through the debate and decision making. The key scripture was Isaiah 61 – this great announcement of the Kingdom of God and declaration that God does remarkable things through us.

Throughout Swanwick God was aligning us with His prayer agenda and we have captured some key points below.

• Put on the garment of praise – in a time when everything seems confused we believe God’s purpose is clear – He is our good shepherd, His desire is that we turn back to Him. So, we praise and adore Him, we bring our testimonies of God’s goodness.
• Dave Landrum from the Evangelical Alliance shared very serious concerns that secularism – life without God – is shaping more of the national agenda. He tells us we should 1. Fear not; 2. Speak up; and 3. Pray for boldness and authority.
• Dave told us that globally the number of evangelicals has risen from 500 million to 1.2 billion in 17 years – with 10 million new evangelicals in Europe in the last ten years. These are momentous times - Hallelujah!
• There is a danger that we stand as British Christians with our Christianity secondary. We are seeing prophetic words circulating that are actually political words. We need to be Christians who are British with humility, and a desire to be led first by God’s agenda.
• We need to be searching for God’s Word. He is a God of justice who repeatedly tells us to defend the widow, oppressed, the orphaned and the alien. That may sit uncomfortably for some but we need to be hungry to understand God’s perspective.
• Rebuilding is not “going back to the good old days”, it is looking forward to God’s new purposes.
• God looks at us and sees Christ. Sin has been dealt with and we are in a covenant relationship with Him. He takes the broken and gives us a double portion and makes us beautiful like brides and bridegrooms.
• We need peace in our homes, workplaces, communities and the nation. It seems far away. Jesus declares “Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called sons of God”
• James tells us “But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.”
• Peacemakers walk in humility, they live in God’s shalom, at peace with themselves and prepared to take risks for peace. They diffuse conflict, address broken relationships, listen generously, encourage honesty and truth. They believe they can disagree with respect.
• We live in a time of strident voices, very public criticism and undermining, and significant falling outs. Romans 12: 18 tells us “As far as it is possible live in peace.”

Steve Botham

Director

As Christians working in government, members of Christians in Government, we, like many others, have recently felt a strong sense that Christians need to come together, whatever our views, to pray for God’s Will for our nation. We are therefore inviting Christians across the nation to join us in a National Day of Prayer on 28 March 2019.

This is inspired by a vision of all the prayers across our nation. These may be small or large groups, in homes, villages or churches – but all are connected and are lighting up our nation like a Christmas tree with lights shining all over it. And we believe, at this key time for our nation, the King, our Lord, calling His tribes, the many denominations, and groups, to come together and seek His will for our nation.

We believe there is power in unity and we want to show the UK that the church is alive and cares about our nation; that God has answered prayers in the past for the UK, and He can do it again! And we would love to pray for God, to be our Good Shepherd of Psalm 23, to guide, comfort and bless the UK at this key time in our history.

Therefore, whatever your views, your denomination, wherever you are in the UK, we invite you to be part of this National Call to Prayer, to bring people together to pray for our nation.

We would love for you to join us! You are warmly invited to pray individually, and to mobilise your friends and communities to pray for our nation, and to join events in London, Edinburgh, Cardiff, and Belfast, or to host events in every town and village across the UK for a NATIONAL DAY OF PRAYER on Thursday 28th March 2019. To sign up to host an event, please go to our website: www.nationalcall2prayer.com

At the beginning of a New Year and at this time of reset on our WPC journey, I have felt a prompting from God to call for Shepherds to prepare for a suddenly, some of which will be good and others challenging.

We cannot plan a suddenly for ourselves, but we can prepare for a suddenly in the place God has placed us, on the journey He has called us to take. In preparing for whatever God will release or allow, I have looked at how a few people in Scripture received and dealt with their suddenly experience and how in many cases a suddenly changed the course of history.

