DAY OF REPENTANCE AND PRAYER 25th April 2020 livestreamed by Voice for Justice UK
Session 5:  Our betrayal of family
David Lindsay, joint leader of Together for the Nation

'I now want to read an email sent by an American friend, who is based in Jerusalem, sent last week and it’s entitled

Uplifting Family Hope when Sheltering from the Coronavirus

 
On Good Friday during a wonderful time of prayer for families staying in their homes because of the restrictions in many nations we felt the heart of the Lord as we wept for specific families. We are confident that in the end these events could give families hope. We prayed for 3 different families we know, not living in the same house, where certain family members are not speaking to one another because of past offences. We prayed for families who have a good relationship but were rediscovering the family altar. We realised this is a divine moment for us to allow the Lord to work in our families. Here is what we then felt the Lord was saying:
 

‘The healing of the nations will come through the healing of the families. Come apart with me during this time when I have called you apart from the busyness that has filled your lives. Do not fill up the void with the voice of media, purpose to quiet other voices to hear mine. This is a time when I will go deep to pull out roots of wounding between husbands and wives, between parents and children. For some these are small wounds, but my desire is to heal them all. Do not wait for the other person to take initiative to restore relationships but hear from me how you can take initiative to restore relationships. In other families there is not such a deep need for healing but there is a need to learn again how to hear one another, how to enjoy one another, how to have fun together, how to encourage one another. This is a season where I am restoring the family altar for husbands and wives to pray together, for parents and children to worship together, for families to read the scriptures together. As the family altars are restored you will learn how to function as more like one family in my church, in my kingdom. For the restoration of the family must precede a great restoration within my church, my ecclesia, my kingdom.

And He then goes on to quote from Malachi 4


 
“See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction.”
(other versions have ‘with a curse’)

But as the hearts of the parents are turned to their children and as the hearts of the children are turned to their parents I can heal your lands.

David then prayed:

May this be a time for the turning of the hearts between generations, the healing of relationships and the strengthening of the family unit that is foundational to the strengthening and healing of our nations. At this time may our families find hope.

Forgive us as the church for marginalising and rejecting what scripture says about the family. Forgive us for not modelling that family to the church and indeed to the wider society. Forgive us Lord for the sins of omission and commission. Lord we know that judgment begins in the House of the Lord and we say have mercy on us, your body, because we have failed you and turn us, turn our leaders back to you, that they would teach, they would help us to model what is taught throughout the Old and New Testament. Lord we grieve too at the ungodly legislation and policy that we have seen in the last 4,5,6,7 decades with regard government towards the family and we say forgive us, forgive them. Lord would you turn the hearts of those in Parliament, those in the Civil Service, those with their advisers, Lord turn their hearts to you and forgive them for what they have done, that you’d be glorified Lord, Amen.'