Cybersex trafficking
22 Mar 2017International Justice Mission is a global organisation that protects the poor from violence in the developing world. Their global team includes more than 750 lawyers, investigators, social workers, community activists and other professionals at work through 17 field offices.
Pray for IJM as they fight a new but devastating form of slavery in the Philippines: the cybersex trafficking of children. It involves the live sexual abuse of children, most under the age of 10. Before the internet, predators had to physically go to into a bar or a brothel to purchase sex. Now, paedophiles can abuse children without ever leaving their home. For this, reason, cybersex trafficking is harder to track down than traditional trafficking, as the abuse can happen anywhere there is an internet connection and a webcam, or simple a mobile phone. Find out more here.
- Pray for the IJM investigators as they work with police to locate the abuse, and that they would be able to successfully rescue and protect these children.
- Pray for the physical and emotional healing of those who’ve already been rescued, and for specialised aftercare facilities that can meet the long-term needs of both these young girls and boys.
- Pray that we would be able to catch not only the traffickers in the Philippines, but the paedophiles around the world (including from the UK), who are paying to direct the abuse.
The Way of Blessing by Roy Godwin
22 Mar 2017NEW BOOK BY ROY GODWIN FROM FFALD-Y-BRENIN
In The Way of Blessing you are invited into a spiritual pilgrimage to the windswept hills of Wales, and to the small praying community of Ffald y Brenin, where the deaf hear, the blind see, the lost are found and the broken receive healing.
Roy reveals how God longs to bless us and has given believers the authority to bless others, and teaches how to do it. He shares how this ministry began, stories of miraculous healings, and ways you can usher God’s manifest presence into your community.
Richard's Watch
22 Mar 2017
Richard's Library is a library of prophecies and visions that have been given from 1909 to 2017. www.richards-watch.org
Christian woman refuses IS conversion demand
17 Mar 2017Mariyam Petrayus, a blind Christian woman, was trapped under IS control in Mosul for over two years before she escaped. When IS took over territory in Iraq, it gave Christians and other religious minorities the option to convert to Islam, pay a large tax or die. Mariyam, who is now living in the Sewdinan displacement camp, recounted at least one instance in which an IS jihadist pressured her to convert to Islam. Mariyam, who is in her 50s, refused to deny Christ. ‘He told me, “Why don't you convert to Islam? Why are you Christian?” I told him that everyone is on their religion, and nobody leaves their religion.’ She also told the jihadi that she did not want to convert to Islam and be anything like him.
Sharing Christ’s love with North Koreans
17 Mar 2017Some Christians study weather patterns over North Korea in order to choose the best time to launch helium-filled weather balloons, with a GPS transponder, carrying gospel tracts and New Testaments into the country. By including a GPS transponder, workers can track the paths and see where the precious payloads land. Another method of reaching the unreached involves radio broadcasts from South Korea. The North Korean government tries to jam signals, but frequencies are repeatedly changed and sharing the Good News continues. North Korean defectors read Scriptures over the air deliberately slowly so that listeners can write down passages of God’s Word themselves. These handwritten verses are the only Bibles that many will ever have in a nation where owning a Bible is only a dream for most. Also brave Christians hand out Bible tracts. John was detained for passing out gospel tracts in North Korea. Listen to his story by clicking the ‘More’ button.
Friday Focus: let’s get talking
17 Mar 2017Are we prepared, alert and ready to talk about Jesus? Are we living in a way that stirs people to ask us for the reason for the hope that we have? Together as God’s people, today and every day, we have God-given opportunities to share our faith. How can we live intentionally to make the most of every opportunity? Lord, thank you that out of Your great love for us, You sent Your son, Jesus, who in turn sends us.
(Phil Timson, HOPE Youth Director)
Homeless charities’ links to Home Office
17 Mar 2017Leading homeless charities were criticised after fresh revelations about their links to the Home Office. A report from Corporate Watch said that several homeless charities, including St Mungo's and Thames Reach, are ‘collaborating’ with the Home Office to remove foreign rough sleepers from the UK. Among the documents referred to in the report is a St Mungo's policy paper stating that if clients are not engaging with their service their details will be passed on to immigration enforcement teams by outreach workers. The refugee and migrant group Ramfel said it had become abundantly clear that there was more than a close collaboration between homelessness agencies and the Home Office. This is an issue of trust and confidence and if homeless people on the street cannot trust those that claim to be coming to assist them, then the meaning of charity needs a serious rethink.
EU citizens in the UK
17 Mar 2017EU citizens in Britain are the victims of ‘political games’ and their rights must be the first item in the exit talks, the European Parliament's chief Brexit negotiator has said. Guy Verhofstadt called for the fate of those three million EU nationals, and of British ex-pats, to be settled before negotiations on the rumoured £50bn ‘divorce bill’. Mr Verhofstadt said the EU parliament would agree a resolution soon after the Article 50 exit clause is triggered in the next few weeks, which it would expect to guide those talks. Otherwise the parliament could exercise its right to vote down any eventual deal agreed between the UK and the European Commission. ‘We vote no - that is possible,’ he said. MPs recently overturned a Lords’ amendment to the Brexit Bill urging the Prime Minister to give a unilateral guarantee that EU citizens will be able to stay in Britain.