NIGHTWATCH FOR EUROPE week beginning Sunday July 13th 2008
‘Could you not watch with me for one hour?’ (Mtt26: 40)
WELCOME TO THE NIGHT WATCH FOR EUROPE
Thank you all so much for the responses and offers of help towards the Nightwatch transition event from September 26-28th 2008. Suggestions for the location have ranged from Gothenburg, Munich, Brussels, Strasbourg, Lichtenstein, Prague, Jerusalem, the Ukraine and the far north of Scotland! In the end the prophetic timing dawned and over the last few days a unison of prophetic voices for Europe have suddenly and clearly announced Spain – the Spanish island of Majorca midway between Europe and Africa, to be exact. So right now we are looking for a suitable inexpensive hotel within easy reach of the airport of Palma to where Ryan Air and Easyjet, among others, provide reasonably priced flights from all over the continent. The plan is to get together on the Friday evening, but to have the major time seeking God all day Saturday and Sunday morning to allow for those whose flights arrive later on Friday to still make it, and for those who need to get home by Sunday night not to miss out. We will let you know the hotel details as soon as possible, but in the meantime please go ahead and book flights while the prices are still relatively cheap. We will share the prophetic perspective behind this decision for prayer during subsequent watches. In the meantime this week’s watch will focus on some crucial preparation for the future that forerunners need to complete before these three and a half years come to their fullness.
If you know of anyone who would also like to receive this night watch prayer bulletin each week, they can subscribe by going to www.passion.org.uk/announcemail and submitting their details on the web form. Alternatively they can email us at admin@passion.org.uk
IF YOU ARE A REGULAR YOU CAN SKIP THE NEXT 2 PARAGRAPHS
If you are receiving this material unexpectedly it is because someone has suggested that you may be interested to join in. If you do not want to keep receiving it please inform us immediately and we will stop sending it to you. We want to let those of you who are newcomers know that we are very pleased to have your partnership in this watch. We are simply asking for a commitment of an hour a week some time between 9pm and 6am whatever time zone you are in.
We will send you a brief outline for prayer each week according to the prophetic direction coming from the contemporary prophetic movement in Europe. You will not always agree with everything in the watch material. Go with what you can and trust the Lord to help you with the rest. This Nightwatch began in November 2003 and we are looking to carry on until the end of September 2008 after which there will be a transition into a different form of intercessory support. If you have to miss an occasional watch it’s OK as the rest of us will carry it. We are ready for eleventh hour workers for these final months!
THE CONTENT OF THE WATCH FOR THE WEEK BEGINNING SUNDAY 13th July 2008
1. THE CHURCH AT THE FULNESS OF TIMES (12 minutes)
“But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth his Son” (Gal 4:4)
"For it was the Father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in him, and through him to reconcile all things to himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross; through him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven." (Col 1:19-20)
"And he put all things in subjection under his feet, and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all." (Eph 1:22-23)
Note that at the fullness of times all the fullness of Christ is intended to be manifested in its fullness in the church. Notice too that the result of this fullness is the reconciliation of all things and that the means to this reconciliation is the cross. So the mature church at the culmination of the times needs to carry everything that remains unreconciled to the cross.
In the light of this, prayerfully consider the role of Paul’s suffering and ours:
"Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I do my share on behalf of his body, which is the church, in filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions." (Col 1:24)
2. REVELATION OF THE NEED TO REPENT TO AND FORGIVE OUR SPIRITUAL FATHERS (12 minutes)
Please spend time praying and reflecting over the following:
When we first understood the need for intercessory repentance for past corporate sin back in the late eighties, my wife Sue engaged in a forty day fast. As a result of this the Lord revealed the importance of turning in repentance and forgiveness, whatever the cost, towards the previous churches, ministries and denominations from which our current expressions of church had emerged. Things shifted powerfully in the spiritual realm as a group of us repented first to the Lord and then to representatives of the Apostolics, Presbyterians, Anglicans, Assemblies of God, Plymouth Brethren, Mennonites and so on, that we, our families or our churches had started out from. God showed us clearly that unless we did this, then the same spirits of religion and exclusivity that we or our parents had broken away from would threaten or demolish the new expressions of the Body that we were now part of. In some situations the need and the cost of doing this exposed the hold that such spirits already had on the churches and saints that we were walking with and some drew back from completing the initiative because of the issues that it opened up. Nevertheless it is now time for us to fill up this initiative as far as we can before moving on as the Body of Christ in Europe today. One of the most important and controversial issues that this leads us back to is the need to repent towards and forgive our fathers the Roman Catholics and the Jews who came before them.
3. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SPIRIT OF RELIGION AND IDOLATRY (12 minutes)
Continue to pray and reflect over this:
If we cannot find it in our hearts to repent for bitter or apathetic attitudes towards our spiritual fathers and turn and forgive them, then we will be vulnerable to the same spirits that brought about their problems and failures. This is not easy to accept. In some cases the level of rejection and persecution shown by past Christian leaders has been huge. In the history of Europe, Christians have been killed, robbed and disowned in the name of Christ. As a result reformers, revivalists and new church planters have been tempted to identify their fathers as misguided, mistaken or even anti-Christian. Almost always the sin of our fathers has been to regard their teachings, leaders, structures and ways of doing things as the best or only expression of God’s character and will. This soon becomes idolatry as Jesus and his kingdom is displaced by our attempt to interpret and embody it. This then becomes the object of our worship. This is the essence of religion and is the spirit that Jesus resisted in the Jews who believed in him when he described them as “of their father the devil” (John 8:31, 44). It is the same spirit that Paul resisted in the Judaizers; Jewish believers who tried to enforce their Jewish religious practices on their fellow believers and of whom he said “beware of the dogs, beware of the evil doers, beware of the false circumcision” (Phil 3:2; see also Gal 2:12ff; Rev 2:9). If we do not repent of our hard hearts and forgive the sins of our fathers then the same idolatrous attitudes will overtake us. Our expressions of church, whether traditional or new, emerging or post-congregational will become increasingly threatening and destructive to the kingdom of God. Pray for the same love and grace towards our fathers that Jesus demonstrated at the cross and Stephen echoed in martyrdom when they spoke the words “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” and “Lord do not hold this sin against them.” (Luke 23:34; Acts 7:60)
4. GETTING IT RIGHT ABOUT ISRAEL (12 minutes)
Please reflect and pray over this too:
In the international intercessory movement there is much focus on Israel about who Paul says “who are the fathers, and from whom is the Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.” (Rom 9:5) But the difficulty for many of us is the frequent presence of a religious spirit in this current emphasis, which frequently fails to recognise and confront the past and present sins of Israel. These have often been religious pride and cooperation with the economic and military powers of empire in the attempt to maintain power over the land. Whereas Jesus, Stephen and Paul recognised, identified with and willingly suffered for their fathers’ sins, some have tried to gain cheaply the blessing promised to those who bless Israel. True blessing comes from real loving, which repents of actual bitterness and resentment and recognises and forgives actual sin. This will not come until we expose the sin and unforgiveness of our own hearts towards our Roman early church fathers who themselves hated and separated from the Jews. At the council of Nicea in 325, instead of turning their hearts in repentance and forgiveness to them, the church of our fathers separated entirely from all that was Jewish. (For details of this see Sue and my book Target Europe (Sovereign World 2001 pp. 20-23). The recent intercessory walk from Whitby to Rome and on through Nicea to Jerusalem that we have covered in prayer, together with the intercessory initiatives in Trier and Brussels, has dealt with some of this. However, unless we complete this work in the context of our own lives, movements and churches, we will simply step over the sins of the past in a religious spirit that affirms the pride and self-assertion of our own religious practices. Instead of opening up the way back to truly loving and forgiving our fathers we will allow a religious idolatry towards Israel to block the pathway to the resurrection of the work of the kingdom of God in Europe.
5. FINALLY LET’S ASK GOD FOR REVELATION ABOUT THOSE IN OUR SPIRITUAL HISTORIES THAT WE SHOULD BEGIN TO REPENT TOWARDS AND FORGIVE (12 minutes)
Let’s begin in own hearts with the Lord and prayerfully list those individuals, churches and movements that we need to turn our hearts towards. Then consider and pray for those who we should meet together with in agreement to carry the sins of our spiritual histories to the cross. Finally let’s resist the devil away from this whole process.
