I realize that at first this may sound general, vague, ambiguous, even a bit out of reach. You may be thinking, Can I as an individual really pray specifically and effectively for the entire world? Let me show you what I mean and why it’s so important.
In a world where more than 4.5 billion people are without Christ and more than a billion are on the edge of starvation, we have to begin somewhere. So where? Jesus answers that question for us. In Matthew 9 we see him surrounded by the multitudes and moved with compassion because they were “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” So he turned to his disciples and said, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”1
Do these words surprise you? They do me… for two reasons. First, in light of all the sick, poor, and needy around Jesus, I would have expected him to immediately start giving marching orders to his disciples. “Peter, you go to that person. John, you care for that guy. Andrew, you help her over there.” But that’s not what he said. Yes, as we see in Matthew 10, he gave them the instructions that we looked at in the last chapter. But before he told them to do anything else, Jesus told them to pray.
What is even more surprising, though, is what Jesus told them to pray for. I would have expected Jesus to say, “You guys see the need. The harvest is plentiful. So pray for these people who are harassed and helpless. Pray for them.” But that isn’t what he said. Jesus didn’t say to pray for those who were lost. Instead he told the disciples to pray for the church.
Why do you think Jesus would look at the crowds around him, with all their deep needs, and then turn to his disciples and tell them to pray for themselves? The answer is humbling. When Jesus looked at the harassed and helpless multitudes, apparently his concern was not that the lost would not come to the Father. Instead his concern was that his followers would not go to the lost.
Now think about it. What happens when you and I take these words from Jesus and put them in a world where more than a billion people have still not heard the gospel? A fundamental reality snaps into focus: we are not praying. This is the only possible explanation for how there can be such great need yet so few workers. The multitudes are waiting to hear, and our most urgent need is to pray for the Lord of the harvest to send out Christians into the harvest field.
This is the step that you and I are most likely to overlook and yet the one that is most dangerous for us to ignore. In the gospel we have seen the depth of our inadequacy and the extent of our inability to accomplish anything of eternal value apart from the power of God. We are a planning, strategizing, implementing people, yet radical obedience to Christ requires that we be a praying people.
Not long ago a friend of mine spent a couple of weeks in South Korea, a country that has seen explosive Christian growth in recent years. Over the last century, some estimate, almost half the population in that country has come to Christ. Church leaders there have been intentional about pointing to the power of God in prayer as the reason they have seen such widespread spiritual awakening.
My friend was staying in a hotel, and one morning around four o’clock, he was awakened by a loud noise outside. He staggered over to the window and pulled back the curtains to see a stadium filled with people. He wondered, What kind of sports do Koreans play at four in the morning? Frustrated, he crawled back into bed and tried to sleep through the noise coming from the stadium crowd across the street.
Later that morning he went down to the hotel lobby and asked the manager what kind of sporting event had been going on in the stadium. The hotel manager responded, “Oh, sir, that was not a sporting event. That was the church gathered for prayer.”
You and I live in a culture where we gather in stadiums and around televisions for hours at a time to watch guys run around a field with a pigskin ball in their hands as they try to cross a white line. We express enthusiasm, emotion, and affection for football and other sports, and it begs the question, what would happen in our culture if the church prayed with such passion? What would happen if Jesus dominated our affections more than the superficial trivialities that garner our attention? What would happen if we spent hours before God praying on behalf of the church, the lost, and the poor around the world?
Of course, your Radical Experiment does not have to start in a stadium. It can start in your living room or prayer closet. Anyplace can be the place you begin to connect the practice of prayer with the purpose of God in the world.
But back to my question: can you and I as individuals really pray specifically for the whole world? The answer is yes.
Years ago I was introduced to Operation World, an invaluable book by Patrick Johnstone that has revolutionized my prayer life more than any other book outside of the Bible. This book contains detailed information on every nation in the world, including statistics on the religious makeup of every country, updates on gospel work in every country, and prayer requests for every country. It also includes a prayer guide that you can follow, and over the course of a year, you will pray specifically and intentionally for every nation in the world. The book has a corresponding children’s version for use in families, and all the information in the book is available free online (www.operationworld.org).
Let me introduce you to Ben and Jennifer, two of the many parents in our church who use this resource to lead their families to pray boldly for the purposes of God to be accomplished in the world. They gather every evening with their two children, ages four and two, to pray specifically for different countries. Night after night their lives are being exposed to the present work of God in the world, and their hearts are being formed by the passionate desire of God for the nations. In Jennifer’s words, “God is opening our eyes to the specific needs of peoples around the world. It is changing our family every day and preparing us for our part in his mission.”
Prayer is not flashy and probably doesn’t even seem radical, but consider church history. Just a century ago the prayers of one man, Evan Roberts (1878–1951), precipitated a revival in Wales in which an estimated hundred thousand people came to faith in Christ in a matter of months. The effect reached far beyond Wales, though. A global movement began among the people of God, and ordinary Christians began scattering to the nations. In the years that followed, the Christian population in Indonesia tripled. In India, the Christian population grew sixteen times faster than the Hindu population. All around the world the nations witnessed the outpouring of God’s Spirit.
Prayer can lead to effects far beyond what we can imagine. What can your prayer do, as it is empowered by God? Just imagine.
So the first facet of the Radical Experiment is to pray for the entire world in one year. I’m daring you to intentionally, specifically, audaciously pray for God’s purpose to be accomplished around the world.