Over the past four and a half decades we have sent out thousands of pointers and topics for prayer. You will surely have noticed that my own focus usually has to do with national and international issues, for these are the matters God has laid on my heart. News stories on these issues often make my ears prick up and my spirit rise in prayer, all too often with a view to crying out against some injustice!
But they might not be what stirs your spirit. For you, it might be stories about a particular group of people that catch your eye and tug at your heart strings: the young, the elderly, the mentally ill, an ethnic group, a profession. Or maybe it is the damage being done to Creation that rouses you, and any number of environmental issues besetting the world.
Whatever our call to prayer, our desire is to see people and situations come into encounter with the Lord, so that He can bring about the changes He has in mind. Despite what the world may think, our faith is not a private matter; it touches every aspect of our life, and longs to see that same world know something of the fullness, beauty and glory of the Lord that we ourselves have experienced! He has given us principles that we can apply to help us pray with integrity, authority and confidence. These are what I want to share in this article, and I do so through an internationally focused lens, because that is the one I tend to be looking through – but the principles apply no matter where your own focus and fulcrum lies, and they in turn will help others to see and pray in a more rounded insightful ways.
For example, I have always found it helpful to make big topics more accessible by taking one person as representative of a group of people who stand in need of prayer. Recently, I shared precious fellowship with someone who for many years served in a highly prominent public position from where she was able to support victims of persecution. She knew what she was up against, because she had herself endured ten gruelling years dealing in court with over fifty entirely false allegations that had been levelled against her, before she was finally vindicated. In praying for this lady, I was able to extend my prayers to include so many who are suffering as victims of unjust slander and accusations.
Pray for the many who stand in great need of Jesus standing alongside them as their Advocate, and of grace and resilience to enable them to persevere in the face of much unjust provocation.
Open Doors featured the story recently of Rumana, a courageous nine-year-old Bangladeshi girl, who remains faithful to the Lord in the face of unrelenting pressure from classmates, teachers and neighbours who refuse to have anything to do with her because of her faith in Christ. Her story is something that we can again take to heart and turn into worthwhile prayer for the millions of people who are facing rejection in one form or another by their communities because of what and who they believe in.
When seeking to pray for ‘big’ topics, it can be of the greatest help to pray for one particular person associated with that area, and then to move wider. For example, suppose you are concerned for the NHS as an organisation. It feels far too big a topic for your tiny prayers. But what if you begin by praying for your paramedic neighbour, or for the clinician treating your father? Focus for a while on that one person, and then on the immediate ward or circumstances that they are in, and then move out wider across the whole of that field or hospital. Before you know it, you have moved from praying ankle deep about the situation to waist deep and then to then ‘swimming’ freely. We can do the same in any area of life.
Principle: Make the most of opportunities and unexpected circumstances!
Back in the last days of late 1989 and early 1990, when one Soviet-leaning East European regime after another was crumbling and falling from power, we were praying one freezing cold evening at one of our prayer conferences in a remote part of North Wales when there was a sudden power cut. Undaunted, the musicians promptly started played Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nacht Musik from memory, with the room lit only by candles! The power cut was an inconvenience to us, but no more than that. What it did do, however, was help us identify with the people of Romania, which was being plagued at the time by power cuts.
Looking back, those were indeed ‘heady’ days of prayer, because the Lord had given us a word that He was giving us a measure of authority to bring down the Iron Curtain. We had a picture of a narrow corridor opening up to let the gospel into Russia. He warned us that it would only remain open for a short time, but we knew that it was really important to pray that people would make the very most of it. For a brief moment there was more freedom to pray in Russian schools than there was in American ones!
To be sure, our prayers were being added in at the tail end of seventy years of fervent prayer for Communism to fall from believers around the world, for the Lord had warned that there was a great spiritual power behind it that would cause much bloodshed. I felt rather like the grandfather in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, who put one of his fingers on his son’s back to ‘help’ him do the real work of pushing the heavy car! But isn’t it wonderful that God hears our prayers, however lightweight we may sometimes feel that they are!
