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Ramadan and Eid are over but prayer continues
These regular updates are continuing to unpack the refreshed Mahabba vision and how it’s being worked out in practice across the Network. In case you missed it, you can find previous Network updates here.
Update #12 for June from the Mahabba Network
“The amount of prayer was staggering. Every day there was a prayer meeting (on-line) with up to 12- 15 people, using Prayercast and 30 days, etc. We had an evening of prayer on the 19th for the ‘Night of Power’ - organised in 24 hours - and now prayer is continuing twice weekly at least. Quite remarkable - it seems that people don’t need to be persuaded about prayer, but there is a real heart to pray for Muslim neighbours and friends.”
Ramadan and Eid are over but prayer continues. How will it keep going and growing for you locally?
Encouraging Prayer is one reason Mahabba exists. This month we’re sharing some fresh encouragements for prayer in the form of resources and opportunities to join in praying together, along with one group’s exciting story.
New resources area
Visit the new area of the website devoted to resources. There are featured resources for taking prayer on-line and taking a virtual prayer walk. Other recent additions are resources and courses under ‘Fuel for Prayer’, ‘God’s Big Picture’, ‘Getting Started’, ‘Going Further’ and ‘Engaging in different languages’. https://www.mahabbanetwork.com/resources More coming soon!
Join your local group
There are people who aren’t currently close to a local group who would like to join with others to pray. Maybe that’s you. If so, drop a line to Gillie to get connected with a group praying on-line.
Friday noon prayer
Network-wide prayer is happening on Fridays at noon, at the point the weekly Jumaa prayer update is posted. You are invited to join each week for 30 minutes. Contact Gille for more information.
Monthly Zoom prayer
The monthly, Third Thursday, Network Prayer calls have been enormously encouraging and, we believe, significant times as we’ve joined in praying into local, regional and national situations. If you are able, do join with the next one on 18th June, 9am. Contact Gillie for more details. Even if you can’t be on the call, do please input your prayer requests to Gillie.
By way of further encouragement, here’s one Mahabba group’s story of how prayer started for them and where it has led:
We started our Mahabba group in 2018 following the Open Doors ‘Month of Ramadan’ prayer initiative. At that time we had a godly gospel-centred Syrian refugee family with us who had been following Jesus for several years. We felt we wanted to support their outreach among the Arabic speaking community, and that the best way would be through a Mahabba prayer group. Furthermore we had garnered interest among folk at church who had a leaning towards Internationals Ministry, who had also been very active in our Ramadan prayer.
By the time we started we had four Iranian Christian asylum seekers in our church who were anxious to join any ministry that was working with believers from Muslim background. The first meeting, which was hosted by our Syrian family, was less of a formal ‘British’ prayer meeting, and rather a Middle Eastern time of fellowship involving, testimony, singing, food and prayer. The prayer focused in small mixed groups praying in their own language, for families in their home country, salvation and courage in Home Office interviews.
After a couple more meetings we had as many from Muslim background in the group as the English (roughly ten and ten). They came from Syrian, Iranian and Kurdish backgrounds. It was felt it was very much their meeting which I co-ordinated. The English were getting a taste of the Middle East, which by this time included singing and Arabic/Farsi TV and more food than you could shake a stick at – it became a God-given social highlight for them.
We continued to see numbers of believers from Muslim background grow. We started to run weekly Bible studies, one for beginners (Mark’s Gospel) and the other for people who’d been with us a year (Genesis). Our Morning and Evening services were translated live through wireless head sets in Farsi.
We thank God for his grace – we took up the ‘Ramadan prayer initiative’ because we thought it would be a good thing to do – but to be honest, not with any great vision. God answered our prayers anyway and brought more asylum seekers to our church. In his goodness the Lord also gave us a couple of believing Farsi translators – who had a vision for God’s work. Without their gifts we would have struggled to communicate effectively. God also touched the hearts of the English people in the rest of the church who opened their hearts, homes and wallets to needs. It was this as much as anything that grew relationships and gave us retention and growth.
Today, I’m writing in lockdown. We can’t have such social gatherings (although it doesn’t appear to be stopping some in spite my protestations!). Nevertheless, we have managed to master Zoom meetings with various success (not everyone has WiFi – sometimes it’s a matter of what we prioritise data allowances for). And one of the blessings that has come out of this ‘Exile’ is that although many of our former members got moved out of the local hotels to around the country – we have been kept in touch via Zoom every week, feeding these new believers with the Word of God. If it were not for lockdown – we certainly would not have been thinking about continuing our teaching with them. Therefore, we are considering how we can keep the relationships going when things open up again.
These are exciting days! God is moving and drawing precious Muslims to Himself. A movement of prayer is growing - may many more pray-ers be mobilised.
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From Phil Goodchild for the national Team