Praise Reports 3

Egypt:

Do pray for the Church to continue to overcome evil with divine forgiveness and love. Do pray for Jesus to reveal Himself to an unprecedented number of Muslims disillusioned by Islamic State. Do pray for a stable and trustworthy government to act in the interest of all its’ people. (For more info, do click onto this link – https://www.mnnonline.org/news/egypt-of-christmas-christians-and-counterterrorism/ to read for further news by Ruth K'lama from Mission News Network, 7th January 2019)

Russia:

Do pray for open hearts to the Gospel and lives touched by Christ through Immanuel's Child. (For more info, do click onto this link – https://www.mnnonline.org/news/immanuels-child-tangibly-explains-story-of-christs-birth/ to read for further news by Beth Stolicker from Mission News Network, 7th January 2019)

Before Revival Must Come Repentance

“When God is about to do a mighty work, He gathers His people in consecrated repentance,” said Reverend Edmund Chan at PraySingapore on 7th October 2018.

 

“We each need to return to our own Galilee,” said the Leadership Mentor at Covenant Evangelical Free Church (CEFC), who called on the tens of thousands of Christians who had gathered at the Singapore Sports Hub to unite in consecrating their hearts in repentance.

 

Why Galilee? Rev Edmund recalled the words of Jesus to the two women who were surprised to find an empty tomb. “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.” (Matthew 28:10)

 

“Lord, we are coming back as a church to our first love, to start over again.”

 

Why Galilee? Why not Jerusalem? Why make that 120km journey up to Galilee? Rev Edmund said he believes it is because Jesus was telling them to return to the place of their first love.

 

Galilee was the place where the disciples – many of them fishermen – were first called. Likewise, he said, for the Church in Singapore to be the Antioch of Asia, we need to return to our first love, the place of our first calling.

 

“Each of us has a spiritual moment when we heard the first call of God on our lives. It is that moment that the presence of God became real for us,” he said.

 

“Starting over. Breaking free. Looking up. Letting go. Moving on. That is the call of Jesus.”

 

United in repentance:

After Jesus was crucified, the disciples were scattered, broken, their faith shaken. All hope, it seemed, was lost. The spiritual moment when we first heard the call of God is the moment the presence of God became real for us.

 

Until the empty tomb, and the word from an angel which gave them the same instructions as Jesus had given the women: Return to Galilee. (Matthew 28:7). “This is what Biblical repentance is about: Returning to our spiritual Galilee, when we first heard the call of the Kingdom and the mission of Jesus,” explained Rev Edmund.

 

Key to this is unity in prayer, because Galilee was also the place where the Great Commission was issued to disciple the nations, he said. It was only after that call was given that they were sent to Jerusalem. And so, upon their return to Jerusalem, the centre of religious worship for Judaism, the disciples gathered as one in prayer (Acts 1:12). When that happened, the Holy Spirit came upon them (Acts 2:1-4).

 

Lessons from Dunkirk

A memorable call to united repentance also happened during World War II, shared Rev Edmund, in an incident recently immortalised in film. Gather and repent before God as one, then there will be a consecration of God’s people.

 

In the Battle of Dunkirk, Winston Churchill – then the British Prime Minister – was woken by a phone call from his French counterpart, saying that his country had fallen to the Germans. With the fall of Belgium, the Netherlands and now France, Germany had trapped some 330,000 Allied troops along the shores of Dunkirk.

 

The War Office reported that, realistically, only 20,000 to 30,000 – a mere 10% of the troops – could be rescued. Churchill spoke to the reigning monarch, King George VI, who then called for a National Day of Prayer on 26th May, 1940.

 

But, instead of praying for deliverance of the troops or victory in the war, the Church gathered and repented before God, Rev Edmund told attendees at PraySingapore.

 

When they prayed, three miracles happened:

• Hitler halted 1,800 tanks just 10 miles from Dunkirk for no apparent reason. If the tanks had pushed through, the victory would have belonged to Germany. Churchill speculated in his memoirs that Hitler ordered this as he wanted to depend on the country’s aerial superiority.
• But that backfired as bad weather in the Flanders kept the 300 German planes grounded.
• A rare and unprecedented calm in the English Channel facilitated the evacuation of British troops. Some 800 vessels, both big and small, took part in the greatest rescue operation of all time, as more than 300,000 were brought safely home.

