REFLECTIONS ON ISRAEL

Dare I pray it, God? Let me see Israel as You see them. What is Your heart concerning Israel?

Oh! No! I see but a glimpse and it is too much! Much too beautiful! Far too painful! I weep. Is this what You see?

Let me see no more. No, yet I want to see it. Beautiful. Painful. The Bride of Christ. Your love for her. Your chosen people. Their rejection. Your rejection. Your love. Your broken heart.

The songwriter says that Your tears grow into the hands that serve the outcasts. As I join You in Your broken heart, what will spring from my own tears?

I pray for the Kingdom! I pray for the Arabs, (more than a third of the population, but less than 2% are Christians). I pray for righteousness and justice to flow down like rivers in this place, or for God to discipline the very-secular state of Israel (most here are atheists). I pray for the believers to flourish. I pray for peace. I pray for repentance. I pray for the message of Jesus to go out to all (not just to Israelites). I pray for the Armenians. I pray for the Bedouins. I pray for the Arabs. And I pray for the Jews. Above all, I pray for You to do Your will, whatever that looks like, as You wish.

Secular Israel needs us to pray that they will see the end of their headlong pursuit of financial prosperity and their obsession with military security. Lord, may they see that the so-called freedom they see embodied in America is only a ruse, and that they are in to their flesh: modern art, immoral lifestyle, diamonds and guns. Let them find the Prince of Peace and the Spirit of Holiness.

Religious Israel needs us to pray that they will see the futility of trying to please a holy God through keeping the Law. They love the written law, which is good, but they have not yet seen that the Scriptures are what speak of Jesus! Prayers have substituted for the sacrifices, but without the shedding of there is no forgiveness. They need atonement, Lord, and they need You to take the load of their sin problem. Their Messiah came to deal with sin and guilt, but they have looked for political deliverance for all these years. Deliver them, Jesus!

Oh, Jerusalem
Hear Yeshua cry over you again
May the Glory fall on you like rain
Jerusalem
Oh, Jerusalem

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem
Pray that love and justice reign in her
That God will heal the divisions of men
And gather all His children to her

City of God that bears the Sacred Name
The Prince of Peace, your King of Glory came
You stoned the prophets, your Messiah died alone
And now your wounded history lies within these stones

You have fallen for my good
As God said you would
Yet rising from the dust
Springs a covenant of love!