NIGHTWATCH FOR EUROPE week beginning Sunday July 27th 2008
‘Could you not watch with me for one hour?’ (Mtt26: 40)
WELCOME TO THE NIGHT WATCH FOR EUROPE
Thank you and well done all of you who have already booked flights, paid the registration fee and reserved your hotel place for the Nightwatch transition event from September 26-28th 2008. Those who cannot make it to Majorca, please note the dates in your diary so that you can especially stand with us in prayer during that time. Full details of the registration process can be fund at the end of these prayer guidelines.
This week the Watch material has been prepared by our good friend and fellow watcher Andy Knox from Manchester. For some time now he has sensed the pressing relevance of the seminal prophesy in Isaiah 55. We will spend the next few weeks praying through it.
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 transition event of September 26th-28th 2008 in Majorca. After this we expect to move 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 27th July 2008
ISAIAH 55
We will start with two of the key verses in the chapter as a basis for praying through this scripture in the coming weeks. The idea is that as we pray we are preparing ourselves to be forerunners, so that the church can become nation-changers and our continent step into its destiny for the kingdom of God.
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9)
Spend 6 minutes on each of the following observations
• Theology is a major battleground for intercessors and watchmen to take more seriously
• God's thoughts are not 'other' than ours in the sense that he thinks about special things we could never think about
• Rather his perspective and worldview are totally different to ours. His way of thinking about things is different to our western, capitalist, Greek/platonic-shaped mindsets.
• It is not merely thought patterns in us that the Lord is looking to deal with but our entire perspective of how we see the world.
• There are strongholds in our minds that we may not even realise are there.
• See Romans 12v1&2 “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”
• A three stranded cord is not easily broken. At this time the Lord is breaking open the three-fold pyramid of empire (economics/power/religious control) and exposing it for what it is. He is starting with his body and then moving to our nations and the wider context of Europe. As European people we should not be surprised to discover that these three-way agreements of Greek philosophy, capitalist economics and Christendom theology are set up in our mindsets and will take hard work to break.
• So let us submit our minds and mindsets to God to be broken open by him and renewed by him.
• There is a need for us and the rest of the body of Christ throughout Europe to repent of all escapist theology on one hand, that hopes for a 'rapture' or 'going to heaven when we die', and for an over realised eschatology on the other hand that denies the second coming and thinks that by social regeneration alone, we will, with the right policies and interaction somehow manage to arrive at a blissful Utopia. Neither is based in the New Testament.
• We need to embrace Jesus again as the Resurrection and the Life, who has already started the New Creation and has already brought in his Kingdom, and will one day return to bring all things to completion in him and make all things new. That means our work to bring the new creation and the Kingdom into the now is not wasted, but will bear fruit and last into eternity! So, even if we die in the process, it is in the hope of the final resurrection that our work now will not be in vain! This is worth praising Father, Son and Holy Spirit about!
The theology of the Resurrection that Andy is drawing on here is very helpfully expounded in Bishop Tom Wright’s book, Surprised by Hope (SPCK 2007)
