A church leader in Lahore was beaten up during his Sunday service by a policeman, during a dispute over the music being played over his church loudspeaker. Lahore has the largest concentration of the Christian community in Pakistan. The situation in Fazlia Colony, where about 400 households are Christian, deteriorated when a Muslim neighbour of the Pentecostal United Church called the police, saying that the loudspeaker ‘violated a Punjab Sound System Act’. When other churches nearby heard about the beating, hundreds poured in, blocking the road and demanding action against the policeman who had beaten the leader. In a separate incident a Christian was beaten by a mob for selling ice cream to Muslim customers who said it was ‘ritually unclean’ because it had been touched by a Christian. Most Pakistani Christians trace their origins via Hinduism to the Dalit caste - ‘untouchable’ and ritually impure.

WPC Teams were invited, by the Diocesan Prayer Advocate, Pauline Mack, to support a county-wide week of prayer. Originally planned for the week beginning 21 May it was rescheduled to take in the Archbishops call to prayer, Thy Kingdom Come, in the week before Pentecost Sunday.  We prayer walked the parts of the Severn where it flows into the county, and where it flows out, and strategic stretches of the Shropshire Union and Llangollen canals.

The first three days were a prayer walk from Bridgnorth to Ironbridge, which we felt was significant for many reasons. The theme of Jesus as a bridge recurred, and that God's people should be bridge-builders in their communities. In Ironbridge we saw, during evening worship, that we have a bridge of flesh and blood, and that He breaks down gates of bronze and cuts through bars of iron, with His blood.

We prayed the 'Friday blessing' prayer from Ffald y Brenin, and/or a more comprehensive prayer crafted by Sarah Cawdell from Bridgnorth, on any significant bridge we came across (or under) on our walks, directing our words downstream so that the river carried the blessing (as in Ezekiel 47 – wherever the river flowed, there was life).

Another task was to go and pray at some of the ancient wells, such as ancient or not so ancient churches en-route, Buildwas and Haughmond Abbeys and the Roman city at Wroxeter. At Buildwas Abbey Chrissie reminded us of Psalm 74, "Lord turn your footsteps towards these ruins..." and on reading the psalm out loud there, were able to imagine the scenes during the dissolution of the monasteries and how the saints of old must have echoed the words in the psalm: "we are given no miraculous signs; no prophets are left, and none of us knows how long this will be." Were able to declare hope, referring to the Malcolm Duncan talks, about the new day coming.

The two scriptures that formed the basis for our prayer for the week were Psalm 63 v 1-5, and Isa.41 v 17-20, both of which talk about dry land – the opposite of what Shropshire is naturally, but which proved to be the case spiritually. But in praying blessing over the land and the people, the end in view was v.20: "that men may see and know, may consider and understand that the hand of God has done this, the Holy One of Israel." However, another scripture proved very directional during the week, and this came to light because John Gilman had done his homework! He pointed out that in the area we began, Highley, there had been mines, and felt that Paul Miller's word about the hatches was going to become relevant, which proved to be the case.

From the first evening in the 24-hour prayer room at Highley, the 'treasures in darkness' scripture came up (Isa.45 v 3) and this theme kept cropping up, even when we visited old friends in Newport to drop off a sewing-machine! Izzy said: "I have been praying this scripture for you all week: Daniel 2 v 20-23" Verse 22 says: He reveals deep and hidden things; He knows what lies in darkness, and light dwells with Him.

The Task
Each 24-hour period from Tue 10th to Thu 19th was to be prayed through in 10 different locations. Churches had set up prayer spaces or rooms for this to take place.

As mentioned our work began with prayer walking, but we also did some prayer "motoring", joined in at the prayer rooms, sometimes filled empty slots in the rota and in one location, we set up and with Pauline Mack helped to make sure the 24-hours were covered in prayer.

The LORD gave us many opportunities to pray and bring prophetic encouragement to people or into localities which we trust will bear their fruit in due season. We met ministers who were feeling they wanted to give up and others who were pressing in to seek God for the transformation of their locality, church members whose hope was rekindled just because we turned up to pray, and were blessed in return as we prayed and worshipped with those who were alive and alert and praising God anyway in challenging situations.

The time in Shropshire was an exercise in flexibility. We never knew what to expect in any given situation, and very often we were praying with the ones and twos in little village churches, bringing much-needed encouragement. This we were glad to do. We feel we have been stretched and encouraged ourselves by the way God has resourced us and never let us down, renewing the streams of living water which as He promised have flowed out of us.

Chrissie & Colin
May 2016