The State of the Nation – A Call to Prayerfully discern the mind of Christ
As part of a UK National Prayer Leaders forum called ‘Watchmen’, I was asked to join a number of other leaders from across the nation to prayerfully discern together what ‘The State of The Nation’ is in terms of its standing before the Lord and consider what He might want us to do. We met in Birmingham at The World Prayer Centre last Thursday. Before the meeting Jane Holloway, the convener of this gathering wrote;
‘In this year of celebrating The Reformation, we are hearing the words ‘reaction, revolution and rebellion.’ Talk of summers and winters of discontent are in the media, the fear of terrorist attacks, pressures from other religions, the safety of our buildings, the social and biological pressures on our children, the excitement of rebellion gripping our young people, the constant attacks on marriage and family life, greed and corruption in the financial world, the uncertainty over Brexit and the side-lining of the fear of God both inside and outside the church are producing a cocktail that could completely eradicate our Judea/Christian heritage and radically change our way of life. At the same time we see many coming to Christ – there is a spiritual battle for our nation.’
We all know that discerning the mind of Christ together is never easy! Depending on your individual denomination, church stream or the theological framework you hold, more often than not these influence your perspective. As you can imagine there was a wide range of perspectives on causes of the condition of our nation, but one overarching theme emerged and that was that the ‘Church’- that is -both the state church and other shapes of church, have some responsibility to bear for what is being unveiled before us.
In the famous call to prayer in 2 Chronicles 7:14, it is the people of God who are called to prayer, confession and repentance in order to see the healing of the land. If we want to see ‘our land’ the land of the UK healed, we, the church, are the ones called to our knees. One of the contributors to the day was Malcom Duncan. Malcom couldn’t make the meeting but connected with us via phone and his contribution was recorded. If you were to ask me for a summary of the issues that we face, his summary is as good as any. Click on the link below to hear his reflections.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5subycJWYFQRC1aMjBTWDRkWnM
He quotes from these verses;
2 Kings 17 v 14
But the Israelites would not listen. They were as stubborn as their ancestors who had refused to believe in the Lord their God. 15 They rejected his decrees and the covenant he had made with their ancestors, and they despised all his warnings. They worshiped worthless idols, so they became worthless themselves. They followed the example of the nations around them, disobeying the Lord’s command not to imitate them.
How interesting when we have just finished our series on the same subject – Idolatry!
This was an initial meeting, I envisage the possibility of a regular gathering to seek the face of God on behalf of the church and the nation.
Please pray for us as we discern the next stages of this journey.
Adrian Lowe