Greetings from the rainy west coast of Ireland! All right, I won’t complain. In all honesty, we’ve had more sun in the last month than we know how to deal with. But it’s back to grey skies for us and, for Amy and I, it’s time to stop lounging on the beach and prepare for another month of prayer!

KC 12 kicked off in Armagh and by May it will have reached the western shores of Ireland. Since our last month of prayer, back in last October, we’ve been kept busy with prayer rooms in churches, schools, youth conferences and shopping centres. Briefly, the highlights:

We worked on an advent prayer room with a small group of Christian students in Sligo Grammar School. The responses were overwhelmingly positive! The teacher who invited us into the school keeps us updated and told us the students ran another prayer room over the period of Lent. Praise the Lord for continuing the work he has begun in that school!

Since the New Year, we have been experimenting with establishing a rhythm of prayer in Ballina Methodist Church. We had a 12-hour, daily prayer room over St. Patrick’s weekend, which went brilliantly well. The sign-up sheet was almost completely filled despite the fact that most of our supporters were away.

Easter was an incredibly busy time for us, beginning with our first National School Prayer Room in St. Paul’s in Colooney. The kids loved the prayer room, even giving up their morning break to spend a final few minutes in the room before it was taken down!

Taking down the school’s prayer room on Friday morning, we moved on to Sligo Methodist Church to set up a prayer room for a youth conference beginning Friday evening. We were also given the responsibility of running a prayer seminar. We were both fairly nervous, but God gave us the words to say and boosted our confidence. It went well and the teens who came really enjoyed having time to use the prayer space during the seminar.

The youth conference ended Sunday morning and on Monday morning we were busy setting up an interactive art and prayer space in one of the main shopping centres in Sligo. The prayer space was up and running all through Easter week, ending on Easter Saturday. We had some great conversations, a lot of lovely notes in our comment book and a LOT of cups of coffee. Seeing a prayer space in a shopping centre in the West of Ireland is something I’ve been dreaming about for the past couple of years. Thank you Lord for opening that door and giving us such amazing results!

On the Universities roadtrip back in February, the team stopped off at a college in Sligo to meet with some members from the chaplaincy and pray for God’s light to fill the campus. I believe it’s an answer to prayer that the Catholic chaplain’s assistant has invited us to set up a prayer room for the month of May to cover the exam period in the college. That, along with the possibility of a couple of national school prayer rooms and the usual church prayer rooms, should fill our month with Prayer.

Coming up to this year’s month of prayer, we’re really focusing on the idea of ‘more mission’ in our prayers. Especially because it’s coming so close after our last month of prayer, we’re looking at stepping out of the prayer rooms and bringing prayer on to the streets of our towns and cities. The idea for our month of prayer is to prayer walk as a united group of churches in each area once a week for a month. That means we’re going to be prayer walking around Ballina and Sligo once a week, walking around Carrick-on-Shannon and possibly Boyle.

In Joshua 1, God says to Joshua: ‘I will give you every place where you set your foot.’ (v3). As we walk in prayer, we want to see God moving in mighty ways to reclaim our land for his kingdom. Please keep us in prayer as we move forward with this idea. Let God’s ‘Kingdom Come’ in Ballina

Keilah Joyce

While spending a quiet hour in a prayer room in my church the other day, my eyes became fixated upon the Bible that had been left at a prayer station… it wasn’t an NIV, an NLT or The Message… but a simple Beginner’s Bible, aimed at the thoughts of children. However, after picking it up and reading through several stories I was left with a sense of awe.

After reading many stories and pondering over the understanding and simplicity of various parables I was left asking myself
two things;

What does childlike faith really mean?

Is the character of childlike faith working in me?

I concluded that childlike faith is the wonder and awe at what Christ did for us. The combination of trust, hope and unpretentiousness of someone that knows that God loves them and leads them.

Children see the world as exciting and adventurous, and worth pursuing. They jump at opportunities to see the world and their attitude isn’t the same as adults who say “been there, done that”, even if they have been!

Childlike faith is similar to this. We should be unlike the adult who says “been there, done that”… we should be adults who are saying everything is exciting and adventurous, every trip to a new part of our nation is exciting and adventurous! It doesn’t matter if I have been there before and even bought the tshirt!

This is exactly how I felt after spending two days in February road-tripping and travelling around different places in Ireland, most of which I had been to before. God gave me fresh understanding and excitement for these places, because God was revealing more about these places to me.

God wants us to remain childlike in order that we may maintain our humbleness and enthusiasm and that life would not just become a routine.

Considering the idea of childlike faith also led me to consider some opposites; apprehension, complacency, timidity… or being childlike without trusting! These characteristics could deter us from seeing the wonders in opportunities, the possibilities of new relationships, seeing places in our nation as nothing special, or being satisfied with what we have already seen being done and never striving to want more…

After considering these opposites, I have been asking myself several questions;
What part does childlike faith play in my relationships with friends and my church family?
Have I lost out on opportunities because I have been timid with my faith?
When have I failed to see the wonder in situations and in different places and as a result have become complacent?
When have I been filled with childlike faith the most?

Matthew 18v2-4 says “He called a little child and had him stand among them. And he said: I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

As I reflect upon the Kingdom Come 2012 year of prayer so far and what God wants for us, I am challenged by the idea of childlike faith and what this means for us as individuals, as well as for Ireland as our nation…

So, is the character of childlike faith working in you?

Kattie McGlaughlin