Jacob (Israel) who would shepherd huge flocks, is on a journey. Suddenly angels are climbing up and down ladders and God is saying, “I am the Lord the God of your father Abraham and your father Isaac, I will give you the land you are lying on.” From that holy, fearful place that he called the house of God, the gate of heaven, Jacob the twister, changed to one who blessed and prophesied a nation into being.

Moses is tending the flock when suddenly a bush is burning but is not burned up. Moses, more humble than anyone on the face of the earth, faithful in all God’s house, who talked to God face-to-face, leads the nation Jacob blessed, out of captivity into freedom.

David is out tending the sheep when he suddenly gets the call from Samuel to lead the nation and deal with the giants that are trying to kill God’s flock. Psalm 78 tells us that he did so with integrity of heart and skilful hands. No wonder he could write with such authority, “The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want.”

When God wanted to use a king who did not even acknowledge Him to rebuild God’s city and set the exiles free, He said of Cyrus, “He is my shepherd.”

When hundreds and hundreds of years later God wants to announce the greatest happening in world history, He finds a bunch of shepherds, on watch, and suddenly the skies are filled with the glory of the Lord. An angel freaks them out, the biggest choir heaven could send turns up and such is the impact they decide to go and see this thing that has happened, acknowledging the truth they had been told. World history suddenly changed.

33 years later, suddenly to His followers, this Good Shepherd is being led like a lamb to the slaughter, laying down His life for the sheep of all nations to know God’s Mercy, His Grace, His Freedom, His Justice and His incomparable love.

When Peter was asked by Jesus to, “feed His sheep,” his ministry of shepherding started at a prayer meeting in which suddenly the Holy Spirit comes, shakes the house and shakes him and his friends out of the house, to turn the known world upside down.

When God wants to call a nation into His purposes, when He wants to bring a nation into freedom, when He wants to protect a nation from powerful people, when He wants someone to restore, renew, and rebuild, when He wants to turn our world upside down, He takes a shepherd with a limp, a shepherd on the run, the shepherd who is the odd one in the family, a king shepherd who needs straightening out, a denying disciple, an obedient son and suddenly uses them to prepare the way of the Lord in a family, community, nation and the nations. The coming of His kingdom on earth as in Heaven.

At a time of national and global uncertainty, whether we are shepherds in a family, a church, in a community or in Government, wherever God has placed us, let us as good shepherds keep watch. Prepare for a suddenly, in humility, integrity, skilfully, faithfully and in obedience, with a willingness to go and see and believe what God is doing and join Him, even if in our humanity it freaks us out.

Are you ready?

Source:  Ian Cole, Founder of World Prayer Centre

I am so privileged to be part of a church that has transformation at the very heart of it. My husband is an associate minister at Victory Outreach church in Manchester. Our church has victory homes for men and women who are in a life of addiction and crime.

Last weekend, I was at our victory homes Christmas dinner where families of the people that are in the recovery programme are invited to come and celebrate. Many of the people in a drug lifestyle have tense, if any relationship, with their families due to their habit. Many families have given up on their loved ones, thinking that they will never change.

Through the recovery programme, we see many addicts set free from drug addiction and people healed of hepatitis and hearts healed from the roots that caused them to spiral out of control in the first place. It is only through meeting with Jesus and allowing him to work on a deep level that real, lasting transformation happens.

Jeremiah 30;17 ‘I will restore you to health and heal your wounds,’ declares the Lord, ‘because you are called outcast, Zion for whom no one cares.’ God’s heart is to not only heal us but also to restore broken families. We all want to be loved and have somewhere to belong, that’s why God created the family. So, let’s pray for struggling families for:

• Reconciliation – that in the midst of the hurt and the anger that God will release love, positivity, and hope and allow them to take steps towards fixing the relationship.
• Forgiveness – allow those involved to realise the mistakes that have been made and ask for forgiveness. Ask for negative feelings and hate to be removed and replaced with a love and kindness and a willingness to trust God. He works ALL things out for good.
• Communication – for God to open the lines of communication and for them to think about what they speak over each other. Replace anger and hate with love and respect. There are life and death in the tongue!

