In This Issue• Today's Daily Brief
• The Middle East in Focus
• GLOBAL DAY OF PRAYER: SUNDAY, MAY 31st
• Ministers Issue Call to National Repentance
• The Good News Corner
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The Daily Brief - Tuesday, May 26, 2009
"Yet they seek Me daily, and delight to know My ways, as a nation that did righteousness, and did not forsake the ordinance of their God. They ask of Me the ordinances of justice; they take delight in approaching God." (Isaiah 58:2)
Today's Daily Brief
1. Analysis: N Korea's Bomb Test Adds to Atomic Threat - AP
The Bush administration worked hard to get China, in particular, to press the North Koreans to denuclearize, and it seems likely that Obama will push equally hard with Beijing, which sided with the North Koreans against US and United Nations forces.
• Lord, we pray that this new administration and Obama will not work to undermine the decisions that were made in the previous administration. Let there be caution and great deliberation made first. Free their people!
• Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those who are perishing. Yes, speak up for the poor and helpless, and see that they get justice. (Proverbs 31:8, 9 NLT)
2. Iranian President Dismisses Nuke Talks - CNN
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday ruled out nuclear negotiations with other nations, saying, "Iran's nuclear issue is over, in our opinion." At a news conference in Tehran, the hard-line president also said that if re-elected he again will call for a debate with U.S. President Barack Obama.
• Heavenly Father, we pray for Ahmadinejad to be replaced with a leader in Iran who will not have plans to aquire, or develop nuclear weapons. Let Iran be a peaceful nation and let the people be free to elect a better leader.
• Perversity is in his heart, He devises evil continually, He sows discord. Therefore his calamity shall come suddenly; Suddenly he shall be broken without remedy. (Proverbs 6:14, 15)
3. State Dept. Has Few Who Speak Language of Area Where Taliban Operates - USA Today
Complicating the Obama administration's plan to ramp up civilian aid to Pakistan and Afghanistan, the State Department employs just 18 foreign service officers who can speak the language of the region where the Taliban insurgency rages, according to records and interviews.
"It's a grim illustration of two problems," said Ronald Neumann, a veteran diplomat who was U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007. "First, there is no money, and second, there are no people."
• Lord, with such a dire need in this area of our defense, we ask You for the money and the people that the Department of Defense needs. We thank You for Your abundant supply, in all things. Amen.
• He teaches my hands to make war, So that my arms can bend a bow of bronze. You enlarged my path under me, So my feet did not slip. (Psalms 18:32, 36)
4. US Kuwait Troops Suffer Swine Flu - Reuters
Eighteen US soldiers in Kuwait have been tested positive for swine flu, health authorities have said. The cases are the first to be reported from the Gulf region since the H1N1 outbreak of influenza type A began last month in Mexico. The US personnel had not come into contact with Kuwaiti citizens, the Reuters news agency said.
• Lord, we thank You for the military people who have volunteered to protect this nation. We pray a hedge of protection around them, their families, and all that pertains to them. We pray You will bless them greatly.
• "The Lord bless you and keep you; The Lord make His face shine upon you, And be gracious to you. The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, And give you peace." (6:23-26)
5. Saudi 'Killer Chip' Implant Would Track, Eliminate Undesirables - Fox News
German media outlets reported last week that a Saudi inventor's application to patent a "killer chip," as the Swiss tabloids put it, had been denied. The inventor said the chip could be used to track terrorists, criminals, fugitives, illegal immigrants, political dissidents, domestic servants and foreigners overstaying their visas. Model B would have an extra function - a dose of cyanide to remotely kill the wearer without muss or fuss if authorities deemed he'd become a public threat.
• Heavenly Father, we have come to the place where evil is being called good. We pray that there will be a strong outcry against these kinds of inventions and plans. Let them never be used against Christians and other innocent people. We ask this in Your Name, amen.
• These six things the Lord hates, Yes, seven are an abomination to Him . . . A heart that devises wicked plans, Feet that are swift in running to evil, (Proverbs 6:16, 18)
The Middle East in Focus
This week, for all the headlines cited below, please join us in proclaiming THIS DECREE:
"You who fear the LORD, praise Him; All you descendants of Jacob, glorify Him, And stand in awe of Him, all you descendants of Israel." (Jeremiah 8:11)
1. Abbas to Press Obama on Israeli Settlement Issue - Reuters
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Monday he would focus on Israel's refusal to stop the building of settlements when he holds talks with U.S. President Barack Obama later this week. Abbas, who is due to meet Obama on Thursday, has ruled out restarting long-stalled peace talks until Israel commits itself to the creation of a Palestinian state and halts expansion of its settlements.
