Chai and Chapati

Worship

Over recent years there has been an extraordinary move of the Holy Spirit across the Iranian, Farsi-speaking community, so I thought that we would begin with a familiar worship song…but in Farsi.

I know an Afghan lady whose second language is the above.

As a very traumatised woman in her fifties, she fled her home country without family and found herself seeking asylum here. For the eight years that I have known her she has had numerous moves and been made homeless three times. I have attended court with her, taken her to English classes and to various medical appointments; but for the most part (covid excepting) all we do together is meet up once a week in her home for chai and chapati! She’s my friend.

Nearly all the people who have helped her in this country are Christians. She is aware of this and has clearly been exposed to the Gospel through that love yet there appears little openness to Christ. However, I do perceive that the Holy Spirit is working in her wider community, maybe out of our touch on her life. The Holy Spirit blows where He pleases (John ch3 v8).

Prophetic

I am sensing the finger of God under our chins, just lifting our sights beyond our nation and its recent traumatic couple of years. I feel that he wants us to look out at our wider world.

I appreciate that there is a lot on the television currently about Afghanistan; but there are many other places that have not caught the attention of the press.

During the day, could you buy a balloon and take a marker pen, please?

Prayer

You may want to read Psalm 67. We have been blessed for a reason.

Would you ask the Holy Spirit to put a nation or people group* on your heart?

Then would you blow up your balloon and write the nation/people on it with your marker pen.

Now leave the balloon somewhere where it will be disturbed, blown around a bit.

Many folk across the globe are like that balloon. Their lives are fragile and unstable; subject to the winds of political instability, geographical change and religious oppression.

Every time you look at that balloon, could you pray for those people? It may be that you have written a stable, wealthy country on your balloon; but even within that will be hidden lives like that of my friend.

You never know; out of your prayers you may find yourself sharing chai and chapati…and catching the wind of the Holy Spirit moving on a people group.

(*a people group are a community of people who share the same language and culture. India, for example, has many people groups; whereas the Fulani is one people group which sprawls a number of North African countries).