NIGHTWATCH FOR EUROPE: week beginning Sunday February 18th 2007
‘Could you not watch with me for one hour?’ (Mtt26: 40)
WELCOME TO THE NIGHT WATCH FOR EUROPE
Many hundreds of watch men and women maintain this weekly watch. One of them, David Leigh, is a great partner with us all and a fine example of true cross-cultural service, an American who understands Europe and what it is to be European more than most of us! This week we will pray into his response to the EU fiftieth anniversary points that we prayed over last week. We will then pray into a response that I made to some very different material that came from America to Europe. Then we will proceed with our prayer into Sue Mitchell’s word for this year as well as continuing to pray for the Balkan region.
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 web form.
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. We are looking to carry on for another year and eight months, while realising that some can’t commit right now for as long as that. We are pleased for you to enlist for as long as you can. If you have to miss an occasional watch it’s OK as the rest of us will carry it. A six-month commitment is probably a good start.
THE CONTENT OF THE WATCH FOR THE WEEK BEGINNING SUNDAY FEBRUARY 18th 2007
1. TAKE 15 MINUTES TO PRAY AND REFLECT OVER DAVID’S RESPONSE TO THE POINTS FROM THE EU’S 50TH ANNIVERSARY WEBSITE WE PRAYED THROUGH LAST WEEK
In reading the list from the EU website, I could not help but compare and contrast what sort of things, both very similar and very different, come out of the mouths of patriotic Americans...many of whom are sincere, believing Christians. It makes me think that the Body of Christ in the EU is at a crossroads. Here is where we can, as you stated Roger, "celebrate the good things that have the potential to make room for the Kingdom." One of the statements says, "This is the European Way." This is where the crossroads is. Can the Church in Europe discern the difference between the "Kingdom Way" and the "European Way?" There will be seasons and domains when the two converge and for that we can indeed celebrate. But in times and situations when the European Way is not aligned with the Kingdom Way, how will the Church in Europe act (and I specifically don't say REACT)? The American Church struggles with this discernment. Can the European Church celebrate without losing true discernment? How will the European Church fare? Pray for wisdom and revelation for the church in Europe.
2. TAKE 15 MINUTES TO PRAY AND REFLECT OVER MY FOLLOWING RESPONSE TO A NUMBER OF RECENT WORDS FOR THE UK AND EUROPE COMING FROM AMERICA
We have come to a hugely significant time where prophets, historians and social scientists all agree that Christendom, or to put it another way, the Christianity of Empire, has come to an end. This has been expressed variously as 'the end of the Roman way of doing things', 'rolling up the Roman way' and so on. Initiatives like Steve Lowton's walk from Whitby to Rome and onwards to Istanbul and now Jerusalem have marked this and sought to establish it in prayer and declaration.
The problem with much of the prophetic material coming to Europe from some of our American brothers and sisters is that it comes from a perspective that does not yet understand this shift, or if it does, hasn't been able to discern God's hand in it. The result is that their prophecies, or at least their interpretations, look backwards for the restoration of a past glory of supposedly godly covenants and governments which were in fact a mixed and often twisted expression of the gospel and non- or even anti-Christian expressions of empire. Unfortunately this strengthens the misconceptions of some of our own intercessors and prophets. Pray for deeper and more courageous interpretative gifts to arise!
The understanding of many of us in the prophetic and apostolic stream here in Europe is that the end of Christendom and the Roman or empire way of doing things is a good thing, and is the result of the work of the Spirit, the body of Christ and intercessory prayer especially throughout the last three generations. It is now time to recognise and deal with the sins of the past while honouring our fathers and mothers of past generations in order to clear the ground for something new in church and nation that will more truly express the kingdom of God. Pray for this understanding to widen and spread.
3. TAKE 15 MINUTES TO PRAY AND REFLECT OVER THE NEXT EXCERPT FROM SUE MITCHELL’S WORD FOR THIS YEAR
In the final phase of these years, we will be tested on the third vow, which is never to touch death, in order to receive a supernaturally different kingdom. John the Baptist withdrew from death when he withdrew from the power-seeking, compromise and hypocrisy of the city into the wilderness. These same powers however followed Jesus even into the wilderness to test him to the depths and they pursued him to the cross. For us it is no time to withdraw from the city or the creation, but it is fully time to resist the ‘world’s present domination systems’ which killed the wholly different Son of God and so easily captivate his followers. We cannot avoid this conflict, the dye is cast and the call has gone out for a Nazarite people who are fully committed against these systems and the spirit which inhabits them. They inhabit the whole world, including the church. John’s own struggle, even in prison, was with his expectations of how power functions in the kingdom of God. He knew by revelation and experience that Jesus was the one sent from God, but could only ask, “Are you he, or should we look for another?”, since his way of being King was to go and hide himself from the coronation! Jesus so severely contested the worldly mindsets even of one so radically different and so radically just, like John (none greater born among women…) that it confused even John enough to cause such questioning of what he had received by revelation and encounter.
4. TAKE 15 MINUTES TO PRAY FOR THE BALKAN NATIONS
The Balkan nations form the border lands of what was once the dividing line of the Eastern and Western Roman Empire. When the West fell the East survived for another thousand years before it was overtaken by the Islamic Ottoman Empire. What had been the borders of East and West became the fault line of so-called Christianity and Islam. One of the greatest needs of Europe is a new baptism of costly love and repentance of recent past sins between the people groups of those borders, between Turks and Armenians, Serbians and Albanians, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholics. It is hard for the small groups of living prophetic Christians to model this, even to accept it, and all too easy for those of us who are far from the areas of conflict to take up a superior attitude. Pray for humility, courage and wisdom for us all. Above all pray that the body of Christ will be exactly that!
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR PERSISTENCE IN THIS WATCH,
