1. There is much to be thankful for when one belongs to the Lord Yeshua.

    • LORD [YHWH] is gracious, and full of compassion; slow to anger, and of great mercy. LORD is good to all: His tender mercies are over all His works. All Your works shall praise You, O LORD; and Your saints shall bless You. They shall speak of the glory of Your kingdom, and talk of Your power. To make known to the sons of men His mighty acts, and the glorious majesty of His kingdom. Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and Your dominion endures throughout all generations.

      Psalms 145:8-13

    • Lord, we bless You this morning.

    • We declare Your glorious Kingdom is among us and Your mighty acts sustain us.

    • We are so thankful that You are a God who both hears and answers prayers and that You actually delight in them (Proverbs 15:8,29).

    • We praise You in advance for Your answers to all we pray for during our time together.

  2. The world seems to be slowly waking up to the threat of Iran with nuclear weapons.

    But it is probably a case of "too little, too late." We prayed first for supernatural intervention from Israel's God.

    • From Shabbat's Torah portion:

      I will send My fear before you, and will destroy all the people to whom you shall come, and I will make all your enemies turn their backs unto you. And I will send hornets before you which shall drive out [your enemies]... from before you.

      Exodus 23:27-28

    • Abba, send Your fear upon Iran - Israel's enemy - as You have done for the past 3500 years. We are reminded of how You dealt with the Egyptians, and with Sisera, as well as how You routed the enemy in the 1967 Six Day war and at so many other times.

    • Let God arise. let His enemies be scattered. Let them that hate Him flee before Him.

      Psalms 68:1

    • Cause the Iranian leadership - in their arrogance against Your people - to overplay their hand, like You have done with Pharaoh, Haman, Arafat and Abbas today.

    • Let them all be confounded and turned back that hate Zion.

      Psalms 129:5

      Amen!

    • Lord, You did not bring Your people home from the nations to see possibly millions of them destroyed in a nuclear holocaust. You promised to both gather and guard us, therefore we remind You to watch over that word and do as You have said.

      He who scattered Israel [is gathering] him, and [will] keep/guard him, as a shepherd his flock.

      Jeremiah 31:10b

    • Cause the fear of the Jews to fall in the land of Persia/Iran again (Esther 8:7; 9:2-3).

  3. We prayed for Israel, so that if she needs to attack Iran militarily - which seems to be a strong possibility, especially as each day passes without the world dealing with Iran in a serious way - that she will be able to do this in the most effective way.

    • Lord, provide Israel with all the up-to-date intelligence from inside Iran that she will need to strike hard and accurately.

    • Remove from Israeli intelligence services any preconceived notions that will hinder their correct interpretation of information being revealed to them.

      Every purpose is established by counsel: and with good advice make war.

      Proverbs 20:18; cp. 24:6

    • Keep Israel's plans under the world's radar.

    • Remove from Israel's leadership anyone who tries to politicize the Iranian threat or the methods of dealing with it.

    • Give supernatural wisdom, courage and strength to all who will be involved in the attack.

      The horse is prepared against the day of battle: but safety is of LORD.

      Proverbs 21:30-31

    • Give supernatural wisdom, courage and strength to the IDF to deal with Hamas in Gaza, Hizbullah in Lebanon and Syria - all of whom threaten to attack Israel if she attacks Iran.

    • Provide intercessors - in real time - with the wisdom and insight into how to pray into this very dangerous situation.

    • In agreement with King David, we cry:

      Arise, LORD; let not man prevail: let the nations be judged in Your sight. Put them in fear, LORD: that the nations may know themselves to be but men. Selah.

      Psalms 9:19-20

  4. We next turned our prayers towards Israel's political scene.

    • Abba, we thank You for a relatively stable government.

    • We bless You for the decent job that many of our leaders are doing - especially Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and his deputy Danny Ayalon and Israel's American ambassador, Michael Oren.

    • Raise up leaders after Your own heart - as You promised (Jeremiah 3:15; 23:3-4), and remove from all positions of authority anyone whose main goal is their own political gain.

    • Block Kadima's Shaul Mofaz from becoming part of the current government.

    • And I will restore your judges as at the first, and your counselors as at the beginning: afterward you shall be called, the city of righteousness, the faithful city.

      Isaiah 1:26

    • Give the current leadership great wisdom to steer Israel through the very dangerous waters she is navigating at this very hour.

  5. Water may be overflowing in many of your nations, but we are still facing a severe water shortage here in the Middle East.

    • We do thank You for the recent rains and snow.

    • Yet we plead with You to send more - much more.

    • Lord, please let the water that You will send in response to our cries, fall in exactly the right places to replenish the aquifers and fill the Sea of Galilee.

    • We ask that this hot, dry weather which is suppose to be over Israel this weekend, be removed - and replaced by a cold, wet front.

    • Thank You for helping Israelis to conserve water last year. Help them to continue this, and do the same with all the tourists that visit Israel.

