The Military Christian Fellowship (MCF) is holding its annual national day of prayer for Australian Defence Force service men and women this Saturday 28 March.

Jamie Van Heel, MCF’s chairman says it’s a challenging time for the defence force, so prayer is very much needed.

“There are around 2,000 Australian personnel deployed overseas right now, and the Government has recently announced that Australians will form part of a training taskgroup to Iraq in the next few months,” Van Heel told Eternity.

Other service personnel have been involved in Operation Sovereign Borders – implementing the federal government’s ‘turn back the boats’ policy – which Van Heel said could often be “quite difficult” personally. And others still have recently returned from Afghanistan.

With those events, and Australia’s commemoration of the Gallipoli Centenary coming up, Van Heel is hoping many Australians get behind the Defence Force in prayer this year.

“There’s about 100,000 servicemen and women and, on top of that, their families, who are directly involved. I see the Defence Force as a huge mission field and opportunity. Christians throughout the ADF can influence and lead the agenda towards righteousness,” says Van Heel.

The ADF has been beleaguered with criticism of its culture in recent memory, with accusations of abuse spread across the newspapers. On Saturday, groups around the country will pray specifically for God to speak into that culture, and change the hearts of men and women.

“Defence, as an organisation, knows that some of the practices that have gone on in the past need to change,” says Van Heel. “But I truly believe that before something changes in the physical realm, prayer can break through spiritually.”

Over 20 groups of Christians from defence establishments around Australia will meet together on Saturday to pray. They’ll be praying for deployed personnel and their families, for those servicemen and women who have returned from operations with physical, mental or spiritual injuries, for change in the Defence culture, for chaplaincy work and the variety of Defence Christian military ministries that support the ADF.

Van Heel says churches and Christians can be praying for the ADF throughout the year for all those things. The Military Christian Fellowship offer monthly prayer points, and have produced a National Defence Prayer Day booklet that can be used all year to keep the ADF in prayer.

“My prayer is that the hearts of ADF men and women would be softened to hear the gospel, that they will accept and understand who Jesus is and that he can heal their spiritual, mental and physical injuries from their time in service.”

You can download the National Defence Day of Prayer booklet here.

Image credit: Australian Civil Military Centre via Flickr