Here is a principle to take to heart: grasp opportunities and turn your token circumstances and sufferings into prayer for people who are facing really serious situations. Even the simplest shortest prayers can play their part and make a difference.
To take last weekend as an example
Doing this requires resolve and insight, so that we are able to turn into prayer those things which catch our attention. This past weekend, for example, various themes from the news have stood out to me. Firstly, there were the elections in Romania, and Sir Keir Starmer’s negotiations with the EU Europe, various concerns re democracy in Hungary and America alike, considerable concern about the build-up of sophisticated Russian troops on the Finnish border and finally a renewed and considerable disquiet about some important aspects of the late pope’s theological views.
Some of these points we will cover briefly here, but the last of them merits a post to itself.
Praying for the Romanian election
With my long-term concern for politics and praying for nations, it is surprise, therefore, that I felt a burden to pray for the recent Romanian presidential election. Even before the vote count was completed, the staunchly pro-Trump candidate, George Simion, was predictably claiming that he won. Had he actually done so, he would have taken the country – with its long border with Ukraine and its important role as a forward base for NATO post – much further away from western Europe, and therefore more fully into Putin’s pocket, just as has happened so dramatically in recent years in both Slovakia and Hungary. In reality, an unusually large turnout had ensured that the vote went against Simion, and even by quite a significant margin.
(You will remember that ultra-nationalist Calin Georgescu had originally won this election a few months ago, but that the highest court in the land disqualified him when it uncovered unmistakable electoral interference from Russia.)
Surveys show that a considerable majority in Romania still want to be close to Western Europe – but that there was an equal challenge for change because of the huge amount of corruption that there has been in that country, and which people are so fed up with. The staunchly pro-EU and NATO centrist mayor of Bucharest, Nicusor Dan who has won the election is standing as an independent says that he is standing as an anti-corruption candidate. I know nothing about the man, but let’s pray success and protection for him in all he seeks to do that God can bless.
It was indeed a busy weekend of elections. Donald Tusk’s centrist deputy Prime Minister narrowly defeated a right-wing candidate in Poland. This BBC article explains why that particular election was an important one.
There was also a third General Election in three years in Portugal, which failed to deliver a result that would break the worst spell of political instability in the country for decades.
The centre-right Democratic Alliance will lead a minority government, but it will be at the mercy of opposition parties. Most noteworthy was the significant rise in support for the recently formed hard-right populist anti-immigrant party Chega (which means “Enough”).
This, of course, is in keeping with the advance of right-wing parties right across Europe. Do keep both Portugal and Poland in mind in your prayers.
Praying for relationships between Britain and Europe
The second matter that stood out to me concerned the direction Sir Keir Starmer was taking in his desire to realign Britain with the EU in terms of trading, free travelling and tourism.
The government has been buoyed by trade deals with India and America, although the latter is less clear cut than they might like to claim, despite its having certainly saved many jobs in the auto-industry in the nick of time. I was praying for sensible measures to be taken that facilitate British trading and travelling arrangements with the EU, since they have been hamstrung by red tape since Brexit. But, like many, I remain concerned (and prayerful) about the prospect of too many of the fish in Britain’s coastal waters landing up in the nets of European super trawlers.
These are long-standing complex and controversial issues. Since people have very different perspectives on them, the one thing we can all agree on is the need to ask the Lord to overrule in these matters.
Principle: There is nothing wrong with having different viewpoints, but ask the Lord to help you connect what you see with what else you know: Biblical truth, current affairs, local and wider history, and so on.
It is clearly important, too, to pray about the rise of the Reform party in the UK, and for Nigel Farage in particular. He is well known not only for his criticisms of the EU, but as a strong leader who does not relate easily to having people of real standing alongside him. Pray concerning the impact this populist leader continues to have in British politics.
