“Every Friday lunchtime, I go with hundreds of others. I go because this is the most blessed time to pray. I dress properly, wash properly, walk in the right way to the mosque and listen well when the Imam speaks. These things mean my sins are forgiven for the next week.”
This is how my friend described Friday prayers – an important time in the week for him.
How we long for our Muslim friends to know that they don’t have to do all these things to be right with God. How we need to pray that God will open their eyes to see the forgiveness that Jesus freely offers.
As we see the crowds going to Jumaa prayer every Friday, what better time to be reminded of Jesus’ compassion for the crowds and to cry out to the Lord of the Harvest.
250 years ago, Jonathan Edwards wrote,
“I have often said it would be a thing very desirable and very likely to be followed with a great blessing, if there could be some contrivance …..wherein we should all unite on the same day…Some perhaps may think its being all on the same day, is a circumstance of no great consequence; but I can’ t be of that mind…It seems to me, it would mightily encourage and animate God’s saints….. to think, that at the same time, such multitudes of God’s dear children, far and near, were sending up their cries to the same common Father, for the same motives.”
Well, we now have such a ‘contrivance’, a means to unite in prayer on behalf of our Muslims neighbours.
At noon on Fridays a UK-focused topic for prayer, a single prayer point, will be provided for us to unite in crying to the Father. It might not be possible for us all to pray at that exact same time but our prayers to the same end will powerfully combine.
“It’s a crazy idea, and it’ll never work… When do we start?”
We start next week! Please join us from Friday 1st Feb, and encourage others to share, in this simple crazy act - standing together to see God establish his kingdom. Initially the prayer point will be posted at noon on the following social media channels:
“Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests”