A Call to Prayer for Iraq

A Call to Prayer for Iraq from Rob Weingartner 
Executive Director of The Outreach Foundation

For the community that is The Outreach Foundation, the painful developments that are unfolding in Syria, Palestine and Iraq are personal, personal because many of our friends are caught up in the violence. The news accounts are more vivid and heart-breaking because brothers and sisters are suffering. 

The Christians have fled Mosul, Iraq. ISIS forces gave the Christians clear choices: convert, pay an outrageous tax, die or leave. Friends of ours have fled Mosul. As they left, they were stripped of anything of value. And it is not only Christians who are being harmed. Please pray for all the people of Iraq, pray that evil hands might be stayed, pray for those forced from their homes, pray for peace with justice.

The Christians in Iraq are asking for our help. They long to continue bearing witness to the good news of Jesus Christ in their homeland.

They ask that we condemn the attacks on Christians in Mosul and other cities that are driving believers from their communities.

They ask that we call upon the leaders of nations and others who wield power in the region to pay attention to the threats and hardships that the government and the people of Iraq, both Christians and Muslims, are facing.

They call upon Christians and Muslims to exert pressure on their governments, and to broadcast clearly their concerns about what is going on today in Iraq, which, in the words of the Middle East Council of Churches, “if not stopped immediately, will result in human calamities and wars and will affect even those who were behind it or have kept silent in face of it.”

They ask that we pray. May we pray to Almighty God to rescue all the people of Iraq who are deeply suffering as sheep taken to be slaughtered, while there appears to be no one to advocate for their right for justice, mercy and life.

Let us pray. And let us act. Let us call for justice and challenge our own leaders to use the power and influence of our nation in ways that affirm the value of each human life and that promote religious freedom for all people.