    • We ask this for Your holy name's sake, as You said having a fruitful land was part of the restoration process that will bring You glory:

      But you, O mountains of Israel, shall shoot forth your branches, and yield your fruit to My people of Israel; for they are at hand to come. For, behold, I am for you. I will turn unto you, and you shall be tilled and sown. And I will multiply men upon you, all the house of Israel, even all of it. The cities shall be inhabited, and the wastes shall be built. And I will multiply upon you man and beast; and they shall increase and bring fruit: and I will settle you after your old estates, and will do better unto you than at your beginnings: and you shall know that I am LORD.

      Ezekiel 36:8-11

    • The desolate land shall be tilled, whereas it lay desolate in the sight of all that passed by. And they shall say, This land that was desolate is become like the garden of Eden; and the waste and desolate and ruined cities are become fenced, and inhabited. Then the nations that are left around you shall know that I LORD build the ruined places, and plant that that was desolate: I LORD have spoken it, and I will do it.

      Ezekiel 36:34-36

    • We remind You of this wonderful word:

      You, O God, did send a plentiful rain, whereby You did confirm (establish/strengthen) Your inheritance, when it was weary.

      Psalms 68:9

  6. Israel's legitimacy has been under attack for years. Today, it is the UN's Goldstone Report on Israel's activities to defend herself in the recent war against Hamas in Gaza that is bringing global pressure on Israel to desist from being a nation. After all, if Israel cannot defend her citizens against thousands of rocket attacks, then how can Jews live here?

    • Arise, O LORD, disappoint him, cast him down: deliver my soul from the wicked...

      Psalms 17:13a

    • Help us God. Give Israel wisdom and an anointing to have the kind of public relations that helps the common man in the street come to conclusions based on facts and not emotions.

    • We bless You for every voice that speaks the truth in the midst of all Satan's deceptions - both about Israel and the Church (Revelation 12:9).

    • Shield us from a spirit of intimidation, and enable us to declare Your truth.

      Lord... grant unto Your servants, that with all boldness [we] may speak Your word,

      Acts 4:29

    • Help Israel's representatives in the nations - both governmental and others - be bold in declaring the truth about Israel.

      Thus says LORD; I am returned unto Zion, and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem: and Jerusalem shall be called a city of truth...

      Zechariah 8:3a

    • Wake up the Church to see the connection between the enemy's attempt to delegitimatize Israel and the destruction of Christianity's theological foundations! If Israel will no longer be a nation before God (Jeremiah 31:35-37), then how can we believe God is serious about the promised new covenant - prophesied right before that in Jeremiah 33:31-34!

    • Raise up voices to declare this in churches - especially in the West, where many believers do not see the prophetic connection between the end-time restoration of Israel and the return of the One whom they love - Yeshua, the King of the Jews, the Lion of Judah.

  7. Aliyah, the return of Jews from exile to Israel, is always worth praying for, because this is an area in which God's revealed will is not in doubt. He wants His people home. We specifically prayed for the approximately one million yordi'im - Israeli citizens who have made their homes outside this nation for various different reasons - to return.

    • Lord, work on the hearts of the yordi'im. Make them homesick.

    • Stir up their nests and cause a deep sense of unease to descend on them.

    • Do this before they need to flee home because of the rise of the hunters (Jeremiah 16:16).

    • Use the economic situation in the nations to drive Your people home to Israel - whose economic outlook is very strong.

    • We do bless and thank You for helping Israel's economy to be so solid in these days.

    • We especially ask for those Israelis who have met You, Yeshua, while in exile. Speak to Your sheep that this is the year of return.

    • Your word is compared to a two-edged sword in Hebrews 4:12. Cause Psalm 137:5-6, a prayer of Your people while in Babylon, to become just that:

      If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember you, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.

    • Wake up the Church to aid in carrying Your people home - in prayer, with finances and literally helping in this prophetic process (Isaiah 49:22; 60:3-6,12; 62:6-7,10-12).

  8. We thank you for your prayers for IFI's Prayer Conference and Tour. Both were accomplished with the spirit of unity and deep intercession. We concentrated our prayers on many of the areas we have been interceding into for the past year. And to be on the land - while praying for Israel's protection and water and salvation - was an awesome experience.

    • We bless all of you intercessors who spent you time, effort and money to come here and stand with us. You encouraged us and many unsaved Israelis with whom we had interaction.

    • May the Lord protect you from burn-out, from deception, and may He help you to find like-minded people to share your experiences and prayer burdens with.

    • May your foundation always be the Word of God and not what you see or hear in the media, or even from some pulpits.

    • And may these verses be the goal of both your walk with Him and your intercessions for His people:

      Not unto us, O LORD, not unto us, but unto Your name give glory, for Your mercy, and for Your truth's sake. Why should the nations say, Where is now their God? But our God is in the heavens. He has done whatsoever He has pleased.

      Psalms 115:1-3

Shabbat shalom,
The IFI Team