It’s Time

Week one: Understand

Suggested time and date: 6.30am-7am, Monday 22nd September

Good morning! Feeling sleepy? We’re not surprised – it’s 6:30am (if you’re doing this when we suggest), but it’s time to wake up and pray. This week we’ve decided that it’s time … to Understand.

While you’re waking yourself up and getting ready to pray, why not let the world know? Tweet using #itstime2014 and get your followers praying along with you.

Alright sleepyhead. Time to start!

Grab your Wake Up and Pray Guide and spend the next half hour reading through the material, thinking about the Bible passages and praying for change.

If you haven’t managed to get hold of the ‘Wake Up and Pray’ guide, you can download the full pdf session below to help you spend 30 minutes reflecting on the Bible, praying for change and learning more about life as a secret North Korean Christian.
Download full PDF session…

Extra thoughts

Use the following stuff to help expand on the things that are in the Wake Up guide session. These extra thoughts can be read now, or if you don’t have time, during lunch, on your bus ride to school/college/work or whenever you can fit them in!

1. Watch

Movie time: Hea Woo’s story

2. Learn

It’s so alien to us to even try and imagine a world where everything we say, do and even eat is regulated and controlled by the government. It sounds like something out of a book, or a film. And yet, for Christian in North Korea, this is an everyday reality. Many thousands are in prison for holding opinions different from those of the government, or any Christian or religious belief, and everything is ordered and dictated by a government who declares its 18-years dead leader to be god, and forces people to worship him.

‘Kimilsungism’ is the worship of a man, the former leader of North Korea, who died 18 years ago and whose family has been in dictatorship over the country ever since. North Koreans are forced to worship portraits and idols of the leaders, attend meetings solely dedicated to the worship of this leader, and learn hundreds of pages of information about the family.

Christians are persecuted beyond belief in this country. Forced into burying their bibles and meeting in secret silence, the situations in which they find themselves daily are unthinkable. If they’re caught, they face lifetime imprisonment and even death, with no hope of escape.

And yet still they have faith, even in the most extreme circumstances, surrounded by risk and danger at every turn, all for love of Jesus Christ and his message of new life, hope, and freedom.

3. Pray

• Pray for a deeper understanding of what Christians have to go through in North Korea, and for a spirit of intercession to rise up in these next six weeks and beyond. Ask God to break your heart for North Korea and the Christians living there.
• Pray for change to happen in North Korea, for hearts and minds to be opened to the Gospel of Jesus, and for peace to reign throughout the land.
• Tens of thousands of people are imprisoned in labour camps across the country, often being worked and starved to death. Many of these people have been imprisoned for professing faith in Jesus. Pray that He would draw close to them by His spirit at this time, that they would know his comfort, his peace, and his miraculous provision.

4. Act

North Koreans often live off minimal amounts of food. For one day, why not eat like a North Korean? Try skipping breakfast and dinner, and having a bowl of watery soup and some bread for lunch. When your stomach rumbles, use it as a reminder to pray for those who are going hungry in North Korea.

Keep going

Keep praying throughout the day and rest of the week for those in North Korea – why not stick a note on your fridge, or your mirror, to remind yourself to pray? And, every time you pray, tweet #itstime2014 and remind others to pray as well.

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