Natasha Ruddock
Communications Manager 

At our recent Watch + Pray gathering, we had a strong sense to pray for our prodigals.

Tens of thousands of people have prodigal family members. Christmas can be a hard time. The Dictionary describes a prodigal as someone is profligate, a big spender, and extravagant. It describes the son in the well-known parable – does it also describe the Father – who threw a great extravagant feast and gave presents to his errant son? Was he the prodigal Father? You can probably empathise with this man, who loves his son but has not seen him in many months and is worried about his adventure in the big wide, but often dangerous world.

As a Father, Mother, sibling, child of a prodigal you know the deep ache as you pray for them to come back to Jesus. Expect more from God, prodigals are on His heart. Ask that God will give you the words you need to help open the conversation. Ask for your relationship to strengthen so that you will draw closer together. Hear God’s promptings on when to open things up and when to be silent. Pray for the future.

We are spending a lot of time in Isaiah 61, where the spirit of the Sovereign Lord anoints us to preach the good news. Pray for that anointing with your prodigal. But go beyond this as they hear and respond to the good news the people in Isaiah 61 turned into oaks of righteousness. Such a picture of stability and strength. More than that they move on to Rebuild, Restore and Renew the broken places. It’s our conference focus in 2019. This is our hope and expectation that many of those called to rebuild, restore and renew will be restored and released prodigals on fire for the gospel.
So let’s keep praying. Let’s keep listening to God and let’s expect the goodness of God to breakthrough.

Father God, we pray You will call our prodigals home and give them a clear revelation about Jesus this Christmas. Put a longing in their hearts to come back to You and prepare them to serve You and grow in understanding who You are. Mend and restore broken relationships.

Steve Botham, Director of World Prayer Centre

2018 has seen a growth in the persecution of Christians, in some cases with a significant increase. There is a battle going on as more people embrace the Gospel. Here are three nations to pray for – two facing persecution and the third traumatised by civil war.

CHINA

• New regulations on religious affairs were introduced in February of this year. Persecution has intensified – churches have been demolished and crosses destroyed, some churches are seeing pictures of Jesus replaced with pictures of President Xi.
• In the western Xinjiang region over a million Uighurs have been put in “re-education centres”. This is a non-Chinese part of China and there are a heavy army and police crackdown. Christian friends just returned from Xinjiang report that Christians have also been sent to the camps. They cite the case of a Christian friend whose husband has been returned to his country of birth and the wife has been imprisoned for 18 years with no charges so no appeals can be made about her sentence.
• The three self-movement who are registered with the government have been told that nobody under 18 can attend their services to stop “indoctrination.”

Pray for strength and boldness for those caught up in this situation and for God’s love to astound their persecutors.

INDIA

• Persecution is intensifying. Extreme Hindus have an aim to eradicate every Muslim and Christian from India by 2021. In some places, they seem to have support from the government and the police. Pastors have been killed and their own family accused of the murder despite eyewitness reports of Hindu extremists.
• This is also a time of unprecedented church growth with many testimonies of miracles and amazing moves of the Holy Spirit amongst young people. The remarkable children’s prayer movement is growing. One district had no Christians 10 years ago and now has 200 churches.
• Persecution is more likely in traditional rural areas and in the north but radical Hindus can, and do, arise anywhere.

Pray for God’s Holy Spirit to blow on his church. Pray for more of you Lord. More miracles, more conversions, more joy, more children and young people on fire for Jesus. Bless your remarkable people in India.

YEMEN

• Houthi Shia Muslim rebel movement seized large areas of Yemen in 2014 when a new president was appointed. The Houthis went on to take Yemen’s largest city Sanaa, forcing President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi into exile abroad.
• The conflict escalated dramatically in March 2015, when Saudi Arabia and eight other mostly Sunni Muslim Arab states - backed by the US, UK, and France - began air strikes against the Houthis, with the declared aim of restoring Mr. Hadi's government.
• The Iranians backed the Houthis and this impoverished nation became the surrogate battleground for the Middle East’s big players. The UN fears that up to 14 million Yemenis face famine.