2.US: J'lem's status open to discussion - Jerusalem Post
The US State Department said Sunday that the future status of Jerusalem would be determined through peace negotiations, after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's declaration Thursday that the capital would "never again be partitioned and divided."
3. PM: No new West Bank settlements - Jerusalem Post
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told the cabinet Sunday that he made clear in the US last week that although Israel is committed to removing illegal West Bank outposts, it will not stop construction in Jerusalem or building to accomodate natural growth in the settlements.
4.Israel Moves Closer to Banning Naqba Memorials- VOA
An Israeli government committee has approved a draft law that would prohibit commemorating Israel's independence as a day of mourning.
GLOBAL DAY OF PRAYER: SUNDAY, MAY 31st
GLOBAL DAY OF PRAYER:
Let's Celebrate as ALL 220 Countries will be participating on 31 May 2009!!!!
And I, because of their actions and their imaginations, am about to come and gather all nations and tongues, and they will come and see my glory. -- Isaiah 66:18 (NIV)
Yes, what seemed impossible has become a reality: 1 city in 2001, 1 nation in 2002, 1 continent in 2004 and NOW hundreds of millions from thousands of cities in every single country of the world will be joining for the Global Day of Prayer!
For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea. -- Habakkuk 2:14 (NIV)
In many European countries the Global Day of Prayer has also grown from a small gathering in one city/town to national participation. Excitement is sensed all across the continent.
From the United Kingdom is reported "the Global Day of Prayer vision has exploded and there will be over 85 locations hosting a variety of creative events in cathedrals, churches, parks, streets, town centres, city walls, up hills, from viewpoints and in a stadium and a university! There will be 13 Northern Ireland events, two events in Scotland, two events in Wales and around 68 events in England which includes 33 different borough events in Greater London. There are 4 cathedrals hosting events" One such event is in Clydebank, Scotland: "The town Centre of Clydebank has a canal running through it. The highlight of our service will be a symbolic "Crossing of the Jordan" as a sign of commitment to Christian unity and intercession."
In the Balkans Macedonia will have young people from 4-5 churches in the city gather together to make plans for the 24 hour house of prayer and for the May 31 GDOP gathering. We believe this will help release a torch to the next generation of believers in this nation and in Bulgaria "God led us into the very heart of Sofia. The largest open air square of Sofia - Alexander Batenberg. A place where the communistic party used to have their speeches, and where during revival times in Bulgaria, 1991, 1992 there had been held the biggest evangelistic meetings."
The Russians tell us "The Lord opened His rivers of the living water through the GDOP. During the last 3 years the GDOP covered the 30 of Russian cities, though started it in the only one city"
Who would have ever imagined the day when the whole earth would be covered with the prayers of the saints, from the rising of the sun in the East to it's setting in the West? That day has dawned on us in a time and season of desperation. Let us now pray in faith that He who is able to accomplish abundantly more than we can pray or think, will hear our prayers and heal our land and the nations of the world.
Please visit the website www.globaldayofprayer.com and click on your continent to see who to contact about an event near you or contact us at info@globaldayofprayer.com .
Many Blessings and love
The GDOP Team
Ministers Issue Call to National Repentance
URGENT!!!
Ministers Issue Call to National Repentance
"Call2Fall" Set for Sunday, July 5, 2009
May 19, 2009 -- A cross-section of Christian leaders on Tuesday issued a call for churchgoers to kneel in prayer on July 5 not for the nation but for the body of Christ.
"We're asking churches as an act of humility, on behalf of the church first and the nation second, to get on our knees and cry out to God on July 5," said Family Research Council (FRC) President Tony Perkins, who is spearheading the initiative being dubbed the Call2Fall. "On July 4 we celebrate our independence, and it's our desire on July 5 to declare our dependence upon God as a people and as a nation."
Perkins was joined Tuesday in his call by Larry Stockstill, senior pastor of Bethany World Prayer Center in Baton Rouge, La.; Bishop Harry Jackson, president of the High Impact Leadership Coalition; Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention; and Bishop Wellington Boone of the Father's House Church in suburban Atlanta.
Perkins hopes to see 8 million Christians in 40,000 churches nationwide kneel in prayer for three to five minutes the Sunday after Independence Day, and he is urging pastors to register their congregations at the Call2Fall Web site. Perkins noted that the prayer call is not to advance public policy, but to see spiritual renewal.
"I think the church is coming to a point where we're coming to the end of our own devices and we're looking to God for the prescription of what it will take to turn this nation around," Perkins said. "And I think we can't come to God on our terms, we have to go to Him on His terms, and He's made it very clear [in 2 Chronicles 7:14] . . . that we are to humble ourselves before Him and seek Him and turn from our wicked ways-and that's not the nation, that's the church. So I'm very encouraged that if the church will take this challenge, take the call to fall, that God will move in this nation."
Although other movements have called Christians to prayer and repentance, the ministers said Call2Fall uses Independence Day as a touch point for addressing the church's need to seek God for national renewal. "We feel deeply and passionately that if something is not done quickly, we really could lose our whole country," Stockstill said. "As Paul Revere woke up the nation to the invasion of the British, we're waking up the nation to the invasion of the demonic powers that are pulling us away from God." "There really isn't a new political agenda we can pull out of the hat or any other form of medicine for America," Stockstill added. "It's only prayer and fasting."
Land noted that great revival movements typically start with fasting and prayer, and he expects Southern Baptists to be very receptive to prayer effort. "We are similarly convinced that the only real answer for America is spiritual renewal and revival that must start with those that claim the name of Christ," Land said. "We believe that as Christians we have failed to live in a way that would be as pleasing to the Lord as we would hope, and we need to repent of that and humble ourselves, and we need to seek His face and seek His guidance and direction for ourselves, for our churches and for our country. "I think that the Holy Spirit is leading different segments of the Lord's kingdom in a very similar direction to call for the revival that our hearts yearn for."
Boone and Stockstill said the nation is at a point of repentance or humiliation. "I know that I'd rather be voluntarily humble than to be humbled by God," said Boone, who leads a national network of churches. "Our nation is seeing some judgment, and the men of God have to stand up and say what's necessary to get God to turn for us instead of turn against us," Boone added.
Stockstill, who helped New Life Church address a sex and drug scandal involving its pastor, Ted Haggard, in 2006, said the call to repentance begins first with pastors, whom he said are often failing to offer moral leadership in the nation. He said churchgoers, too, have drifted into carnality, prayerlessness and compromise. "[Christians must] decry our own failures, our own sins, our own loss of influence to the nation and ask God to restore first pastors, then churches and then our nation into revival," Stockstill said.
Although FRC and Jackson's High Impact Leadership Coalition have been actively involved in culture war issues such as gay marriage, Perkins and Jackson said the prayer call is not an attempt to denounce President Obama or his administration.
"This is not an anti-Obama or anti-administration movement," said Jackson, who has been advocating for traditional marriage in the District of Columbia, where the City Council recently passed a measure recognizing same-sex marriages performed elsewhere.
"But every president needs the power and wisdom of God in order to take our rightful position in the world and appropriately administer justice and represent not only the nation but the world in God's name. ... I am just expectant that we're going to see something dramatic happen. Not through demonstration, not through political action . . . but the spiritual dimension, God awakening and quickening the hearts of our people, causing them to be revived by His grace."
However, Jackson said religious liberty will be in jeopardy without a significant cultural shift. "We need to recognize that if we do not violently-in terms of spiritual violence, not physical violence-violently, aggressively seek God in these spiritual things, we are going to be the Christian community and oppressed people, discriminated against and put down by this culture," he said. "But God has ordained that we turn this around. I believe we're going to see America changed."
Join in praying for a mass response to this call to fall . . . www.call2fall.org (Reported by: Charisma Magazine)
The Good News Corner
Rhode Island Considers Public Cord-Blood Bank
For years, women have been able to store their babies' cord blood at a steep cost. Now, Rhode Island is working toward hosting New England's first public cord-blood bank.
Stem cells found in cord blood have been used to treat diseases and conditions such as leukemia and lymphoma.
The Rhode Island Blood Center and Women & Infants Hospital have started collecting donated umbilical-cord blood in a one-year trial program. Initially, the blood will be sent to the New Jersey Cord Blood Bank. The blood stored there and at other public blood banks is used to treat people around the world.
"Cord-blood donation is an incredible, painless way to save someone's life," Dr. Carolyn Young, chief medical officer at the Rhode Island Blood Center, told The Providence Journal. "There is no controversy, unlike embryonic stem cells."
Jennifer Lahl, national director for The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network, reminded the public that ethical stem-cell research like cord-blood research is the only type that has successfully treated humans. "It's good policy as well as good medicine," she said, "and good ethical, scientific discovery and progress." (By Nima Reza, CitizenLink)
