A Call to Prayer for The Russia-Ukraine Crisis

What happens when the largest country in the world with the second largest military invades the second largest European nation creating the largest European conflict since WWII and one of the greatest international crisis since that time, which will have ripple effects around the world? God’s people pray.

While many leaders throughout the world speak vaguely of prayer it is nothing like what King George VI, King of Canada, issued in WWII at the fall of France and before the ‘miracle of Dunkirk”:

“We must pray…This next Sunday, I’m calling for a national day of prayer…Let us with one heart and soul, humbly but confidently, commit our cause to God and ask his aid, that we may valiantly defend the right as it is given to us to see it.”

Today is not May 1940, however, and so we shouldn’t expect our leaders to lead in the area of prayer—that is the responsibility of the Church:

1 Ti 2:1–2 says, First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, 2 for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.

Remember how King Hezekiah, facing the Assyrian advance, looked the LORD alone for deliverance (Isa 37).

And so as many of us have already begun to do as news of this conflict has reached us, let us unite our prayers together as MBC for peace. I encourage everyone to pray for this conflict each mealtime until we gather this Lord’s Day.

What specifically might we pray for?
-that God’s will be done
-that peace and diplomacy may still prevail
-for wisdom for world leaders
-for Christians and missionaries in Ukraine, Russia and surrounding countries, for them to be a light
-for the many refugees [potentially millions] this will create
-that the conflict may be contained
-for the international fallout
-that peace and freedom may be preserved in Canada
-that wars and rumours of wars may shake the world’s spiritual lethargy and that people may see today as the day of salvation

In the face of this conflict may we be a witness to fellow Canadians:

• Of faith in the midst of fear
• Of hope in the midst of despair
• Of certainty in the midst of confusion
• Of a heavenly focus in the midst of worldliness
• Of Good News rather than Bad News