ICEJ Prayer Efforts Releasing Revival
Published on: 22.8.2022By: Joshua Gooding, ICEJ Prayer Coordinator
A fresh wave of prayer is sweeping through the global ministry of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem.
When the world first faced the challenge of a global pandemic two years ago, the ICEJ turned to prayer and by God’s grace we have not only survived but thrived. Two new prayer initiatives were birthed at that time, the weekly Global Prayer Gathering and the Rosh Chodesh monthly prayer chain. Each initiative had a different vision but the same focus: to ask the Lord for an outpouring of the Spirit of God over Israel and the nations.
The Global Prayer Gathering is held every Wednesday between 4pm-6pm (Israel Time), and usually draws some 500 intercessors worldwide every week to receive insights from ministry leaders and to unite our hearts in prayer.
Meanwhile, the Rosh Chodesh on-line prayer vigil begins the first day of each month on the Hebrew calendar. It started out with a 12-hour prayer chain at Pentecost 2020 and has now grown to 240 hours in length with churches and prayer groups from over 60 nations involved. Each hour a new team of intercessors takes the baton to pray for revival in their nation and for the redemption of Israel as the prophets foretold (Ezekiel 36:27).
We have seen the Lord move mightily and answer our prayers; here are a couple recent testimonies of what He has done.
When our prayer efforts intensified two years ago, our ICEJ national leaders around the globe accepted the call to intercession, and one good example has been the ICEJ-Philippines, led by national director Pastor Steve Mirpuri. He began inviting pastors nationwide to join him in an hour of prayer during the Rosh Chodesh vigil, and the response was amazing. Not only did they want to join, they offered to lead their own one-hour watches. As a result, Christians from the Philippines have carried the Rosh Chodesh prayer chain for 54 hours in recent months.
One leader who happily joined the Philippines watch was Pastor Carlos Ilustre. But last year, his region was hit by a major typhoon and many people lost their homes. In response, intercessors in our prayer chain began to pray for the Philippines and in that moment, Pastor Ilustre felt the unction of the Holy Spirit to do outreach in the community hit hardest by this storm. In one week, over 3,000 people came to the Lord and began attending church. Now, his churches are hosting services where young people especially are having divine encounters with the Lord.
“We attribute this growth and revival directly to our participation in the Rosh Chodesh prayer chain”, proclaimed Pastor Ilustre, whose church teams have been leading 14 different one-hour prayer watches during Rosh Chodesh.
A similar testimony recently came from Thailand. During our Rosh Chodesh prayer chain in the month of Adar, when Queen Esther fasted for three days to save the Jewish people, the Thai teams were in their prayer watch when they received word that Tangmo Nida, a famous young actress and outspoken Christian, had suddenly died. Believers across Thailand were in shock, but in prayer a word came forth from John 12:24: “Unless a seed falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”
Christian leaders in Thailand felt to call a three day fast in alignment with the Esther story, and next thing the main news channel broadcast a story on the actress and her outspoken Christian faith.
Then many of her famous friends set up a memorial service for her, even though they were not Christians, and during the service the Gospel was openly preached on Facebook and YouTube, drawing over three million viewers. The end result was that over 400,000 people came to faith in Jesus in a little over a month – in a nation with only 200,000 Christians to begin with!
This shows that when the people of God align themselves with His will in prayer, grace abounds and miracles happen. If you would like to join the ICEJ’s times of prayer or get more information, please visit icej.org/prayer or send an email to prayer@icej.org