[Thursday's Devotional] - "Britons never will be slaves"

Or so the song goes.  When the song is sung by thousands with gusto in the Albert Hall it is easy to call to mind times when we as an island people have been up against it and come through. For my generation, brought up on tales and films of WW2, the lyrics call to mind images of tired, drawn young men vomiting with anxiety, but still running to a parked Spitfire as the scramble bell rings, shortly before being drowned out by the roar of Merlin engines. Yes, I am convinced that Europe owes its freedom to the fact that the islands of Great Britain were able to hold out against Nazi invasion in 1940. Certainly America could never have become involved in the battle for Europe if we had fallen. But the battle for our nation certainly isn’t just something from seventy years ago.

Sadly when we look at our nation we see plenty of slavery. People enslaved by poverty and illness in our towns. People enslaved by debt, alcohol, drugs, mental illness. The contemporary hymn writer Timothy Dudley-Smith in his hymn ‘Lord, for the years’ prays for spirits oppressed by pleasure, wealth and care: in our land. The list goes on and you won’t need much imagination to add a few more examples of your own, sadly.

Added to this we are seeing a slow moving away from Christian values by government as they are replaced by so called ‘British values’. Scarcely a week goes by now when I don’t receive an email asking for prayer for a British Christian who is in legal difficulty for politely and respectfully stating their Christian beliefs in the workplace or elsewhere.

In fact it is easy to get overwhelmed when you consider how unlike the nation that we are created to be we actually are. But we don’t need to get scared or depressed. Remember that the Lamb wins!! So as Christian, British, prayer warriors we certainly have enough to keep us busy on the home front and that’s what we need to be: busy praying and working.

For prayer:

Lord, bring our nation back to you so that we might walk in freedom.

I have managed to get to Thursday without giving you any music to listen to and so today I am going to give you two tunes to encourage and motivate.

So you can have some homemade worship by handmade people:

Build your kingdom here!

Or you may prefer to pray to an old favourite.

May our homes be filled with dancing

John Martin-Jones