RELIGIOUS LIBERTY PRAYER - CHRISTMAS SPECIAL
'For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son...' (John 3:16)
By Elizabeth Kendal
World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty Commission (WEA RLC)
Special to ASSIST News Service
AUSTRALIA (ANS) -- God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son...' (John 3:16) Our sins, like an impenetrable veil, separated us from the Holy living God. We could only be redeemed and reconciled to HIM through the pure and perfect blood of the Lamb of God that cleanses us from sin, removing the veil. Now, through faith in Jesus, the Lamb of God, we are reconciled to God. But it doesn't end there. Christ calls the redeemed to follow him, in a 'Christlike' life of righteous, holiness, and self-denial for the sake of obedience to God's will. But it doesn't end there either. Christ's path led him not only to the veil but through the veil into the Most Holy Place and the presence of God, the place from where he serves and blesses (Hebrews 9:11-10:22). We must follow him there, to where Spirit of God fills the cleansed, purified heart, empowering us for a new and life-giving way of communion with God and ministry as the light of the world, the salt of the earth, and Christ's ambassadors.
This Christmas, let's pray for the very thing Jesus came to earth for – that a redeemed people with purified hearts and bodies would live in union with him, empowered by his Spirit to bring blessing and salvation to the world. Let us pray for the revival of the Church.
There are 2 billion in this world who profess Christ as Saviour. Yet multitudes are content with personal salvation alone. They are not light, or salt, or ambassadors for Christ – and the Holy Spirit grieves.
What a difference it would make for persecuted believers (and the lost) there was widespread transforming revival in the Orthodox Church from Asmara (Eritrea) to Minsk (Belarus) through Central Asia and to Russia's eastern shores? What a problem it would create in Asia if the grassroots revival, which is like an out-of-control grass-fire in China, spread right up into the treetops of the Asian Patriotic Churches! And what hope and peace could be brought near if the battered, traumatised and downtrodden Eastern Christians of the Middle East could receive from the Holy Spirit that burning evangelistic zeal, courage and supernatural effectiveness of the apostles?
Can we even begin to imagine what the global Church would look like and be like, if, through repentance and in obedience, all idolatry, syncretism, debilitating secularism and sickening lukewarmness was expelled and Christ, in full resurrection power and kingly authority, was invited in (Rev 3:20)? Could false religion advance in the face of this radiating glory? (Jeremiah 23:27-29) How blessed is the church that is worthy of HIS holy presence. What a blessing to the world would be a global Church of disciples full to overflowing with the awesome and powerful presence and blessing of the Lord! 'For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son...' (John 3:16)
IN ACKNOWLEDGING THAT:
* those who persecute Christ's Church are simply those who need the gospel in all its transforming and saving power (John 16:2-3);
* we are God's instruments to bring the blessings of the gospel to the world, in demonstration of its transforming and saving power;
WE PRAY AND ASK GOD TO:
* search our hearts, reveal our sin, and draw us to humble repentance;
* cleanse our hearts, heal our souls, and lead us to re-commitment to holiness and complete surrender to HIS will;
* visit us with a fresh and powerful anointing of his Holy Spirit, so that holiness, self-denial, obedience, courage, strength, grace and all the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23), (in other words, Christ-likeness), will overflow from us to bring blessing to the world;
* spread purifying and unquenchable revival through the Orthodox Churches, up into the leadership of the Asian Patriotic Churches, into the churches worldwide that are crippled by timidity, compromised by worldliness, or poisoned by idolatry and syncretism with occultism or humanistic secularism; so these churches may be worthy of HIS holy name, worthy of HIS holy presence, and a blessing to the world;
* pour out a special measure of his love and comfort on all those who, because of their faithful ministry and bold witness, will spend this Christmas in filthy prisons, in deathly concentration camps, in hiding, and without loved loves. "In all their suffering HE also suffered..." Isaiah 63:9 excerpt.
'For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son...' (John 3:16)
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