Today is Day 2 of the Week of Prayer for International Missions. The day’s focus is: Missionaries welcome efforts to push back darkness. Watch this short video from IMB.org
Two things greatly impacted me from this video: When Mike said that in order to find one Christian in northern Africa, he’d have to meet over 33,000 people. The second thing, the visual he shares of looking out over this huge cemetery and stating the realization that only 1% of those buried there made it to Heaven. Only 1%! It occurred to me there are millions of cemeteries all over the world where the percentage is even lower than that; many where the percentage is zero.
The Pandemic’s Impact on Missions
Our church was just starting to figure out where we could fit into missions when the pandemic hit. In a lot of ways, it’s thrown us back to the drawing board. Key people from our missions team have passed away, drifted away, or moved away; our missions partners have been relocated, trips have been postponed indefinitely.
Yet, in other respects, we’ve been able to see God’s sovereignty in spreading the gospel in new and innovative ways because of the pandemic. I encourage you to download the IMB.org/pray app to read stories from the field (and prayer requests). I’m in awe of God’s hand in the daily lives of believers and unbelievers alike!
Prayer Requests:
- Pray that God will call out more churches to join the work to reach NAME peoples with the gospel.
- Pray for more long-term missionaries in the fields among the unreached.
- Pray that the light of Christ would break the barriers that keep many from hearing the gospel.
Pushing back the darkness:
And I will lead the blind in a way that they do not know, in paths that they have not known I will guide them. I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground. These are the things I do, and I do not forsake them.
Isaiah 42:16
