Prayer for the Nation(s)

Last Thursday was the National Day of Prayer. I (Aimee) had to work, so I wasn’t able to attend any of the lunch time events that were happening around in different cities (Oh yeah! It’s a whole big thing. Google it and you’ll see that events happen all over the place). Instead, in my small group that meets Thursday nights, we spent time in prayer. And then, our pastor talked to us about leading prayer in church that coming Sunday.

So, Sunday morning, I and five other young adults stood up one at a time and led our church in prayer. We started with our community, then grew to include Southern California. Then we prayed for each of the continents. 

It was powerful. There is so much need all over the world, we had so much to share about each of our regions, and I’m sure that we each could have shared more than we did (personally, I probably only shared about half of all of the information that I gathered). 

Spiritual warfare is happening everywhere. Darkness is fighting for control everywhere. And we can sit by and do nothing, pretend nothing is wrong, and go about our lives as if everything is exactly the way it’s supposed to be. OR, we can acknowledge that this world is not the way that it’s supposed to be, we can allow our hearts to break for the suffering in the world, and we can lift them up in prayer.

Have you ever tried praying for strangers? I promise that it’s only weird at first. Like with everything else, and just like with prayer in general, it gets easier with time. 

I want to encourage you to pray for the nations. Start with your own community and work your way out. City, to state, to country, to continent … and on and on. You don’t even have to know the details of what’s going on to be able to pray. You already know that there’s suffering, brokenness, hunger, disease, crime, etc. Pray for comfort. Pray for hope. Pray that God would lift up His followers to go out to the needy, whether their across the world, across the country, or across the street. 

We’re all called to missions. Did you know that? I learned that about 10 years ago. We aren’t all called to leave our homes and go out overseas. But we are all called to reach out to the broken people of this world who don’t know Jesus. That’s what missions work is. And that can be in your own hometown. And it can begin with prayer (in fact, prayer should be all over!).

I would also encourage you to do some research to open your eyes to what’s going on in the world around you. Operation World is a good place to start (www.operationworld.org).

Then … pray! And look at what God will do!