 

When His people repent, miracles happen, Rev Edmund said.

 

“Today as we get back together, we want to return – to the place of calling and consecration as a family,” he said as he called for attendees to pray.

 

“Today, return to Galilee and say, ‘Lord, in repentance and united prayer, we, the church of Jesus Christ, stand as one for the kingdom of Jesus."

 

(Written by Geraldine Tan, 8th October 2018)

 

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Geraldine is a former news journalist, public relations practitioner and research editor with a penchant for puns, punctuation and a positive attitude. She is always up for the next new adventure and is on a quest to bake the perfect chocolate chip cookie. Geraldine is now Assistant Editor at Salt & Light Devotional Text.

The Glory Of God Is At Stake

During last year’s PraySingapore celebration on 7th October, Bishop Rennis Ponniah – head of the Anglican Church in Singapore called on Christians to pray for opportunities to proclaim the good news to their friends and family in order to transform their homeland. Bishop Ponniah said that he along with other pastors in Singapore believe that God is orchestrating a season in which “many people are going to find their way back to God through Jesus Christ”.

 

He declared: “It’s going to be a great homecoming!”

 

To galvanise Christians in Singapore to share the Gospel, several churches and Christian organisations have come together to organise the Celebration of Hope, a three-day mass evangelistic event to be held at the Singapore Sports Hub in May 2019.

“We’re praying that every Christian in every church will arise and share the good news of Jesus, personally, with relatives, friends and acquaintances, so that they may know Him in whom alone is life,” he said. However, believers should not just view the event as merely just another evangelistic rally, but a “vital step in God’s process of revival” in Singapore, Bishop Ponniah said.

 

People of God, we need revival. We need revival because the ground is hard, dark and opposing forces are many. And most important of all, the glory of God is at stake,” he said.

 

Singapore needs revival:

A key reason why the Church in Singapore needs to make evangelism a priority again is because of the lack of growth in the Christian population here, he said. 

In the decades before 2010, the number of Christians in Singapore grew by 2% to 4% every decade. However, in recent years, church growth has plateaued, with the Bishop noting that the number of Christians grew marginally from 18.3% of the population in 2010 to 18.8% in 2015.

The lack of growth in our Church “injures the God who desires that none shall perish”.

“That injures the God who desires that none shall perish,” he said. “That stabs us in the heart. That must propel us into action.” “Another reason we need a revival is there is a lack of righteousness in the land,” said the Bishop. Issues such as divorce, abortion, gender confusion, sexual brokenness, gambling and other vices permeate the culture, he said. “It paints a picture of how much we must cry out for God to come upon the land. ”But only God can change the conduct and ethical life of the people here and bring them to saving faith in Christ, Bishop Ponniah said.

Christians in Singapore must acknowledge their brokenness and the fractures in the local body of Christ, and to pray for churches and organisation to work together “with one heart and mind for the harvest” and for God to lead them to spiritual victory. He also told the attendees to pray for “thousands upon thousands” of souls to be saved, that they will be ready to be discipled, and out of these new believers there would be a fresh batch of missionaries that would help the Church fulfil its Antioch call.

Singapore needs prayer:

“The single most important factor for revival – God’s revival – is prayer,” said Bishop Ponniah.

“Let it be believing prayer, in a mighty God, whose love knows no bounds. Let it be beseeching prayer – we beg God and we don’t let go until it happens.

“And let it be body-of-Christ prayer. Whether it’s in twos or threes, in your churches, or in gatherings such as these. Let us have beseeching prayer, that His glory may be seen in this mighty harvest.”

Bishop Ponniah closed quoting Psalm 126:5: “’Those who sow in tears will surely reap with shouts of joy.’ That’s our confidence in God. That if we cry out to God, we shall surely shout with joy.”

(Written by Rachel Phua, 7th October 2018)

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Rachel Phua is a former reporter at Channel NewsAsia. Her stories have also been carried by several US publications, including the Dallas Morning News, the Austin American-Statesman, and the Austin Business Journal. Rachel is now a Writer at Salt & Light Devotional Text.