‘And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.’ (Gen.1:3) Lord, we know Your Spirit is brooding over our nation, and we thank You for every purpose, ministry and strategy of your Kingdom in this season of Advent. We pray for Your people to continue to enter Your presence and to stand upon their watch. As You spoke and there was light, may Your people be so connected to your heart and Your words that every purpose of heaven will be achieved in this season in our land. As Your Church opens its doors in unusual ways and your message of hope and salvation goes out with clarity and creativity, we pray for those who are spiritually open and hungry from every age group and community to hear and understand your message of truth and to experience your presence.

A new study by Youthscape revealed ‘churches are losing confidence in their ability to deliver quality youth work.’ The report, launched at Lambeth Palace on Wednesday, shows that many churches across the country are failing even to offer a youth work service, and those who do are concerned about its effectiveness. Common answers to the question ‘what's going well in your youth work?’ were ‘not a lot’, ‘nothing’, and ‘it does not do so well’. There is a disparity between what young people want to engage with and what the church is actually doing. Two-thirds of churches never discuss pornography or sexuality, while over half never discuss mental health, even though a separate survey of teenagers suggests that these are topics which they are highly interested in talking about. Pray for the fear to be removed from looking at issues around sex and sexuality.

The Government has said it is 'deeply concerned' about Saudi Arabia’s use of UK weapons against civilians in Yemen, yet ministers will not halt the ongoing weapons sales to the Saudis. Boris Johnson does not believe the threshold has been crossed which would demand the suspension of arms sales to the Middle East country, even though it has been proved that an October airstrike, killing 140 Yemeni mourners at a funeral, was carried out by Saudi Arabia, using UK-built weapons and technology. The UN released a report earlier this year detailing ‘widespread and systematic’ attacks on civilian targets, which are in violation of international humanitarian law. Pray for renewed scrutiny of international export licence applications that could violate such laws. Pray also for the UK export licensing rules to be tightened. See also ‘Yemen’s starving millions’ in Prayer Alert World section.

The UK's biggest constitutional case in decades, how we begin the process of leaving the EU, was discussed at the Supreme Court this week. Judgement is expected in January. The Government says it doesn't need MPs' approval to trigger Brexit, whereas Labour called for a Brexit plan to be outlined before Article 50 is triggered. There was a vote to ‘respect’ the Government's timetable for leaving. Although the result could complicate the Government's triggering of the process for the UK leaving the EU, it is not expected to stop Brexit happening. MPs also supported a Labour motion calling for Parliament to ‘properly scrutinise’ the Government in its proposals for leaving the EU. The votes followed a compromise between Labour and the Conservatives, who had argued over the questions to be put. See