Missions Catalyst 05.11.05 – Practical Mobilization

In This Issue: Hindrances and Tips Regarding Global Prayer

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Practical Mobilization by Shane Bennett is published once a month.

Hindrances and Tips Regarding Global Prayer

By Shane Bennett

OK, true confessions: Though my life is pretty much given over to mobilization for unreached people, I have a hard time consistently praying for the world. Stunning, no? I tell you this for a couple of reasons: Confession is good for the soul, and maybe praying for unreached peoples is a challenge for you as well. If not for you, certainly for most of the folks that you’re working to mobilize. Given that it’s difficult for me to consistently pray for the world, I figure I have a couple of alternatives: One, I could simply not be bothered about it. In the same way that running is hard for me or doing big math problems, so I don’t do them, I could just let prayer go and not be concerned. Alternatively, I could find ways to deal with the problem.

I wouldn’t have written this if I didn’t think it best to try to address the problem, so you know my preferred alternative. But before I dive into that, let’s think about some of the reasons why I, we, or the yet-to-be-mobilized masses find it difficult to pray for the world.

Hindrances

I suspect a key underlying issue is that we don’t understand or believe the true nature of prayer. Whole books are written on this. But what about people who really do believe in prayer? What holds us back? At least three things: Our lives are already full, the world is far away and we don’t see answers, and we just don’t know what to pray.

About four times in the past five years we’ve had the privilege of changing countries. This brings a lot of stress, as you can imagine, but it also carries the cool side benefit of cutting off a lot of the weekly commitments that have filled up our lives. But since we’ve moved back to the US, we’ve been amazed at how quickly our lives have filled up. True inside and outside the church, this dynamic makes it tough to remember to pray for the world.

The second issue has to do with most unreached people living far away from us. Even if you lived in the center of Istanbul, arguably one of the largest unreached cities in the world, you’d still be far away from most of the world’s unreached peoples. And the distance is more than geographic. We are separated by oceans, both literal and figurative. Most of us, in our everyday lives, are not normally connected with unreached peoples. While many apparent Muslims may be e-mailing, asking you to help them deal with the fortune left by their recently deceased uncle, former potentate of Bagsogoldistan (read more about this here), very seldom are they asking for someone to carry their deepest hopes and fears with them before a loving father. The world is distant. Your kids, on the other hand, if they’re at all like mine, are continually in your face. Further, if our prayers for unreached people are answered, would we know?

Thirdly, for many of us, and most of the people with whom we go to church, knowing what to pray for can be a challenge. We may want to pray for the lost of Central Asia, but if we don’t know people there, it can be tough to move beyond, “God bless Central Asia. Oh, and the missionaries who live there.” While I believe God loves to hear that prayer, something inside us says there may be better prayers to be prayed. But how can you know what to ask? How can you join God in his concern for Central Asia?

Tips

So, what can we do to pray more for the world ourselves, and to release those we influence for global intercession? Here are three ideas I use and advocate. At the end, I’ll invite your input.

Since I have a hard time praying for the world on my own, I like to have groups with whom I can pray. Caleb Project helps with this in that throughout our history we’ve taken time each workday morning to pray for global concerns. Closer to home, when we recently decided to host a home group for our church, we asked the leader to allow time for global prayer. He was willing, and subsequently we spend a bit of time most weeks learning about an unreached people group and praying for them. This helps keep me consistent. We also have occasional seasons of prayer for the unreached as a family. A couple of years ago we were living in a Pakistani neighborhood in northern England during Ramadan. We grabbed a copy of Youth With a Mission’s Ramadan prayer guide, 30 Days Muslim Prayer Focus, and each night at dinner (yeah, we weren’t fasting.), we prayed for that day’s selection. These collective times are helpful for me to keep my eyes lifted toward the world.

I think some people would pray for the world more faithfully if they remembered to do so more frequently. To facilitate that, I’ll sometimes tell a group about a particular unreached group then invite them to pray for them regularly over the coming month. To help them remember, I offer them a small glass bead to carry with their keys in a pocket or purse. I ask them to remember the people group whenever they bump into the bead. I only ask them to carry it for a month, but invite them to enlist others in the bead brigade.

Finally, one way to help people pray for the world is to help them understand it better – to provide fresh information that will bring the often very distant unreached world close to hand. Three possibilities to this end:

1. Prayer updates from workers. I’m often encouraged to pray for the world by the several electronic updates I receive from close friends in North Africa, the Middle East, and India. In the right context, such updates would be good to pass on to potential pray-ers.

2. My dad, once captured by God’s passion for the world, began to subscribe to the Global Prayer Digest. He’s now been praying through it for over a decade. In fact, each month he gets several copies which he puts in a display at church. He’s not just a user. He’s a dealer! He’s a mobilizer.

3. In addition to these resources, I’ve often used materials from my own organization, Caleb Project. We have a number of great people group prayer guides and videos. They help people know how to pray, and inspire them with the beauty of the people group portrayed.

Well, there are my thoughts on the subject. Care to comment? I’d love to hear why you think people have a hard time praying for the world and what you do to facilitate such prayer. Please zip off an e-mail to me with your thoughts. I’ll pull them together and present them in the next installment of Practical Mobilization.

Questions? Problems? Submissions? Contact publisher/managing editor Marti Smith.

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