Pray for peace and for food to reach the starving. Pray for people disillusioned with Islam to discover Jesus.

Steve Botham, Director of World Prayer Centre

This weekend marks the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day – 11 am on 11th day of the 11th month 1918.

It is also the end of the 100 days of prayer and as we continue to pray for peace, hope and reconciliation in our time, in our place and in our world the Archbishop of Canterbury has offered the six R’s of Reconciliation to inspire our praying. This can be downloaded here.

Let’s pray that there will be an ongoing impact from this season, particularly on the streets of our major cities when drugs and knife-crime are destroying lives. As London has been confronted with the challenge of escalated violence on its streets, the Church has come together from different denominations and across all ages to pray and seek the peace of its city. For four consecutive Sundays, over 1000 people prayed together, walking the streets of Haringey, Croydon, Brixton, Peckham, Lewisham and Hackney for the rise of violence to be abated.

Our heavenly Father, we pray that you would grant us wisdom and insight into how we might bring peace to our cities. May the cry of violence not be heard on our streets and homes. May your peace reign in the hearts of our youth as you stir up a revival. Rev Nims Obunge thepeacealliance.org.uk

As services and acts of remembrance take place in almost every village, town, and city and with poignant displays of poppies in public gathering places, let us pray that as we stop to remember the lives lost in wartime and peacetime across our world. Pray that we, His church, will demonstrate and share the truth of Jesus the Prince of Peace to all those we meet.

As people march, as bells are rung across the UK, as beacons are lit, let us pray for God’s continued mercy and protection on our nation, on those who serve in our armed forces, for those in the police and security forces and for God’s people in every place to offer the love and comfort to all in need. https://armistice100.org.uk/

Jane Holloway, National Prayer Director

So much of our everyday life journey is governed by the decisions we make; what we eat, what we wear, what we say, where we go, the people we speak to, the directions we take, all contribute to our decision making. We can choose to be positive or negative, critical or encouraging, build up or bring down. Our decisions are generally based on our past, what we have been taught, what we have experienced or what we are experiencing at a given moment. Often decisions are made on an individual basis, sometimes collectively, sometimes they are rash, sometimes considered, but all have consequences. As individuals, families, churches, local authorities, governments, and global authorities, decisions are made every day that affect our lives and the lives of everyone on planet earth.

The Christian journey begins with a decision. Through the work of the Holy Spirit, we are convicted of our sin and our need for a Saviour and we decide to follow Jesus and receive the forgiveness and life He gives. From that moment on, a struggle begins between the new nature that Jesus gives us and our desire to do things His way and the old nature that wants to do things my way. That struggle started in Genesis and continues to this day. Throughout history, in the Old Testament and the New Testament, people lived with good consequences from good decisions made and bad consequences from bad decisions made.

In the Old Testament book of Jeremiah, God speaks to a nation and says, “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is and walk in it and you will find rest for your souls.” Later in the same book, God speaks again and says, “Obey Me and I will be your God and you will be My people. Walk in all the ways I command you that it may go well with you.” In other words, make a good decision.

Today and every day we as individuals, families, churches and indeed our nation stand at crossroads. A point is reached, a decision has to be made. It was the same for the people of Israel in Jeremiah’s day; unfortunately for them, they decided they would not listen to what God was saying but listened to what they wanted to hear from leaders who were deceitful and greedy, who were saying peace, peace when there was no peace.

Today in this hectic, rushing, high speed, sat-nav driven journey of life, God once again is asking for us to stand, pause and consider, look and ask for the ancient paths. Ask where the good way is and walk in it. Walk in the way that brings rest for your souls. So what does that mean for those caught up in today’s frantic pace of life or those caught up in the, ‘don’t know where we are going,’ lifestyle?

Hundreds of years before Jesus, a very wise man wrote, “In the way of righteousness there is life; along with that path there is immortality.” He also wrote, “There is a way that seems right to man but in the end, it leads to death.” 2000 years ago, Jesus taught that there were two paths we could take. In His words, “One was a broad path that led to destruction and the other a path that led to life.”

