Prayer Points

Prayer Points.

A major part of CASSS’s ministry is the flow of information from the churches in South Sudan and Sudan to CASSS’s prayer supporters.

This information sharing is achieved through the CASSS committee, the Sudan Church Review and our website. 

Please pray for South Sudan and Sudan’s current prayer needs. We know that as we pray in faith our prayers have a huge impact! 

In April a fierce war erupted in Sudan, which in November is still continuing, growing in scope and brutality.  In western Sudan, away from the cameras of the media, multiple atrocities have been committed. Six million people have been forced from their homes.  Thousands are struggling to find shelter, sleeping under trees by the roadside without having access to food, shelter, clean drinking water or other essentials.  The UN describe it as an unimaginable humanitarian crisis.

Many families are trapped in the war zones – people who could not afford transport, or families with members who could not easily run, or people who just hoped the fighting would not last long.  Now they have no way of escape.

National organisations are broken, but in the towns and cities church congregations are still meeting to pray, to worship, and to support one another.  The Episcopal Church of Sudan is right there, ministering in the midst of the people, reminding them that the Lord is our refuge and stronghold.

UNIMAGINABLE

It is impossible for us to comprehend what life is like in such countries because we’ve never experienced a long drowning in overwhelming circumstances, daily living with fear and hunger.

In the Bible it is notable that the writer of the Psalms had suffered like this.  Many Psalms are a mixture of agony and faith.  We tend to slide past the pain and bask in the sunshine of praise.  To be intercessors for our brothers and sisters in Sudan we need to stay with the pain, understand something of the terror, and discover how to express faith as they do when the way forward to tomorrow is completely obscured.

Photo meditations on some Psalms have been produced to help us enter their world, connecting with them.  They are inspired by the thoughts of a Palestinian, Yohanna Katanacho, who lives close to the sort of shredded life the psalms describe.  He understands the heart cries in them, and in a book ‘Praying through the Psalms’ [www.tinyurl.com/52uk99da] he expresses them in a way that brings out that life experience. 

PRAYING WITH PSALMS

Take one of the photo meditations above.

  • Read it quietly more than once.
  • Put yourself in the place of someone whose fabric of life is being ripped apart but holding on to Christ.
  • Pray for Christians in Sudan.
  • Try and keep on with prayer for them whilst they are trapped in their circumstances.
  • Read the original Psalm. The number is referenced on the photo meditation, bottom right.

The Church Association for Sudan & S Sudan has a fundraising appeal to provide aid to the church in Sudan  [ www.casss.org.uk/make-a-donation ]  but this call is first and foremost about prayer.