NEWSLETTER - Summer 2009

Czech Republic - NLI Prayer Week - 10th to 17th May, 2009

Redigging the wells in Novy Jicin

[Jan Reporting]
Going on the prayer mission to Czech Republic with NLI, we had  no idea what God was going to do.

2 days before we were due to leave, Rachel - a good friend at our church - asked if I had any books on prayer that she could borrow. I have got a few [Ian adds - A few?!]. So while I was searching through my bookshelves, I picked out a book called 'Restoring the Lost Art of Intercession' by James Goll. It's quite an old book but thought I would take it with me. The back cover said the book was about 24/7 prayer. God had been challenging me about 24/7 prayer and we have a 24 hour prayer day this week, when Ian Hannah comes to speak to our ladies prayer meeting. Ian has a House of Prayer in Colerain.

I began to read the book on the plane. It was about the Moravian prayer movement and how Jim Goll and his team had travelled to the Czech Republic to revive the spirit of the Moravians. I had always thought that this prayer movement had happened in Germany but apparently it started in Czech.

Our church is partnering with a new church plant in Novy Jicin. According to the schedule we were to meet Jarek and Jane our church planters in Trinec on 13th May where the mother church was situated.

We thought we would like to see the actual town that we were partnering with and it so happened that on 11th May we had an hour free, and Novy Jicin was on the way to the town we were visiting.

About 4 years ago, I had a prophecy from SharonStone that said we would be redigging some ancient wells. As we got close to the town I felt God saying that this was an ancient well that we were going to redig.

We got out of the car in the car park in Novy Jicin and I felt a stirring in my spirit.Wewalked into the town square and as we got closer I felt the power of God coming heavier. When we walked intothesquare, something of the power of God hit me. Ian saw something was happening and came over to me. As he put his arm around me, I collapsed to the floor, sobbing gut wrenching sobs from somewhere deep down.

I don’t really know how long I was there, people were coming up to Ian and asking if I was ok, and he just said I was praying for their town.

I began to ask forgiveness that we had lost what had been given to the Moravians and asking God to come again. I began singing the Hillsong song' Oh, Blessed Lamb, once slain'.

I stood up as best I could, and one of the team said she thought we should pray in the middle of the square. Workmen were resurfacing the square and the whole area was fenced off. We just walked through the fence and, as a team, prayed for Novy Jicin. Bohus - the project director - shared with us that Novy Jicin was the birthplace of Christian David who was the leader of the Moravians. I had never heard of him until I read about him in Jim Goll's book.

The Moravians were radical Christians who began praying 24/7 for the power of God to come. The people of Novy Jicin were all Catholics and didn’t want the Moravians in town.  To deny Catholicism, according to the Catholic teaching, would mean excommunication from the Church leading to eternal hell.

They faced the danger of being burnt at the stake as heretics, or imprisonment and torture until they denied their faith and returned to Catholicism.

Persecution began and the Moravians were thrown out of the town. Bohus said that they had to flee during the night carrying their children in their arms. They moved across the border to  Germany and set up a community under Count von Zinzendorf. They built a  prayer tower in Herrnhut, where the power of God fell and they prayed 24/7 for 100 years.

Now I knew what I had been weeping about. Often we do something and then God shows us what we have done.
After we had prayed for the town, someone who could speak Czech asked the workmen what they were doing and they said they were putting 7 fountains in the square. A real sign that this ancient well was being redug.

I asked one of the workmen if I could borrow his shovel and prophetically dug in one of the holes they had made for the fountains. The workmen had apparently been on a break and right on cue after we had finished praying they began digging and operating their machinery again.

I discovered when we came back to England that revival broke out among the Moravians on 12th May the day between the one we were in Novy Jicin and the one when we prayed for our Church Planter.

When we prayed with Jarek and Jane - who are our Church Planters in Novy Jicin - we immediately felt a oneness with them and felt they had a 3-fold ministry of worship, prayer and evangelism, which appears to be what the Moravians were about and also what we at Calvary church do really well and is central to what we do.

The century that the Moravians prayed was the biggest evangelism and missionary season in history.  John Wesley encountered a group of Moravians  on a ship and was moved by their faith during a storm at sea. He then travelled to Herrnhut and spent some time with them. It was this encounter that changed John Wesley and brought the Methodist revival to England.

The Moravians themselves travelled all over the world as missionaries. In order to reach the slaves that were working on the  South Pacific  islands, some of the Moravians sold themselves into slavery, because only slaves and their overseers were allowed on the islands' plantations.

We thought that was the end of what God had for us on this trip, but on our last day, when we had finished ministering, Benjamin, the pastor's son and boyfriend of Erica who we knew from a previous mission and was working with the youth in Cesky Tecin, suggested we might like a visit into Poland, the border was just over the bridge.

We stopped in Poland outside a church they wanted to show us and they began to tell us the story of the church.

300 years ago the area was under German occupation. The region was all Catholic and the ruling Germans wouldn't allow born again Christians to meet. They were meeting in secret, but then the children began to pray openly for a place where they could meet freely. The Germans would not harm the children, so they were allowed to continue. This made the adults bolder and they joined the children to pray. The Christians were eventually granted permission to build a church by the king  himself. This year, 2009 they were celebrating their 300  year anniversary. A choir and orchestra were rehearsing for celebrations that weekend. 

We went to pray in the church with another piece of the jigsaw. This was the start of the Moravian brethren, beginning with praying children. Even before the events in Novy Jicin.

The weekend after we returned home we spent some time with my son and daughter in law who live in Barnsley. Jenny is a direct descendant of Charles Wesley.

We aren't sure what all of this means, but there are so many 'coincidences'. We are really excited at what God will do over the next 4 years of our partnering with Jarek and Jane, and to see what this means for us as a church, and how we drink from the well that is being redug.
 
 There are 4 giants that were killed in the Bible,  besides Goliath. All were killed by David's mighty men. If you want to kill giants, you partner with giant killers.

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