Non-Stop Prayer in Philippines: Changing Lives, Planting Churches

Published: March 12th, 2009

God is doing amazing things in an island province of the Philippines! A recent email from Arthur Peter, a missionary from the Netherlands, told of the call to prayer God is stirring in the heart of his community. He shared about the recent shift in focus for the approximately 20 home groups that comprise their church network called Touching The Nations:   
 
"[We are] a newly started mission organization whose heart is to see churches and people pray." Arthur explained "We started our first church plant on April 10, 2005.  After 3 1/2 years we were finally able to switch to 24-7 prayer. Before that we had a lot of prayer meetings but were not in a place yet to pray non-stop. We are only a little church and feel that we are really only starting. We started praying 24-7 on October 12 and it has been going non-stop since then.” 
 
Palawan is an island paradise, with almost 2000 kilometers (1200 mi) of coastline, white sand beaches and inland virgin forests that carpet its chain of mountain ranges. The native-born Palaweños are the dominant ethnicity of the approximately 737,000 inhabitants of this ethnic melting pot,  but the local culture bears strong influence from China, India, the Middle East and other parts of the Catholic and Muslim Philippines.
 
Palawan is also where the world’s largest pearl was found in 1934. Called the Pearl of Lao Tzu, it measured 240mm (9.45in). One cannot help but think of the parable of the Pearl of Great Price, and see it as a prophetic picture of the investment Arthur's community of faith is making in their corner of the world.
 
Arthur goes on to explain the process that brought them to their current season of unbroken prayer. “Really the Lord led us step by step. When we planted our first church, it was named House of Prayer. We didn't understand why, but we just followed the Lord. As the church continued to grow God was starting to put more and more on our heart the importance of establishing the Tabernacle of David.”
 
Soon they felt God drawing them to round-the-clock prayer. With the mantra of Matthew 21:13 ("My house shall be called a house of prayer…") they moved in obedience. Arthur admits it was tough in the beginning.
 
‘‘Step by step we increased our prayer watches until we switched to 12-7 prayer and than we took the big step on October 12, 2008 and switched to 24-7 prayer. Since we started praying a lot of things have happened. When we started 24-7 prayer the church really changed. People started growing in love. The presence of God became stronger and stronger. We have seen so many answers to prayer. Some members saw and heard angels. Sometimes the presence [of the Lord] is so strong that all they could do was lay on the floor.  Many members left and walked away, but now after 3 months we are seeing more and more God restoring the church. The church is starting to grow in members again and the people that are coming are more interested in praying for the nations. 
 
After being a church for 3 1/2 years we feel that we are only really starting and we wish we had started much earlier with 24-7 prayer. Now we don't have any Sunday services or Sunday school. We only have a gathering together once every 2 months to come together and worship the Lord.”

As God continues to bless their obedience and enlarge their hearts, Arthur and his community are finding God’s plans were bigger than they could have imagined.
 
“After praying non stop we feel that the Lord is challenging us to establish 24-7 churches all over this island. Our focus for the coming 2 years will be to have 12 churches all over this island with the purpose to establish 24-7 prayer all over this island. It is only prayer that is going to break the strongholds of witchcraft and occult. Our heart is [that} by establishing 24-7 churches we will see an increase of God's glory and more people will get saved.”
 
Arthur finished with one last encouragement. “We are so blessed to be able to pray non stop and would encourage every church to undertake the same. It will change your life forever”.

Sheena Littlehale volunteers for 24-7 Prayer and in particular Pete Greig. Sheena is an avid photographer and also enjoys reading and writing.  You can keep up with Sheena's adventures in England through her blog.

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