Today in all of life’s twists and turns, we chose to follow Jesus who said, “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father but by Me.” Today, as again we stand at the crossroads, we decide by the grace of God and in the power of the Holy Spirit to walk in the way of faith, the way of holiness, the way of obedience to God’s Word. It may be an ancient way, but we are promised we will travel well and find rest for our souls. We truly will never walk alone. We would love your company on the journey.

Ian Cole

The situation for the church in China has changed sharply in the past six months. There are 129.7 million professing Christians in China and there has been an explosive growth in people coming to Christ. Earlier in the year the Chinese leader Xi Jinping was elected President for life, this makes him the most powerful leader politically since Mao. He is using that added power to persecute all non- communists in the nation. A huge expansion in surveillance technology makes Xi’s capacity to watch and impede his “enemies” unprecedented. Many house church leaders have been forced into hiding and hundreds are missing with unconfirmed reports that up to 300 have been killed.

The BBC has reported the terrible plight of the Muslim Uyghurs with a heavy military presence on the streets and up to one million placed in Chinese correction camps. Many church leaders in that region have also been taken away.

Across the nation crosses are taken down, Bibles burned and government facial recognition devices have been placed in many churches. Landlords who rent property to churches are finding themselves with huge fines, forcing many to evict congregations and church gatherings. Police can stop and search anyone on the streets to look for threats to society. These threats include bible apps and communications with Christian websites. Oppression is growing and we will be monitoring the situation carefully.

Pray for great wisdom and love for church leaders. Pray this persecution will be widely reported. God is King of Kings and Lord of Lords so in the midst of persecution, we pray for the fire of God to fall on China and for miracles of protection, provision, and healing.

Steve Botham, Director of World Prayer Centre

Yesterday, I was in a meeting and talking to a friend of mine. He had been prayed for at a global conference and told to go to Big Ben and declare it was time for God to move in our nation. He did this two years ago, soon after he was walloped with a host of issues and challenges. I felt I should ask him whether he needed to go back to the call and see if there was unfinished business. Later in the afternoon, we were concluding the meeting when a colleague suddenly said to my friend, “I think God is telling you to revisit your call to Big Ben”. My friend said “That’s interesting because I am just revisiting the prophetic word on my laptop.”

I believe this is a season to revisit our dreams. We may have lost faith, focus, or belief but God tells us to hold onto that word, one season of prayer may not be enough. We need to have persistent faith to see the fullness of the promise coming through. Waiting is an important spiritual discipline. Abraham had to wait for God’s promise. Joseph had many setbacks as he waited for his dreams to be fulfilled. Moses and Israel had to wait before entering the land of promise. David sets himself to wait patiently for God to fulfil his promise of kingship. In waiting we humble ourselves, we let go of our plans and wait on God’s. We become more aware that only a sovereign work of God can really deliver the fullness of the promise.

In a time of spiritual drought there are few dreams, “In those days the word of the Lord was rare; there were not many visions.” 1 Samuel 3:1. When the spirit falls “Your old men shall dream dreams and your young men shall see visions.” Acts 2:17. I believe we are in a time of awakening when God is going to fill many of us with a deep passion to see past promises fulfilled (and is stirring up many new dreams). It may be the return of a prodigal, it may be for a breakthrough, it may be to see the fire of God move in your church.

One thing is at the heart of this. Intimacy with Jesus. He is the author and perfector of our faith. He guides and inspires our prayers. Let us hear His words of preparation to the disciples at the last supper, “I tell you this timeless truth; the person who follows me in faith, believing in me, will do the same mighty miracles that I do – even greater miracles than these because I go to the Father! For I will do whatever you ask me to do when you ask in my name.” (John 14: 12 – 14 – Passion). Intimacy enables us to bring our dreams to Jesus, and to fully align with His purpose. Be open to even greater miracles!

Steve Botham, Director of World Prayer Centre