A Hungarian example: How democracy dies
The European leader Trump feels closest to is Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian leader who came to power because the religious right feared left-wing extremism, and wanted a strong leader to emerge. They have ended up with more than they bargained on! He has been only too successful in extinguishing democracy in his country, without even shedding blood, but instead by making full use of brutal disinformation media campaigns.
Orbán’s first ambition has been to make sure that he remains in power. To that end he has stifled and muzzled the free press, either by buying up editorial control, or by intimidation to the point where media organisations were forced to close. For Hungarians, the main opposition newspaper is now printed in Slovakia; most newsagents are too scared to stock it, and even many of its regular readers are too scared to subscribe officially to it. Meanwhile, Orbán has become ever richer and more powerful. What an utter contrast with Christ Jesus, who is rich beyond compare, but who employs the immeasurable riches of His glory to the furtherance of souls. (Phil. 4:19)
Because ordinary life continues for the most part with every semblance of normality, many people are unaware of the significance of the changes that have taken place. And something of the same process is underway in America, where Donald Trump is following Orbán’s playbook almost to the letter. In both counties people still work for the media, but they must swallow their conscience and principles every day, knowing full well that what they are promulgating is not the truth.
The nonpartisan German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) reports that,
It is no exaggeration to say that, in the spring of 2026, Hungary will face its most consequential elections since the first free ones in its post-communist history, which happened back in 1990. Since 2014, every parliamentary poll has offered a slight opportunity to correct Hungary’s increasingly anti-democratic direction, and yet ultimately succeeded only in pushing it further along the autocratisating path paved by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party. But these next elections will determine the country’s democratic or authoritarian trajectory—and its geopolitical anchoring will also be at stake.’
For myself, I have found that Al Jazeera English (as very distinct from Al Jazeera Arabic) often broadcast very interesting and informative documentaries. One such is ‘Democracy Maybe, (How democracy dies’. As long ago as 2021, they released an edition which remains a perceptive insight into the manner by which Viktor Orbán is achieving his goals in Hungary.
It is only too easy for us to see the danger this represents for European wide – and this at the very time when his special friend Donald Trump is considering redeploying 35,000 US troops from Germany to Putin-favouring Hungary.
See our previous articles Praying for Hungary and A Heart to pray for Hungary.
Russia’s best troops have been withdrawn from Ukraine and are mustering along Finland’s borders
On one thing, we can certainly agree with Donald Trump: there desperately needs to be an end to the bloody killing in Ukraine – and all the more so because there is unmistakable evidence now that Russia is not only tampering with undersea cables off the Finnish and Swedish coasts, but is also mustering its best fighting forces on the Finnish border.
See this article in the Daily Mail, (but there are numerous similar reports to be found on the web).
Cf this MSN article
Finland gained its independence in 1918, defeating the Reds in a bloody battle. They then lost 100,000 people in the violent Soviet-Finnish so-called winter wars, when the Finns fought like furies, and narrowly avoided the fate of the Baltic states that were swallowed up by the Soviets. They maintained a very strong defence force during the Cold War, and are taking their defence very seriously again now – unlike western Europe.
With strong Naval and Air Force units, an excellent army, and a great deal of knowledge concerning how best to use their terrain, Finland would be a very tough proposition for Russia to fight against in a conventional war. Putin is, of course, talking of using nuclear weapons . It feels almost inevitable that we are heading toward that devastating scenario. Pray for the Lord’s mercy to continue to restrain the enemy’s provoking to Armageddon, as opposed to it coming in the Lord’s own time.
I am more and more in remembrance of a prophecy received by an elderly Norwegian Christian nearly 60 years ago which foresaw so many of the things that are happening now, as well as a totally devastating Third World War.
Lord, the reek of war is ever more pungent in the atmosphere, and the dangers increasing and not receding. Bless and protect Finland, we pray.
The Lord has visited Finland in power on a number of occasions, and it looks like He is doing so again, especially amongst younger men.
See this also.
May His saving grace bring many into His Kingdom.
Principle: Whether through Scripture, prophecy or by some other means, may we do our best to find out and take prayerful note of what the Lord is saying about such situations.
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