God’s people are awakened when they have a strong sense of their need for God and His working in this world. When awakened, prayers move beyond simple personal requests, such as “God give us this” and “God bless that.” We are moved to pray more earnestly to a God whom we want to know more deeply. An awakening moves us also to intercession: prayer for the lost, prayer for the nations, and prayer for God’s glory to be seen as more and more people come to saving faith in Jesus.
When God’s people pray that God would send out laborers into His harvest, many are sent. When there is a fresh awakening, there is no shortage of workers and no lack of funds. The prayer famine that plagues so many churches today will disappear, and God will work in ways that many believers today have heard of but have never seen.
Maybe God has already begun to stir you to pursue His glory. You want to pray for missions. One good time-tested way to pray regularly for the harvest and laborers is to pray for individual missionaries. Missionary prayer letters are the primary way many people intercede for missionaries and their national co-laborers. Our GFA family of missionaries has been greatly blessed to have faithful believers pray for them through this means.
Here are a few other ways to pray for the nations:
Pray over a world map.
- Pray for countries in a region such as East Africa or Central Asia, or for an entire continent. If you are aware of missionaries and ministries serving in those places, you can pray for all of them on a given day. The next time choose another region.
- Pray for individual countries. Ask God to raise up laborers for His harvest in a specific place, both from within and outside of the nation. Focus on prayer for the national churches, especially the pastors. Pray for the gospel workers you know who are there. Choose one or more countries to pray for each time you pray.
Pray for people groups.
- Focus prayer on people groups based on their languages,[1] such as Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, or English.
- Focus prayer on religious blocks,[2] peoples, or lands dominated by one major religion, such as Hinduism, Catholicism, Buddhism, or even Secularism.
- Focus prayer on culture blocks, such as Folk Buddhist Southeast Asia, European Union countries, or North Africa’s Muslims.
Pray for global migrants.
- Lift up displaced refugees gathered in large numbers around the world. There are millions in the USA,[3] England, Brazil, Canada, and Germany, many of whom are among the world’s most unreached peoples. Pray for people, such as the Muslim Rohingya from Myanmar or in camps in Bangladesh.
- Lift up the millions of exchange students and migrant workers from religiously oppressed countries who now live in free countries. There are millions of Indians and Chinese in the USA and Canada.
- Lift up international outreaches and churches in major cities that preach Christ to the diaspora, often in restrictive access locations, such as Qatar, Shanghai, or Jakarta.
Pray for the most unreached peoples.
- Pray through lists of the most unreached countries in the world,[4] those with the least percentage of professed Christians and the most remote opportunity to hear the Gospel, such as the peoples of Tajikistan, Saudi Arabia, or Poland.
- Pray through lists of the most unreached individual people groups in the world,[5] such as the Japanese, the Shaik of Bangladesh, or the many vast unreached peoples of India.
Pray for the nations living among you.
- You probably already know some of the ethnic minorities that live in your area or region. If you live in an urban or metro area, you have large numbers of people from certain ethnic minorities around you. Lift them before the Lord, for He brought them to you! Here are a few examples: Atlanta has large numbers of various Asian communities; Detroit has many Muslim communities and a large Polish population; Spokane, Washington has a significant Russian minority; gas stations and hotels all over America are owned by Hindus from India.
- Lift up the immigrants with whom you have come into contact and are within your sphere of influence.
God will use earnest prayers such as these to bring people to Himself and to raise up laborers for His harvest! He commanded us to pray for laborers to be sent into His harvest (see Matthew 9:38). He commanded us to pray for all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:4). Such prayers reflect His love and His priorities, thus becoming prayers of worship which are pleasing to Him.
In the book, Gospel Meditations on the Reformation, Chris Anderson wrote, "Healthy Christianity is always stretching for the next village, the next region, the next horizon. Ambition for the gospel’s advance is in the very DNA of the Christian faith."[6] This ambition for the advance of the Gospel comes through prayer.
Later in the book, Anderson wrote, "Let the Gospel—not some lesser cause—be your priority and passion."[7] How do our prayers reflect our spiritual passion or lack thereof? Do our prayers reflect God’s priorities and His passion or some lesser cause?
If God’s passion is becoming our passion, we will pray for the nations.
[1] https://joshuaproject.net/languages/prs
[2] https://joshuaproject.net/religions/2
[3] https://www.jdpayne.org/2017/10/348-unengaged-unreached-people-groups-in-north-america/
[4] https://joshuaproject.net/progress/1
[5] https://finishingthetask.com/about-finishing-the-task/people-group-list/ , https://joshuaproject.net/unreached/1?s=Population&o=desc and https://www.imb.org/research/maps/
[6] Day 23 of Gospel Meditations on the Reformation
[7] Day 29 of Gospel Meditations on the Reformation