Malta: a wake-up call to church
A float depicting Archbishop Charles J Scicluna will take part in Valletta’s carnival parade, despite criticism. Rayvin Galea, the artist behind the float’s design, hopes to get across various issues which he feels have not properly been addressed by the Church. They include its opposition to same-sex marriage, depicted on his float through a figurine of a gay couple on top of a wedding cake, while the Church’s opposition to IVF takes the form of two horned cherubs. Scicluna will wear a military uniform, which represents the Church’s conservative stance on many social issues. Missing will be the words ‘St Joseph’s Home’ above the Scicluna effigy, which would have been a reference to the sexual abuse of children in the late 80s at the church orphanage. The float also features Lady Justice with a blindfold, a balance, and a sword, showcasing the lack of justice received by the victims of the abuse.
China: keep praying
A baby born in Wuhan was diagnosed with coronavirus thirty hours after birth. It is unclear if the disease was transmitted in the womb or after birth. Medical experts believe the infection could have been contracted in the womb. Pray for God to place a blanket of security and peace over the families and relatives of the infected who are currently living in isolation and fear. In China alone, there are 25,000+ confirmed cases, and currently 570+ dead with both numbers rising rapidly. The World Health Organisation says that there is a ‘window of opportunity’ to stop it becoming a global pandemic crisis. Pray for God to strengthen health workers and research scientists to do all that is necessary. May poorer countries’ leaders have the wisdom and funding to halt coronavirus spreading. May the love of Jesus spread more quickly and further than the virus, through active churches reaching every corner with His eternal hope. See
China: coronavirus - wildlife trade - ecology
China's demand for wildlife products for traditional medicine and exotic foods is driving a global trade in endangered species. Markets selling live animals are considered a potential source of diseases that are new to humans. Over 70% of emerging human infections are estimated to have come from animals, particularly wild animals. Campaigners want China to apply a permanent ban on the wildlife trade. Pray that their crusade is successful and this trade becomes illegal. Editorials in China's state-controlled media have denounced the uncontrolled wildlife market. Ecologists say the coronavirus outbreak could provide China with an opportunity to prove that it is serious about protecting biodiversity. In September this year, Beijing will be hosting a major global meeting on natural and biological resources, known as the Convention on Biological Diversity. A report last year by an intergovernmental group found that one million species are at risk of extinction.
Tanzania: church stampede kills 20+
Tanzania has seen an increase in ‘prosperity gospel’ pastors promising to lift people out of poverty and perform what they call miracle cures. A stampede occurred when Boniface Mwamposa, calling himself ‘the Apostle’, poured what he said was holy oil on the ground and the crowd surged forward to touch it, hoping to be cured of sickness. Twenty people died and sixteen were injured. Five of those killed were children. Authorities are assessing the situation, amid fears that the death toll could rise. Peter Kilewo, a witness, described the scene as ‘horrible’. ‘People trampled on mercilessly, jostling each other with elbows. It was as if the preacher had thrown bundles of dollars about, and there were all these deaths!’ Thousands flock to Pentecostal churches, whose main source of income is the tithe that worshippers are asked to give.
Israel: rocket attacks escalate
On 3 February Israeli media reported that Hamas, which rules Gaza, is afraid of being seen as a collaborator with Israel as a result of ongoing negotiations for a long-term truce. It also does not wish to appear less radical than the Palestinian Authority, which is currently denouncing Donald Trump’s ‘deal of the century’ peace proposal. Consequently, Hamas is permitting Islamic Jihad to fire rockets at Israel. Iran is reportedly putting pressure on both organisations to conduct terror attacks against Israel, both to take revenge for the US assassination of Qassem Soleimani and to influence the upcoming Knesset elections. On 5 February two mortar shells were fired from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territory, and the next day Palestinians launched projectiles and explosive balloons across the border. Exchanges are occurring almost daily.
Nigeria: Boko Haram kills CAN chairman
On 2 January, Rev Lawan Andimi was abducted by Boko Haram. He pleaded with the government and the leadership of CAN (Christian Association of Nigeria) to come to his rescue, adding that his captors were taking good care of him and ‘hoped he would return home safely if it was the will of God’. The insurgents demanded two million euros for his release, but then went ahead and beheaded him. Bishop Mamza, of CAN, said that another pastor had been abducted and killed almost at the same time. Stating that Boko Haram had not been defeated or suppressed, he urged the government to tell Nigerians the truth. President Buhari expressed sadness and sympathy, but another CAN spokesman described the unabated kidnappings and killings as ‘shameful’ to the government. Pray for God’s comfort to embrace those living in sorrow and fear.
