Issues For Prayer

We are called to pray in accordance with God's will and purpose. It is important as believers that we share God's concerns, rather than simply praying about the things that we're naturally interested in or concerned about. While we need to seek Him regularly to know His fresh focus for each hour, these are the key issues which IFB generally prays into:

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The Church And People’s Salvation

This should be our chief concern: that men and women should be saved and that Christ should have a glorious bride for which He died. Everything else we pray about relates in some way to these issues. Paul tells us that God "commands all people everywhere to repent" (Act 17v30 ESV) and Peter reminds us that God is "not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance" (2 Peter 3v9).

 

The church should be as described by Paul: the "household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and support of the truth" (1 Tim. 3v15). The Lord is looking for the church to honour and glorify her Head, and to stand on His truth. When praying about other issues, we often end up praying for the church in connection with them, because of the church’s failure to speak out, set an example or give a better alternative in those areas.

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Abortion and Assisted Suicide

Being made in God's image is a privilege but also a responsibility. We have to recognise that God has the final say on our birth and our death. The psalmist reminds us that God "formed my inward parts & wove me in my mother's womb" (Ps.139v13). From conception, God was at work creating us, and no one has the right to terminate that life which God is creating inside the womb.

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National responsibility for a policy that allows for the destruction of life in the womb has brought (and will continue to bring) the judgement of God. "You shall not pollute the land in which you are; for blood pollutes the land and no expiation can be made for the land for the blood that is shed on it" (Num. 35v33). 

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Similarly, in our old age or when struggling through illness, it is God Who calls time on our lives, and He wants to give everyone every opportunity to find Him before we leave this world for the life hereafter.

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Sexual Immorality

The moral decline seen in the last 50 years in our nation is astonishing, and is most obvious in areas of sexual relationships. God created sex to be enjoyed between a man and a woman within a loving and committed marriage, which protects us and also gives great benefits due to the stability which marriage and family life brings to a nation. The Bible is clear, from start to finish, that sex outside of heterosexual marriage is both wrong and harmful.

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However, we have cast aside God’s wise and righteous boundaries for sex, saying that we know better and that it is our right to have whatever pleasure we want, when we want it and with whoever we want it. This selfish and rebellious attitude has led to the prevalence of broken homes, fatherless children, STIs and other serious consequences, as well as us missing the blessings of God’s perfect plan and reaping God’s judgement as a nation.

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We are now even denying God’s created order of male and female, saying that there are more than two genders and even telling children that they can easily change gender, while ignoring the irrevocable harm this can cause.

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Corruption of our Children

God places a heavy responsibility on each generation to teach and protect the next generation, and warns of the consequences for those who cause children to stumble. Not only have we set a bad example for our children, and harmed them by our own broken lives, but we are also actively teaching them wrong things in schools as children receive graphic sex education and LGBT indoctrination. We are also failing to protect them by allowing them unfettered access to pornography and other harmful content, and letting them spend their lives on social media without suitable safeguards.

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Other Religions

Time and time again in the Old Testament, we see Israel condemned for following or worshipping other gods. The multi-faith and even some ecumenical movements, while perhaps appealing to our desire to be at peace with one another, go contrary to God's teaching and instruction to us. While it may be politically correct to consider all faiths as equal, this would be to deny the unique and completed salvation through Christ and Christ alone - the grace in which we stand through faith, not of works.

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Other Issues

We also pray about a variety of other issues in our nation, such as gambling, drugs, anti-Semitism and other matters.