A Call from the Leadership to Pray & Fast

It’s not very often we have the need to put out a message to the church to ask you to pray and fast so we hope that this post will be unusual enough for you to read and consider our request.

One of our own (as this is a public post we’ll call her “H”) is currently in the Southampton Hospital Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit with what has been diagnosed by doctors as “Psychotic depression”. Her behaviour started a few months back. I remember talking to her on quite a few occasions over the course of a few weeks about her belief that God had abandoned her. She has been in different hospitals for a few months, unable to speak coherently, repeating worrying phrases such as “Jesus is not God” over and over again (seemingly uncontrollably) and turning away those who have come to visit her.

Whilst we don’t believe a Christian can be possessed by a demon (1 John 4:4; 2 Timothy 1:7) we certainly do believe that Christians can be harrassed to the point of exhaustion. We don’t know if this is the case for H but whether or not she is under some kind of demonic attack that has led to her mental state, or whether there are more natural cases it’s really time to pray as a church for H.

This week we’re calling our church members to pray very specific things each day of this week, and choosing one of those days to fast:

  1. Monday – pray for our church, that we would rise up in prayer for H, recognising that our battle is not against flesh and blood – 1 Peter 5:8
  2. Tuesday – pray for our church, that we would resist the devil’s lie that God does not hear our prayer and by resisting the devil would flee from H – James 4:7
  3. Wednesday – pray for H, that her mind would be healed radically and completely and that she would be found “in her right mind” – Luke 8:35
  4. Thursday -pray for H that she would discount the lies of the enemy: accusation and deception – Rev 12:9-10
  5. Friday -pray for H that she would find joy in her Saviour and that her meditation would be directed towards God and she would believe the “life promises” to be true – Romans 8:5–6

Life Groups will give special attention to praying for H this week. please take one day to fast as you pray these prayers for H.

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