Iraq: protests swell
When their tents were burned, Iraqi protesters replaced them with concrete structures. When influential cleric Muqtada al-Sadr withdrew his support, even more protesters turned out despite fears of a crackdown by security forces. On 1 February al-Sadr ordered his followers back to Tahrir Square, where they clashed with demonstrators and forcibly took over the main part of the square. The nomination of Mohammed Tawfiq Allawi as the new prime minister has been received negatively by the protesters, who see his choice as a plot by al-Sadr and his Iran-backed allies to end the protests in Baghdad. The parliament needs to hold a session to vote on the nomination. The Sadrist group is now cooperating with the security forces to end the sit-in at the square.
Algeria: a church among Muslims
A Muslim-majority country of 41 million, Algeria depends on fossil fuels for its export income. It struggles to provide jobs and homes for its people. Democracy and human rights exist on paper, less so in reality. A movement to Christ is happening in Algeria. Most new believers come from a Kabyle Berber (non-Arab) background, but faith is growing among Arabs and most other people groups as well. New fellowships have begun throughout Algeria, partly because Berbers have moved into Arab areas to share the good news. Persecution is a fact of life. One Christian woman wrote: ‘Women who convert to Jesus Christ face new challenges, which sometimes cost them dearly. They face rejection by their families. Others are repudiated by their husbands because of their faith. They can even be deprived of their children.’ Pray for new hope for Algeria’s youthful urban population and its rural poor.
One of the key prayer strategies for the Go2020 initiative is praying for five people in our circle of influence who don’t’ know Jesus Christ. Everyone can pray for someone! Who is someone in your workplace, school, neighborhood, or in your family? Start with a prayer list of 5. You might start with a simple prayer,
“Lord, lead me to five people for whom I can daily pray and then create opportunities for me to share with them the good news of Christ”
It truly is God’s desire that all be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth! We all have people in our lives and spheres of influence who are unsaved and don’t know Christ. We should be praying for them because we care deeply about them and because we know that God cares for them and wants none of them to perish—His desire is for all of them to come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9). God always answers prayer when it is in accordance with his will and for his renown! We don’t always know how or when he will respond, but we do know that he always acts in response to our prayers for others. Our prayers are not in vain! His answers will always be for his glory, for our good and for the good of those we are praying for. He is better than we think he is and doing more than we think he is doing!
“This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:3-4).
“The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).
Here are four claims I like to use in praying for the lost!
1. Claim One: Open Doors …So opportunities will be opened to those who don’t know Christ!
“Devote yourselves to prayer…that God may open a door…so that we may proclaim…Christ” (Colossians 4:2-3, NIV).
2. Claim Two: Open Minds …So people will hear the Gospel with an open mind.
“I am sending you to them [the lost] to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light” (Acts 26:17b-18a, NIV). 23
3. Claim Three: Open Hearts …So unbelievers will invite Christ into their hearts.
“For God…made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of… Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6, NIV).
4. Claim Four: Open Heavens …So the Spirit of God will be poured out upon all flesh and men will be drawn to Christ
“Open up, O heavens, and pour out your righteousness. Let the earth open wide so salvation and righteousness can sprout up together” (Isaiah 45:8, NLT).
Here are some other important themes to focus on praying for your lost family members, neighbors, friends, or co-workers!
1. Ask God for the courage and power of the Holy Spirit to be an effective witness in your sphere of influence.
“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8).
2. Pray for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon all flesh! Pray for the Holy Spirit to convict the world in regards to sin, righteousness and judgment.
“ ‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams” (Acts 2:17).
“And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged” (John 16:8-11).
3. Pray for God the Father to draw all men to Christ through the power of the cross!
“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44).
“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (John 12:32).
4. Pray for God’s kindness to lead people to repentance.
“Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?” (Romans 2:4).
5. Pray for the gospel to the Kingdom to be proclaimed throughout the world! Ask God to give you his compassion for the lost and to send forth laborers into the harvest fields of the world!
“And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (Matthew 9:35-39).
6. Pray that the Lamb who was slain would receive his due reward in the nations!
“And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation… 12 saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” (Rev. 5:9, 12).
“Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession” (Psalm 2:8).
7. Pray for mighty signs, wonders and miracles at the proclamation of the gospel!
“And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness” (Acts 4:29-31).
8. Pray for God to remove the blindness from the enemy over the minds of the unbeliever that they will see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ!
“In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor. 4:4).
9. Pray for the gift of tears, to cry out for the lost to be saved
“Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy! He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him” (Psalm 126:5-6).
