Wildfires in New Mexico; Abuse prevention and response curiculum available to churches; Prayer and fasting plays a role in revival

Good News for Today

As wildfires are sweeping across portions of New Mexico, first responders are working to get control of the fires and care for residents in affected regions.

Disaster relief workers are keeping a close watch on the fires and are preparing to help those affected as they recover.

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Church leaders across have worked together to develop a new curriculum to help churches prevent sexual abuse and care for those who have been affected by it.

A new resource called Essentials: Sexual Abuse Prevention and Response is now available at sbcabusepreventions.com.

The resource focuses on five areas – training, screening, protecting, reporting and caring.

The curriculum developers recommend a church enlisting five key leaders and work through the five chapters of the curriculum.

Each chapter has a list of a tasks to accomplish before moving to the next chapter. They say it should take about a month to complete.

They recommend group take a 5-5-5 approach: five leaders through five chapters in about five months.

Learn more about the resource at sbcabuseprevention.com.

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Speaking on the necessity of prayer and fasting to help usher in revival, Kie Bowman says, “John Wesley took a dim view of pre-revival America, but he had a plan to change it. Wesley spent time in the colonies and reported, “I desired as many as could to join together in fasting and prayer, that God would restore the spirit of love and of a sound mind to the poor deluded rebels in America.” Even a side glance at the current cultural moment demonstrates that prayer and fasting are just as urgently needed for the “poor deluded rebels in America” today as they were when the nation was new.

Prayer is mentioned hundreds of times in Scripture, and fasting is mentioned about 70 times. Prayer can obviously be practiced without fasting, but fasting, as Scripture describes it, is impossible without prayer. Even when fasting is discussed in passages where prayer is not explicitly mentioned, prayer is obviously implied.