Over 2 billion people live in a Commonwealth nation. The Commonwealth Prayer Initiative strengthens and connects their 54 nations in a yearlong prayer thrust for the Commonwealth, and its people and leaders.
20-22 October, Commonwealth Christian Assembly (SHINE) is celebrating the 54 nations of the Commonwealth plus its friends. It will be held in Perth, Australia prior to the heads fo government meeting, CHOGM. 50 nations are now taking part.
24-29 October, CONVERGE will happen during CHOGM week (night and day prayer, worship, special events and sessions with international local teams).
Please see more details about participating in these efforts at
Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) News has produced a video about the situation in the war zones of Burma. We invite you to view it on the CBN site here: http://www.cbn.com/media/player/index.aspx?s=/vod/GLA153v3_WS
This video provides a good, concise overview of the situation in Burma, especially the situation inside Karen state, and includes footage and an interview with a survivor of the recent attack on Tha Dah Der village.
Your prayer support will be all-important to the planning of this event which is intended to be a “new paradigm” for an international congress—carried out Acts 13-style—incorporating listening to God, united prayer, and strategic implementation of world-impacting action that proceeds out of that encounter with the Lord and one another.
Prayer Concerns:
1. Please pray for the eight planning task forces: Program, Logistics, Mobilization (including the Media Strategy Group), Finance, Registration/Website, Youth, Children, and Prayer Support. We need to be led of the Lord, given His creative, anointed ideas, and to all do our work diligently, joyfully, and unitedly.
2. This will not be just another prayer conference. The word “world” adds a great deal of complexity and challenge to the planning process since we hope to have 5000-7000 ministry leaders from all 220 nations. Please pray for excellent organization on the part of the Indonesians and Koreans who are co-hosting the event, for the International Coordination Team, and for the right people from every nation to hear about the WPA and be able to come to Jakarta for it.
3. The WPA Concert of Prayer in Indonesia this year on May 17, 2011. This will also serve as preparation for the WPA that is one year to follow. Please pray for further guidance, an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and unity.
4. Some organizers that are key to the WPA process are: the Indonesian and Korean national committees who will co-host the event and the WPA International Coordination Team (14) that provides overall oversight. Please pray for His guidance, protection, and provision for each of us. The spiritual battle, as you can imagine, is intense.
Here are the two Scripture passages that have particularly inspired us in arranging the WPA:
• The Church Becoming United—that all followers of Christ may be one so that the world may believe. (John 17:20-26)
• Our World Being Transformed—that “the earth may be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea”. (Hab.2:14)
Thanks so much for your gracious help through prayer that will mean so much, not just to those of us doing the planning and organizing, but also to our world that will be affected by the World Prayer Assembly.
Please also help us get word of the WPA out to “ministry leaders of influence” who will represent the “seven mountains” of society (Arts/Media, Business/Marketplace, Church, Development of the Poor, Education, Family, and Government) who should be part of the WPA. Again, for more information, please have them see www.worldprayerassembly.com where they can also register their interest in participating.
During our last Connections prayer alert, we featured the Mexican drug war and asked you to pray for the apprehension of the remaining seventeen “most wanted” drug cartel leaders, people who are utterly ruthless criminals, responsible not only for the deaths of tens of thousands of people in Mexico but also the enslavement of many through drug shipments in the USA and other parts of the world. God is answering the prayers of many in Mexico and elsewhere with the interception of many drug shipments and by turning one cartel against another in chaotic fights for dominance. Remember how He often did this with the enemies of Israel as they attacked His people?
Nathan Hughes, writing for the STRATFOR online journal, described the huge logistical challenges for the U.S. and other coalition partners in the landlocked nation of Afghanistan where “hundreds of shipping containers and fuel trucks must enter the country every day from Pakistan and from the north to sustain the nearly 150,000 U.S. and allied forces stationed in Afghanistan, about half the total number of Afghan security forces. Supplying a single gallon of gasoline in Afghanistan reportedly costs the U.S. military an average of $400, while sustaining a single U.S. soldier runs around $1 million a year (by contrast, sustaining an Afghan soldier costs about $12,000 a year).” No wonder that the U.S. President Barack Obama announced June 22 that the process of reducing military forces in Afghanistan would begin this month. Hughes worries that “though the initial phase of the drawdown appears limited, minimizing the tactical and operational impact on the ground in the immediate future, the United States and its allies are now beginning the inevitable process of removing their forces from Afghanistan. This will entail the risk of greater Taliban battlefield successes.”
Please pray for wisdom for the 50-nation coalition and the Afghan authorities and that the Taliban will become disillusioned with the conflict, giving up their misguided struggle to take over the nation so that peace and healing can come to this austere and isolated area of the world.
The Transitional Federal Government of Somalia has been given a new opportunity through the killing of Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, Al Qaeda’s top operative in Somalia and one of the most wanted men in Africa who plotted the bombings of the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and devised a plan in 2002 that nearly brought down an Israeli airliner in Kenya. He drove into a government checkpoint by mistake last week and died in a blaze of gunfire. The Islamist militant group he helped lead – the Shabaab – has also been “steadily losing ground as African Union peacekeepers and government troops go on the offensive”. Conditions are now ripe for the transitional government, which for years has been boxed into a tiny corner of Mogadishu, the capital, to assert greater control. However, many are doubtful that Somalia’s political leadership will be able to seize the moment. From their perspective, the prognosis for this chaotic, battle-weary nation remains grim.
Pray that somehow the government authorities will be able to act with wisdom and unity to bring Somalia into a new and better future for its long-suffering people.