10. Pray for the Knowledge of the Glory of the Lord to cover the earth!
“For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:14).
“All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you” (Psalm 22:27)
Dr Jason Hubbard - Executive Co-ordinator
IPC Connect
Let’s be encouraged and thankful as we reflect on some positive statistics and information that Nicholas Kristoff has compiled in the New York Times.
For humanity over all, life just keeps getting better.
If you’re depressed by the state of the world, let me toss out an idea: In the long arc of human history, 2019 has been the best year ever.
The bad things that you fret about are true. But it’s also true that 2019 was probably the year in which children were least likely to die, adults were least likely to be illiterate and people were least likely to suffer excruciating and disfiguring diseases.
Every single day in recent years, another 325,000 people got their first access to electricity. Each day, more than 200,000 got piped water for the first time. And some 650,000 went online for the first time, every single day.
Perhaps the greatest calamity for anyone is to lose a child. That used to be common: Historically, almost half of all humans died in childhood. As recently as 1950, 27 percent of all children still died by age 15. Now that figure has dropped to about 4 percent.
“If you were given the opportunity to choose the time you were born in, it’d be pretty risky to choose a time in any of the thousands of generations in the past,” noted Max Roser, an Oxford University economist who runs the Our World in Data website. “Almost everyone lived in poverty, hunger was widespread and famines common.”
But … but … but President Trump! But climate change! War in Yemen! Starvation in Venezuela! Risk of nuclear war with North Korea. …
All those are important concerns, and that’s why I write about them regularly. Yet I fear that the news media and the humanitarian world focus so relentlessly on the bad news that we leave the public believing that every trend is going in the wrong direction. A majority of Americans say in polls that the share of the world population living in poverty is increasing — yet one of the trends of the last 50 years has been a huge reduction in global poverty.
As recently as 1981, 42 percent of the planet’s population endured “extreme poverty,” defined by the United Nations as living on less than about $2 a day. That portion has plunged to less than 10 percent of the world’s population now.
Every day for a decade, newspapers could have carried the headline “Another 170,000 Moved Out of Extreme Poverty Yesterday.” Or if one uses a higher threshold, the headline could have been: “The Number of People Living on More Than $10 a Day Increased by 245,000 Yesterday.”
Many of those moving up are still very poor, of course. But because they are less poor, they are less likely to remain illiterate or to starve: People often think that famine is routine, but the last famine recognized by the World Food Program struck just part of one state in South Sudan and lasted for only a few months in 2017.
Diseases like polio, leprosy, river blindness and elephantiasis are on the decline, and global efforts have turned the tide on AIDS. A half century ago, a majority of the world’s people had always been illiterate; now we are approaching 90 percent adult literacy. There have been particularly large gains in girls’ education — and few forces change the world so much as education and the empowerment of women.
You may feel uncomfortable reading this. It can seem tasteless, misleading or counterproductive to hail progress when there is still so much wrong with the world. I get that. In addition, the numbers are subject to debate and the 2019 figures are based on extrapolation. But I worry that deep pessimism about the state of the world is paralyzing rather than empowering; excessive pessimism can leave people feeling not just hopeless but also helpless.
Readers constantly tell me, for example, that if we save children’s lives, the result will be a population crisis that will cause new famines. They don’t realize that when parents are confident that their children will survive, and have access to birth control, they have fewer children. Bangladesh was once derided by Henry Kissinger as a “basket case,” yet now its economy grows much faster than America’s and Bangladeshi women average just 2.1 births (down from 6.9 in 1973).
Yes, it’s still appalling that a child dies somewhere in the world every six seconds — but consider that just a couple of decades ago, a child died every three seconds. Recognizing that progress is possible can be a spur to do more, and that’s why I write this annual reminder of gains against the common enemies of humanity.
So I promise to tear my hair out every other day, but let’s interrupt our gloom for a nanosecond to note what historians may eventually see as the most important trend in the world in the early 21st century: our progress toward elimination of hideous diseases, illiteracy and the most extreme poverty.
When I was born in 1959, a majority of the world’s population had always been illiterate and lived in extreme poverty. By the time I die, illiteracy and extreme poverty may be almost eliminated — and it’s difficult to imagine a greater triumph for humanity on our watch.
By Nicholas Kristof, Opinion Columnist, NY Times
More at: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/28/opinion/sunday/2019-best-year-poverty.html Pray: giving thanks for the positive steps that are being made across the quoted areas including life expectancy, poverty, literacy, education, health and access to utilities.
Pray: that these advancements will not falter and that governments will continue to invest in improvements in the quality of life of their people.