The Borderland Prayer Initiative of June 16-17 brought together about thirty local participants – Czech and Slovak leaders from four “houses of prayer” in the Czech Republic and Slovakia and their family members – along with Brian Mills (Interprayer and IPC), Sam Hofmann (YWAM and Hernnhut) and myself in the border town of MIkulov on the Czech border with Austria. It was held in a Methodist church that is pastored by a Jewish believer who was from the original Jewish population that was uprooted and destroyed during the Holocaust.

We focused some strong prayer especially on the issue of “redigging the wells of revival”. It was from that same region of Moravia that the Moravians of the 18th century under the influence of brave reformer Jan Hus developed a vital movement for Christ involving prayer and Bible study that brought a time of deep revival and renewal and later resulted in the 100-year prayer chain in Hernnhut, Germany, from which hundreds of the first Protestant missionaries went out to far reaches of the world. The Moravians also deeply inspired and impacted both England and the USA through the lives and ministries of John and Charles Wesley and George Whitfield, who were mightily used of the Lord in the mighty revival that was know as the Great Awakening and led to the birth of the Methodist Church.

The local prayer leaders also took us over the border into Austria where we prayed at the battlefield where centuries before the Hapsburg emperor defeated the Bohemian ruler and stained the ground with the blood of many thousands of the ancestors of the Czechs and Slovaks. To this day, there remains a sense of spiritual and psychological hindrance affecting the relationship of nations in the region that either ruled or were under the thumb of the Austro-Hungarian empire’s hegemony. It was an encouraging, and I think potent, time of reconciliation and repentance praying, entering into His heart for these nations together. May the Lord use it to affect them positively!

Please continue to pray with us for any attitudinal barrier between these national groups to be broken and that Hungarians, Austrians, and other nationalities in the region will be drawn together for future initiatives. Pray that the fire of the Holy Spirit falls upon His Church and that we will see His healing and transformation in this region where the wounds of history can still permeate the atmosphere.