Contingency Plans

Photo of the Sea of Galilee by Zev Sigulim

 The following is my cover story for the May 31, 2024 Arrows from Zion mailing

2024 May 8: Yesterday for the first time ever in my life I packed a GO Bag. I put in Tony’s medications for 7 days, then realized I better put mine in too. I packed critical documents, passwords, a change of clothes, and other things I could take with me in case of need for fleeing our house. I had to grapple with whether making a Go Bag was a lack of faith in God’s protection, or simply wisdom in light of the situation. Then I remembered how one of the Israel ministries wrote recently of their government telling them to make contingency plans of where the family could meet in case of major emergency because of the hostilities increasing from Hezballah in the north. Where there is no vision/plan, the people perish. Prov 29:18
     I stopped wondering if it was a lack of faith to prepare in the face of strong potential of an emergency like we were awakened to in the wee hours of Tuesday morning. Hurricane force winds and torrential rains woke us around 4-5 AM. To me this experience has been a real-life wakeup call beyond the bad weather season we always have this time of year. It was a wakeup call to the spiritual warfare going on in our country that is threatening to become physical warfare. I’m sure many are spiritually aware of the same conditions in your nations also.
     Even with the 75 to 80 mile an hour winds, personally we only suffered minor damage (unless like me you consider all loss of internet & TV major!). Our property was like “the land of Goshen” but all around we saw our neighbors and city took a lot of bad damage. Trees were down everywhere. Fences were down including neighbors across the street, and to our right and left!  It was a mess. We had to go out to vote at the library but their parking lots were jam packed. When we walked in the polling place, there was no one there! All the cars out front were packed in the library using internet & TV.
     I have been wondering for some time what I would do regarding my Israel prayer mailing lists should our communications cease due to uncontrollable forces. This is the second time in the past couple of years that our internet was out for more than a few hours. In years past it would bring me high anxiety for my internet to be down even 24 hours. When we lost our internet for days a couple of years ago, I was determined not to be stopped. That is what enemy attack triggers in me. No matter how much harder it gets to accomplish, I become determined not to let the enemy stop me.
     So I packed up the links and passwords that I needed to access ministry emails sent to me online and to begin to glean from them a makeshift weekly summary to send out. This past week has been a  different set of obstacles because we were not the only ones affected. The library connections became more complicated.  Plus most days this week more heavy storms battered our area. I found I could compile the email with what I had already received during the past couple of weeks even with no internet. So I pushed ahead…with many breaks because of major lighting strike storms rolling in. The thing is though I had peace about it. When our main reason for being is shackled by circumstances beyond our control, we can trust that God will show us a way to move forward.
     I am writing all this because I want subscribers to this weekly prayer list to know that if you have kept your old prayer summaries, they are still a strong valid foundation for praying for the Israeli ministries. Although specific details may change, all of the basic issues they all face remain the same. These are the core issues of their charge from God to being in the sheaves of Israelis coming to faith in Yeshua from the harvest fields of Israel.
      One good thing I hope my subscribers know and that is that the main issues that I have been highlighting weekly in the Israel Prayer emails, are going to be the main issues always. Pray the major themes and you cannot go wrong. Without the weekly specifics it may feel somewhat like you are walking in pitch black darkness which is not a good feeling but there is none more loyal to the calling of God than those who will not give up when darkness makes their path less visible.
     In my view, the major themes to pray over are that more Christians awaken to our duty to support the Israeli ministries work both in prayer and in financial support. The body of Messiah needs to be able to shine brightly in the darkness that Israel is in, not only from attack of enemies all over, but also among the Israeli people who are beginning to lose hope in everything they have been able to put trust in before now. This is key to Israel’s salvation that they are able to see the Light of Yeshua shining brightly in the believing Messianic Jews in Israel, so they will know where our Hope comes from: it comes from the Lord Yeshua, and none other.
     Last night I picked up a book I have had for more than a year by a Christian woman who became a CIA agent right after 9/11/2001. Her Lebanese Christian husband was only 6 months ahead of her in the CIA and they both had done tours of military duty in the Middle East and were Arabic speaking. This was when true patriots were still being hired by the CIA, not Leftists. An entertaining writer, she gave an account of their journey working as a couple in the Middle East at the height of perilous war against Islamic terrorism of the 2000’s. She depended on God providing and protecting her even in situations of great peril she found herself in at times. She admitted she was not as personally cool, calm and collected as she might have appeared when confronting great danger. 
     As I read, I related to her standing in warfare that was above her natural abilities. It made me recognized two things: One is that spiritual warfare is the same as the physical warfare she was standing in the midst of. The second realization is that what she was describing are the conditions my Israeli friends have been living in for a long time – but even more acutely in all these months since October 7^th, 2023. When everything around you is scary, people around you are dying, with rockets and bullets flying past your head – it takes a real trust of God to walk calmly. If you can’t walk calmly, it is much more difficult to hear God’s direction and to act on it.
     The Israeli ministries have say repeatedly over the past 23 years that despite the dangers and reality of enemy strikes, they always get up and continue living their life.
     October 7^th has made it much harder for many Israelis to do that. They have been displaced and removed from their regular lives. We all could be put in that position and like many Israelis we would find the uncertainty of what happens next to be overwhelming to getting on with our lives. Only with a deep trust in God, even when it looks like we have been completely derailed from our lives, our families, our ministries, we can enter an internal peace that passes that understanding because we know God still has us. If we are alive, He still plans on using us. We just have to look around where we are and open our eyes to what He has for us to do.
     The experience of the past week has given me a ‘test run’ on how to respond if things ‘go south’ for a much longer period of time. If I cannot put out my weekly summaries, I hope you realize you have enough information to continue to pray for and support the ministries in Israel. My intention with this prayer list was not to become the source for prayer needs in Israel, but to introduce more Christians with Israeli Ministries so you could connect with directly. I believe I’ve gained a lot of insight about them over the years, but my aim was to be a bridge, not to be replacement for Christians connecting with Israeli ministries. I am confident that God has led me on the right track of the prayer needs for this most significant Remnant of Yeshua’s body in the earth.
     When your own life, your own family, your own country , your own spiritual battleground is in uproar and disarray, I tell you from experience that if you will pray for the Israeli ministries in their situations, God will not ignore the challenges of your life. A prayer for the laborers in the Israeli harvest WILL trigger a release of the same in your harvest fields… your life, your family, your country.