By Callie Mitchell, SAVED News International Correspondent, Jerusalem, Israel
Matthew 24 tells us in the last days there will be wars and rumors of wars. I’ve always thought about the rumors as simply being the circulation of false stories about wars presently happening. Fake news, if you will. In the Greek, however, the word for rumor doesn’t in any way imply that the word being spread is false, just that it’s a word being shared. And these rumors of wars seem to be in our news in Israel almost daily lately!
Through out the last few months, every few days we have had intense situations arise either on the boarder with Syria or in Gaza. The situation in Gaza, in particular, has been very vulnerable lately. In August, on one day alone we had over 200 rockets launched into Israel from Hamas. Most of us in Israel have an app on our phones called Red Alert, which gives us notifications of sirens related to rockets throughout the nation. (You can download the app for free if you would like to pray for Israel with immediate notifications of activity.) Waking up in the morning it has been shocking to see how many notifications were on my phone. We had several days of heated exchanged and news reports that we were minutes away from a major war with Gaza. Then, after hitting some major targets, Hamas retreated and we met calm with calm.
This up and down, “war any minute” then calm, has been the rhythm of the conflict since May, and frankly, its exhausting! Personally I feel that I’m tossed between living in denial that anything is happening at all, to living on the edge of my seat. I’ve asked the Lord if I need to prepare for war or peace, and His gentle guidance has simply been “Be ready!”
When the conflict here first began this more intense course in the spring, I went ahead and updated our war supplies, but the readiness I believe the Lord is speaking of now, is one of spiritual readiness, filling up on His word, and pressing in on some issues that He’s been nudging me to address in my own heart. It’s about fixing those small cracks in the spiritual foundation and reinforcing truth with truth.
The media battles during conflicts here are just as hard as running to shelters. It’s painful to see false reports circulating, and even more painful to see which friends believe them. That is the primary issue I’ve been praying about lately, how to avoid the stress of those situations, and how to speak truth and light into those lies while feeling physically unsafe from a very real, physical war.
We likely are headed to some form of major conflict with Gaza in the near future, so I do ask you all to pray for us, the Messianic community, that we would ready ourselves to be on the frontlines of what’s to come. Purposeful intercession is the greatest way you could support Israel right now, and I thank you all in advance for battling with us on your knees!
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