Kinship Network

Missions news reporter Justin Long writes, "A political earthquake is looming in Lebanon. The cabinet has ordered the army to draw up a plan to establish a state monopoly on arms—effectively disarming all factions—aimed above all at the Iran-backed Shi‘ite group Hezbollah. Can they actually do it? Hezbollah itself is weakened, battered by Israel, but the deeper question is whether Lebanon’s Shi‘ites will allow it. Many view Hezbollah as the only force that defended them when the state could not or would not. But if Hezbollah is disarmed, "it's a whole new Lebanon." And various Gulf powers are dangling incentives, if disarmament is accomplished.

Explainer: Can Lebanon disarm Hezbollah? Lebanon's cabinet has told the army to draw up a plan to establish a state monopoly on arms in a challenge to the Iran-backed Shi'ite Muslim group Hezbollah, which rejects calls to disarm.

A clash between Druze and Bedoin people in Sweida also involved the new Syrian government troops and Israel. At least 1400 people have been killed including an evangelical pastor along with 20 men, women and children in his family. In as separate situation, an elderly Christian woman was killed in a nearby village. Food and water are very limited across the region.

God has been building His church among the Druze in this region. Please pray for the believers there at this time. Some of you met two beautiful young Christian women from Sweida several years ago when we held the retreat/training conference in Lebanon for our Syrian friends. Pray for them as you picture their faces and lift up to God the pastors and believers there who are deeply grieving and looking to God to give them faith in the midst of fear.

This is a helpful article about the current state of Syria and why few refugees may return there in the near future.

After the Assad regime’s fall, will Syrian refugees return? - opinion Although the political landscape has changed drastically, many factors work against a mass return of refugees to Syria.