The re-launch of Free Balkans under IST Prayer!

After a six month sabbatical from the Free Balkans prayer blog, we believe it is time to relaunch the blog with a focus on the refined vision the Lord has imparted to us. During this past six months, we launched a new ministry called Intentional Strategies for Transformation or the IST Group. For more on our vision please check out our progressing website at  ISTgroup.org. With this in mind, we for the most part foresee the continuity of our blog to be as follows:

Week 1: Prayer for any IST Group related needs
Week 2: The city of Zagreb (our home and a specific target of our prayers)
Week 3: Croatia
Week 4: The Balkans. Sometimes regional other times a specific country.

This being our first blog, we will update you on the happenings here at the IST Group and next week, we will have a joint prayer for Zagreb and Croatia. After that we will continue as the above scheduled indicates.

The Upper Room House of Prayer (HOP) in Zagreb
Phase One of the IST Group is to establish the Upper Room HOP in Zagreb. Now that we have been faithful in conducting this House of Prayer for over a month, we feel the purpose and direction of the Lord even more. We meet Monday through Friday, once a day to worship the Lord, invite His presence and pray His heart.

Our objective is to provide a place and atmosphere for God’s promise given through the Apostle James in Acts 15:16-17, “After this I will return and will rebuild the tabernacle of David, which has fallen down;”. James goes on in verse 17 and states God’s purpose, “So that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord,”. For further study on the Tabernacle of David, please read these passages: Amos 9:11-13, 1 Chron. chapter 16, 1 Chron. 23:5, 25:1, 28:19, Psalms 27:4.

The Upper Room HOP is a place simply to give Jesus the honor due His name and worship who He is. The HOP is also a place we can corporately approach the Father’s throne in boldness and have confidence to seek His heart and His perfect will. When we know His heart we are confident in our prayers and intercession.  We learn what it means to be “more than conquers”.

We pray for the city of Zagreb, the country of Croatia and the Balkan region. We pray for the harvest of souls in the country, the government and all churches and civil institutions. We believe the time is now for God to bring a spiritual transformation!

Pray with us:
1) To stay focused in our prayer times on the unfinished task to disciple the nations (Croatia and the Balkans) Matthew 28:18-20
2) Pray for our Croatian HOP leader and her family, Lidija Zidov.  (She is truly a gift!)
3) Pray that we can move from meeting in our living room to a permanent place. (Pray for the funds to rent or buy such a place. Pray for a strategic location.)
4) Pray that the local pastors, priest and foreign missionaries will welcome our efforts.
5) Pray that the Lord draw the burning ones in this city who are called to be a part of this prayer effort.

Thank you so much for praying with us as we pursue this vision for blessing Croatia and ultimately the Balkans.

Jerry and Zuzanna

Timisoara, Romania

I took a Sabbatical from my weekly prayer blogs for the Summer. I had been systematically praying for the Balkan countries for 7 years and many of you were faithful to pray with me. I want to thank you for your prayers and assure you God heard them. I am so fortunate to now be living, traveling throughout the Balkans and witnessing what God has done and is doing. The follow story is a testimony of His faithfulness.

I plan to start publishing once again on a regular basis, but it will take on a new dimension. Next week’s post will give explanation to the new dimension and new vision.

TIMISOARA

Forty years ago, God  used a Romanian pastor to set in motion my destiny. I find myself today (Sept.2,2015) in Romania praying with about 300 people. Zuzanna and I are at the European Trumpet Call in Timisoara, Romania. ETC is a group that brings together intercessors to pray for Europe.

There were so many reasons we could have used to talk ourselves out of coming but God made sure we got here.

Once we were here in Timisoara the Lord reminded me of two past events regarding Romania and the destiny I have to pray for the Balkan countries. To expand on what I mentioned above, forty years ago, 1975, God spoke to me through a Romanian pastor.

I was in a Texas jail because of drug charges. We were allowed to have books to read and somehow I had picked up Richard Wurmbrand’s book, “Tortured for Christ”. In the book he tells of his many years in prison and the tortures he endured because of being a pastor in a communist country.  At one point while reading the book the Lord showed me something that deeply impacted my life. Here was a man that was in jail for doing good but I was in jail for doing bad. I had become a Christian a few years earlier but had fallen back into sin. Wurmbrand’s story planted a burden in me to pray for Christians that were living in communist lands.

I was released from jail/prison in 1977 with a desire to read all I could about the persecuted church. In 1985 I moved to former Yugoslavia as a missionary. For three and one half years I was able to travel throughout the Eastern bloc countries and actually pray with my feet on the ground.

About June of 1985 my pastor from America, Olen Griffing, and his wife Syble came to visit me in Yugoslavia. He gave me a letter that contained important information and he ask me to take it to someone in Timisoara, Romania. The letter was from a Romanian in America that wanted to communicate some news to his relatives. So I arranged to travel to the then very restricted Romania to deliver the letter. I arrived in Romania and delivered the letter and watched as the family weep as they read it. I was ask to come back the next evening so  I could then meet with other Christians. I woke up the next morning, and realize I had most of  the  day to walk around the city and pray. So that is what I did. I never noticed anyone following me, which was the normal thing regarding foreigners back then. I think the Lord had me hidden. As I walked and prayed I noticed the stores that were not closed had very little food in them. There were nice wide streets but hardly any cars. I was shocked at what I was seeing, or what I was not seeing.

That evening I meet with a small group of Christians in a home. We prayed together. I observed them on their knees, poureing out their hearts to the Lord. The next morning I left Timisoara a changed man.

Now it is 2015 and here I am in Timisoara 30 years later, in a huge church, praying with hundreds of Romanians and other people from around the world. 1975 I received a call from the Lord, through a Romanian pastor, to pray for Eastern Europe. 1985 I was able to prayer-walk Timisoara, a very devastated city. (By the way, in 1989 the revolution that brought down communism in Romania started in Timisoara.) To me these dates are important: 1975, 1985 and 2015, 5 has always been my favorite number.

This time of prayer in Timisoara with the European Trumpet Call has been earth shaking. Timisoara is experiencing a heat wave. The church we are meeting in is not air-conditioned and 300 people are sweating and crying out to God for a revival in Europe.

Destiny is an amazing thing. Please seek the Lord for the Destiny He has for you.