I received this prayer request yesterday from a man named Aaron living in Israel, and I urge you to read this to the end. The people in Israel, and around the world, need our prayers and support…

"Thank you all for praying about the situation here in Israel.

As you might have heard two more Israelis were killed by rocket fire today and there has been a call up of several thousand reservists, including the sons of my pastor. There is much worry that the IDF will have to send in infantry units to go house to house in Gaza. If this happens, many thousands will be killed and wounded, and it will also cost a tremendous amount of money that Israel can ill afford to spend and which is badly needed in other areas.

There are some other areas that need prayer but I need to give you some background so you’ll know what’s really going on. I urge you to take the time to read this. It’ll only take a couple of minutes and it’s actually kind of important.

If you’re an American and/or if someone you know is fighting in Iraq then you’ll also want to know this because it’s very important for what’s going on in that country.

Lebanon is a small country to the north of Israel. It has a very weak government and army, and so it doesn’t even control all of the territory of its own country. Hezbollah is a terrorist organization that controls southern Lebanon and which fought a war with Israel in the summer of 2006. Ever since that war ended we’ve been waiting for the next round, which we expect Hezbollah to initiate whenever they think they can get the most advantage from it.

However, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has publicly stated that his organization will not initiate hostilities with Israel at this time, although that could be a deception. Some of the moderate, secular governments in the Arab world, most notably Egypt, have publicly blamed Hamas for the fighting and also warned Hezbollah and other Iranian proxy organizations that they will resist their efforts to destabilize the region.

Something which CNN and Fox news don’t do a very good job of explaining is that the Arab-Israeli conflict is not the biggest conflict in the Middle East. The biggest conflict in this region is between Shiite and Sunni Moslems, and between Islamic theocrats and the secular governments (allied with America and England) that most Arab countries have.

Iran is the only major Shiite country and it is also the only openly theocratic government (that is, the Islamic religious authorities are also the political authorities) in the region. Iranians are also not Arabs, they are a different ethnic group and they have no great love for Arabs.

They want to export their brand of theocratic autocracy to the rest of the world, starting with the Moslem countries. In this conflict, they have allies and proxies, and Hezbollah is the most important one, with Hamas (which is Sunni but which has decided to accept aid and support from Iran) a close second.

The secular governments of the major Arab-Muslim countries (Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, the UAE and Jordan) are all Sunni. They are allied with America and England for political, economic and military reasons but there is no great love on either side of this alliance. It is a marriage of convenience.

In all of those countries, there are Sunni Islamists like Osama bin Laden (who only went to Afghanistan after being kicked out of his native Saudi Arabia) who hate the secular governments which they correctly believe to be corrupt and which they also hate because, well, they hate everyone who isn’t like them.

The most important Sunni Islamist group is the Moslem Brotherhood, which started as a terrorist organization in Egypt in 1920 and which "renounced" terrorism in the 80’s and re-invented itself as a grassroots political movement. Despite being officially banned in Egypt, it has several representatives in Egypt’s parliament and has extensive operations in almost every country in the world, including the United States and all the countries of Western Europe. It also has a branch in Israel called "The Islamic Movement in Israel" which Israel, being a democracy, cannot outlaw. Hamas used to be the branch of the Moslem Brotherhood in the Palestinian Territories but as I mentioned above they have come more under the influence of Iran lately.

So these three major players, Secular Arab governments, Iran and their Shiite proxies, and the Sunni Moslem Islamists are all fighting against each other. They are also all fighting in different ways against Israel, but the secular governments are more then happy to let Israel fight against the common enemies of Iran and the Islamists. That is why they quietly applauded the war Israel fought against Hezbollah in 2006 and it’s also why they’re not trying very hard to get Israel to stop fighting Hamas in Gaza right now.

There’s another major wild card in all this and that is Turkey, a democratic, Sunni Muslim, non-Arab country with a long tradition of secular government but which has lately elected a more strict Moslem theocratic government and which also has a strong military and political alliance with the US, England, and Israel while also maintaining strong ties to the Arab Muslim world and Iran. They also have the second most powerful army in the region after Israel, (third if you count the Anglo-American army in Iraq.)

Turkey’s government has publicly condemned the Israeli operation in Gaza, but that doesn’t mean they’re not privately happy about it or that they will sever what is for them a very profitable and strategically important partnership with Israel.

Turkey’s main military problem is the Kurds, another major wild card in the Middle East conflict. The Kurds are another non-Arab Muslim group which controls all of Northern Iraq and which has large minority populations in Iran, Syria and Turkey. There was once a country called Kurdistan encompassing parts of all of these countries, and there are Kurdish terrorist organizations in all these places fighting against those governments, chasing the dream of re-establishing that country.

But there is one more major wild card in the Middle East and that it YOU!

YOU are the Body of Messiah. YOU are the citizens of the Kingdom of God and of His Christ, with Israel being the Embassy of that Kingdom in this world. YOU are the ones who will have the victory in the end.

But it won’t happen by itself. YOU have to DO SOMETHING!

I know you want to know what you can do, so I’ll give you three easy ways to get started.

1) Pray, fast and read your Bible every day. This will bring you closer to God and will make you a better servant of Him and better able to build His Kingdom. It will also keep you safe from the spiritual deception which Jesus said would be rampant in the world in the End Times.

2) Make God and your Walk with the Lord the main priority and center of your life. Confess your sin to Him, ask forgiveness and ask Him to help you become the person He created you to be. It will take time and it won’t be easy, but it’s more then worth it.

3) Invest your time, money and efforts into the Kingdom and Israel, the Kingdom’s Embassy. The economy of this world is melting away, and the only investment that won’t fail is when you invest in God.

Invest your time in praying for Israel and the Jews, but also pray for your own pastor and the people in your own church. Pray for the town you live in, for your country, and for the leaders of your city, state and country. Pray for revival all over the world, and pray for the persecuted church in countries that have anti-Christian governments and/or cultures. Don’t forget to pray for the Believers in the Arab-Muslim world and Iran. Of course, please don’t forget to pray for the Believers here in Israel.

Invest your money in your congregation, but also try to send some to organizations in Israel that are involved in blessing the Israeli population. Never forget that God will give you back every penny you give Him, and he’ll actually bless you with much more.

Invest your efforts in helping the other people in your congregation and in educating people about Israel and the Gospel. Tell them that when someone gets involved in Israel, they are getting involved with God and His Plan for the future of the entire human race, and that’s when we’ll have revival in the Church! Things in Israel, and the world, are getting rough. But Jesus told us that we are not to be disturbed, for these things must come to pass.

So stay strong! Stay focused! Keep praying, and stay centered on Him!

I will see you in the Kingdom, and we’ll spend Eternity in His presence, and the memory of this difficult time will fade into nothing."