NIGHTWATCH FOR EUROPE week beginning Sunday June 8th 2008
‘Could you not watch with me for one hour?’ (Mtt26: 40)
WELCOME TO THE NIGHT WATCH FOR EUROPE
Last week we returned to our practice of resisting the devil. My experience tells me that we seriously engaged him, and prompts me to suggest that this week we should do it again in a similar way. So I suggest that once more we lift up the cross against the devil using the same scriptures but applying them even more deeply and clearly. We will also pray into Ireland’s referendum on the Treaty of Lisbon and pray again into the projected Nightwatch transition event. At this time I believe it is very important to emphasise the nature of our watch. Can we remind you that it is not an organisation, nor does it belong to Passion or any other ministry. It is something instigated by the Holy Spirit that we noticed was happening and we offer these guidelines as an aid to prayer for any who find them helpful. If you don’t, by all means disregard them, but please continue the watch in any way the Holy Spirit leads you. Nevertheless we don’t offer them lightly, but are deliberately offering a theological context for prayer flowing from what we take to be a radical intercessory and prophetic stream flowing in Europe at this time
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
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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. A three month commitment is probably a good place to start.
THE CONTENT OF THE WATCH FOR THE WEEK BEGINNING SUNDAY 8th JUNE 2008
1. LET’S LIFT UP THE CROSS AGAINST THE DEVIL (40 minutes)
Each note is an attempt to make the points that we prayed into last weak in a deeper and clearer way:
"All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door; if anyone enters through me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. … I am the good shepherd, and I know my own and my own know me, even as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear my voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life so that I may take it again. No one has taken it away from me, but I lay it down on my own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from my Father." (John 10:8-11, 14-18)
a) Notice that Jesus describes himself as the door to go in and out by. As a child I could not understand this. The Christianity I grew up with portrayed Jesus as the door into a subcultural community in which you stayed while on earth and would remain in for eternity. So why would anyone want to go in and out again? But Jesus is not the door to a church ghetto or a future distant heaven, but to the kingdom of God lived out in this world and one day coming everywhere for ever when Christ returns. Jesus is the door into an intimacy with the Trinity that we constantly carry out into world by sowing ourselves into the situations in which we live and work. Satan’s way robs and steals from this world. Jesus’ way gives into it. Pray for the church in Europe to go in out every day and find pasture like this. Resist all the ways in which Satan’s footprints are found in your situations in Jesus name. (10 minutes).
b) Notice what distinguishes the Lord from the devil: “He lays down his life for the sheep.” Jesus states this five times in these few verses. The word ‘martyr’ and the word ‘witness’ are the same in New Testament Greek. “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses (Gk: marturen) both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth." (Act 1:8) While this does not mean that we will all literally die for our faith, it underlines the heart of Jesus’ lifestyle and therefore ours as well. This is the clue to overcoming Satan. He wants to kill us. But we have given our lives to the crucified one. Therefore we are dead already, "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” (Gal 2:20) Take time to list those things most important to you and deliberately rededicate your life to Jesus including each of these things. Thank him for dying for you and tell him that you want to be identified with him in his death even if it means losing everything. Don’t panic! God is good and you can totally trust him. Then tell the devil several times over: “I am dead and my life is hid with Christ in God. You cannot harm me, you cannot kill me; I am dead already.” (10 minutes)
c) Last week we noted that the life laid down is the way of life in the Trinity. Jesus said “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life.” We suggested that this is the way of life he created us for and how life in the whole of creation is meant to work. We tried to find simple words to describe it, but they were difficult to translate. On the basis that if words are difficult to convey in a second language then they probably don’t make sense in the first one, we will attempt to say it differently and hopefully more clearly! The creation was made for the poured out love that issues in resurrection. We chose the devil’s way, the life of the thief and the robber that brings death and destruction. But God chose to go on laying his life down, to subject the creation to the results of our sin, to lay its life down for us in sacrifices in order to prepare and demonstrate the way of life that belongs to the kingdom of God. After all, he sees even the sparrow that falls, don’t you think it cost God to lay the life of the creation down in the sacrifice of bulls and goats and pigeons so that humanity’s selfish sins of robbing and stealing from the creation and each other could be overcome by the power of life laid down? And finally of course Jesus came and fulfilled this way of life and overcame Satan completely. And death could not hold him for he rose again from the dead. Let’s say it over and over again, “Because he laid his life down resurrection is coming. Because we’ve given our lives away to him his life is in us. As we lay our lives down in every daily task we undertake, resurrection is coming to our continent. Satan will not win! (10 minutes).
d) Notice that Jesus said that to lay his life down on his own initiative, by his own authority, was the commandment he had received from his Father. When we humans were commanded to subdue and have dominion over the creation, this was the kind of authority that we were given. It was the authority of the life laid down. This is what we relinquished when we first chose to exert our own life and authority over God, our spouse and our neighbour from the fall onwards. We joined forces with the devil and his power. When we repent of our sin this is what we are saying sorry for. Now in the resurrection life of Jesus we return to the authority that he shares with the Father and the Holy Spirit. It is the authority of life laid down. When we repent and give our lives to him, it is this kind of life and authority he gives us. Pray for grace to use this power of the cross against the devil in spiritual warfare prayer, but especially now, in this transition of intercessors into the world, by the way we live our lives (10 minutes).
3. PRAY FOR THE FUTURE OF THE TREATY OF LISBON (10 minutes)
Pray for Ireland as they go to the polls on June 12th to vote on the Treaty of Lisbon, the reform treaty containing many of the provisions of the rejected EU constitution. While opinions differ over the potential impact of the treaty, some of the social justice issues surrounding conditions imposed by it on third world nations receiving EU aid, as well as the overall selfish approach to the EU states over and above the rest of Europe and the world, makes it an encouraging thought that Ireland might prevent the treaty from becoming EU law! The news agency Reuters reporting from Dublin on May 29 states: “Ireland's three biggest political parties put on a show of unity today, rallying around their shared goal of securing a "Yes" vote in what looks set to be a close referendum on the European Union's reform treaty. Irish voters go to the polls on June 12 to vote in the only referendum on the treaty planned by an EU state, meaning one of the bloc's smallest nations could sink a project designed to end years of wrangling over reform of its institutions.”
Pray for God’s will to be done; try not to pray the way you always do about this unless you have first listened hard to the Holy Spirit.
4. PLEASE CONTINUE TO PRAY OVER THE NIGHTWATCH TRANSITION EVENT (10 minutes)
Thank you to even more of you who have responded to our requests for input over the nature and location of this event to mark the end of the current watch. As well as the majority of suggestions recommending Brussels as the location, we have had a further second suggestion of Munich, and two separate suggestions of Scotland, and another of Ukraine as well as the one of Sweden. Clearly there is plenty of interest and engagement over this, for which we thank you. We need to make a decision shortly, so more input please, but perhaps over the suggestions we’ve already had, rather than new ones! And offers of help, financial input and some idea of your interest in coming will all be gratefully received by admin@passion.org.uk .
MANY, MANY THANKS FOR BEING CO-WORKERS IN THIS WATCH,
