049 - The Bride in the Middle East
Several months ago, after returning from a focused prayer strike in a Middle Eastern nation, I had an audible dream in which I heard it said, “The Bride is rising up in the Middle East!” This statement has been confirmed recently in a profound way.
While attending a leaders' meeting in Israel a few weeks ago, I was searching for this past dream on my laptop. Just as I found the dream and began to reread it silently, the person on the microphone at the front of the room spoke the exact same words that I was reading at the exact same time. I could hardly believe my ears! The speaker was testifying of a significant partnership between some Messianic believers and Arab Christians in the nation of Israel and how together they are functioning as a corporate example of the “Bride of Christ”. She literally declared, “The Bride is rising up in the Middle East!”
This week, in the hills outside of Jerusalem, we received a similar testimony from Asher Intrater, director of Revive Israel and Tikkun International. Asher just returned from meeting in a nearby country with about twenty Christian leaders from across the Muslim world. Though he has had a long history of relationship with Arab believers, Asher expressed that what is happening now throughout the Middle East is almost unheard of.
As we know, over the past eight years or so, terrible tragedies have swept through this region due to Islamic extremism. So many people have been killed, murdered, raped and displaced. Yet, in the midst of all the devastation, there has also been a great move of God. Sheer desperation has created an openness that’s resulted in more Muslims coming to know Christ in recent years than in the prior 1400 years altogether. Asher went on to report that a large part of these conversions have come through supernatural scenarios. "It has become evident,” he said, "that as the Church prays for laborers to be sent into the harvest, the first one to go has often been Yeshua himself - showing up in dreams and visions!”
Another profound dynamic is that several of the leaders that Asher met with last week had never seen a Messianic Jew before, nor had they met a Palestinian Christian. Their paradigms were being rocked. On the other hand, most Messianics have never anticipated opportunities like this to glean from the remnant Church in these other historically Muslim nations. These are new and glorious times. Truly, the corporate Bride of Christ is rising up in the Middle East!
Therefore, even as we pray for the nation of Israel and its people, let us also hear the cries of the Christian leaders in nearby Muslim countries. Their need for laborers and finances are great. Pray Matthew 9:38, that many workers would be ekballo-ed to join them in the fields (Mt 9:38). Pray for the release of finances to sustain the great work there. Pray for the Muslim and Arab masses and for a revival of evangelism to the Muslim community. Pray for restoration of their nation's churches, and ultimately, for the bringing together of this growing global family in Jesus’ name.
