The NATIONAL PRAYER ALTAR
MARATHON PRAYERS
Monday 5th – Sunday 11th February 2024
A BULLOCK FOR THE PRIEST, A BULLOCK FOR THE CONGREGATION
For the third week now, we are persuaded to draw the attention of Christians in Nigeria to crucial issues bordering on their personal survival and that of the Church. Since 2009, Islamist insurgents, funded, protected and deployed by some influential people within and outside Nigeria, have daily been decimating the Christian population. The carnage has assumed genocidal proportions. According to World Watch Monitor, in the past 12 years, Nigeria has been the most dangerous country in the world for anyone to be a Christian.
In Nigeria today, murder is legalized. In every other country in the world, murder is a crime punishable by either death or life imprisonment. Murderers in Nigeria roam free, get enlisted in the military as ‘repentant terrorists,’ and others are let go apparently with a license to commit the next act of terror, while their survivors remain destitute in IDP camps. Their victims depart planet earth without personal identity in mass graves.
Those agents of wickedness are not stronger than Nigerian Christians, neither are they better strategists. Christians are more in number, better educated, better enlightened, and stronger than those determined to exterminate them. Christian leadership failure is to blame.
A good parallel to the situation in Nigeria is found in Exodus 1: 8–11. Pharaoh admitted that the children of Israel were “more and mightier” than the Egyptians. How come it was the people who were “more and mightier” that became slaves to their apparently less and weaker opponents? The answer is: leadership.
In the past few days, a troublesome ethnic nationality in Nigeria that has gained notoriety for bloodletting and abuse of hospitality has openly escalated plans to cause further destruction of lives in the country, going as far as publishing its intention to bring destruction to the 36 states in Nigeria. That is in addition to registering a vigilante group made up entirely of members of that ethnic group. Informed observers have noted that that was how Janjaweed, the quasi terrorist police in Sudan, started. In all of these, what is the response of the Christian leadership?
The problem is failure both of leadership and followers. According to Sociology, two factors produce leadership in any society:
1. Someone to claim it.
2. Someone to recognize it.
If someone claims leadership but no one recognizes it, there would be no leader. So long as people recognize someone as their leader, that person remains a leader. Spiritually, recognizing someone as leader carries a lot of weight.
According to Lev. 4, if an anointed priest sinned, he would bring a young bullock to atone for his sin. However, if the entire congregation of Israel sinned, that priest would bring only a young bullock to atone for their sin. If the ruler sinned, he would bring a male goat to atone for his sin, whereas a common man would bring a female goat (Lev. 4:3-28). A corrupt and covetous leadership brings divine indignation upon its congregation. In this crucial season, the Nigeria Church requires Good Shepherds, not hirelings. A Good Shepherd will not allow the wolves to devour his flock. Good Shepherds will not have folded their arms since 2009 with no plan of engaging the insurgency. They will not throw the weight of the Church in support of enemies of Jesus Christ. The endorsement of the Muslim-Muslim ticket by influential Christian leaders, after eight years of jihadist Buhari, is a strong indictment on Christian leadership.
PRAYER POINTS
1. John 10:10
Take authority over the spirits of darkness that have come to steal, kill, and destroy in Nigeria. Bind all those evil spirits and cast them out.
2. Ezek. 34:2–6
Pray that they will not be blameless who were empowered and positioned by God to halt the murder of Christians in Nigeria, but did nothing.
3. John 10:11
Pray that God will raise a new generation of Church leaders, Good Shepherds, for the Nigeria Church.
4. John 10:12–13
Pray that God will dismiss every hireling occupying a position of Christian leadership in Nigeria Church.
5. Gal. 2: 11–14
Pray that God will raise the spirit of boldness and zeal for righteousness in the Church.
6. Acts 6: 2 – 4
Pray that the Holy Spirit would raise people in the Church who would reorganize the Church to do the work of God and at the same time answer the enemies at the gate.
7. Philp. 1:27–28
Pray for unity amongst Christians in Nigeria; unity to confront the enemies of God determined to destroy Christians.
