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This article was originally published in Edition (4) of Prayer Magazine, Autumn 2005. On October 31st 2005 – Prayer TV celebrated it’s first birthday. It’s been a hectic year and one which has solidified the vision and given a firm sense of purpose to all involved. During this first year we’ve launched Prayer Magazine, a comprehensive website (www.prayer.tv), started TV programming and mobilising a network of people around the World to pray for Britain and Ireland. Personally I turned 35 this year and have been spending a little time, thinking about how things were so different when I was a child (Say 25 years back), there was no internet, we still only had black and white TV. In the village where I lived there were only half a dozen cars, no mobile phones or satellite navigation, I didn’t even see a computer ‘in the flesh’ until 1982. There were no speed cameras, in fact no police camera’s at all, today there are over 320,000 in the UK alone. No Sky TV, Microwave ovens were only just coming into vogue and DVD players and recorders weren’t even on the horizon. The corner shop was still central to the village existence and of course often incorporated the post office, because in those days you used to have write a letter to communicate to someone, no email or voice over internet free phone calls. Our family used to holiday in Devon, and the thought of travelling overseas, was a remote dream of ‘one-day maybe’. This was how life was, we visited Grandparents on the weekend and my Grandmother always had a cake baked, which strangely made the ‘family’ experience all the more secure. The thing that strikes me most about the time back then was respect was assumed not demanded and sin was not on open display. Many people would shout from the rooftops that ‘we have come along way’. Yet our society seems to have gone into social meltdown in the middle of the biggest advances of technology, in the history of mankind. So what is wrong with our Nations ? For me personally having spent the last twelve years meeting up with Church Leaders, going on Mission overseas, as being inquisitive with Cultural differences in Nations, the conclusion I’ve come to is that Western Society has become so successful and comfortable, that it thinks, it no longer needs God. Our Society thinks it has made advances on all levels, yet, in many ways we are more deprived now than ever. Our nation for example has 27 nationally accessible pornographic channels and sex is being pushed as a currency of our ‘advanced’ culture. It was only a few days ago, I was driving along a busy road, and passed a car parked in a layby, and inside the driver and passenger were having sex, on open display. I just couldn’t believe it. So what can be done. ? One thing I’m sure of is that there is a growing ache in people who genuinely believe they are Christians. Approx. 70% of the population in the last census said they were, yet only about 10% attend church. People in Britain and Ireland, only really pray when in Crisis. Yet they are trying their hardest to satisfy this ‘aching heart’ by filling it with everything ‘the world’ has to offer. As Christians we can of course lobby government to slow down or stop the laws that are becoming increasingly ‘anti-Christian’ in values. We can also be more aggressive in the way we proselytise individuals, but the over-riding niggle in my mind when ever I think about what we could do, or how we could address things, is ‘what about fervent prayer’. Biblically God has always responded to people that cry out to Him for change, ironically change is never usually deliver in the way we ask for it, mostly we want change to occur on our terms. If we do nothing, no social action, no lobbying, no prayer. Where will our society be in 25 years time ? Prayer is a force that can influence any situation. When we engage with God in fervent prayer, nothing is able to stand in the way of the change that will come as a result of praying in line with God’s will. It’s not all bleak in Britain and Ireland, there is more prayer going on than ever before, it seems as the sin level in our Nation is abounding, the ‘Grace’ to pray is overflowing. Prayer TV is getting involved through building a media platform that can inform individuals and churches of some of the urgent situations that require prayer and also seeks to introduce people to prayer in a way that perhaps they have experienced before. There’s lots of things we can do. Our aim is to see the penetration of Prayer deepen in every area of Britain and Ireland, prayer for every aspect of Society, taking the level of prayer to a point, where it wouldn’t be impossible to see prayer for every person by name, right across our nations. We’ve started resourcing church prayer meetings, with the publication of the magazine and will shortly be producing a Prayer Guide, which will provide practical daily prayer points, brought to us from ministries operating in over 50 key areas of Society. Perhaps you might consider, becoming a prayer correspondent for your village or town, which means you can feed prayer needs into the office, which can then be shared with thousands of people who are standing in prayer with us. But more than this why not join ‘Prayer Force’. On our first Birthday, we launched an international prayer task force, which will faithfully pray into the social problems of Britain and Ireland, and which is determined to pray for an outpouring of God. At the time of writing Prayer Force has 828 members and has a goal of seeing ‘one million people’ pray for Britain and Ireland. The best way of getting involved is to send an email to prayertv-subscribe@myinjesus.com or if you haven’t got email, you can write to use and we’ll post you the information as it’s produced. Friends, we cannot wait anymore, we should not expect someone else to pray for us, if we are not prepared to pray ourselves, so join in, let’s work together and call out to God, that He would intervene in the future of our Nations. Blessings Carl Brettle If you like this article, why not subscribe to Prayer Magazine - Click here to Subscribe {LINK : https://www.prayermagazine.
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