Ramadan 2024: Pray 4 Movement

Ramadan is just around the corner, and if you're interested in interceding for Muslims, you can sign up at https://pray4movement.org/ramadan-2024

As a reminder, you might read “Why We Must Pray for Muslims Around the World” by David Garrison.

Pray4Movement and BibleProject

Ramadan begins March 22 and ends with Eid al-Fitr on April 21. You can sign up to pray for a Muslim city, country, or people group here: https://pray4movement.org/ramadan-2023/

PrayerCast also has excellent resources: https://www.prayercast.com/love-muslims-landing.html

Finally, if you haven’t heard of the BibleProject, you are definitely missing out. Much of the world operates from a “digitoral” (digital + oral) learning preference now (after the Gutenberg Parenthesis), and the resources they are creating capture this phenomenon in theologically robust and faithful ways. The Tree of Life (4:51) and the Visual Commentary on Genesis 1 (7:42) are two of my favorite videos.

I also like their videos on the book of Acts. How many times can you hear them say “movement” in the video on Acts 8-12 (6:00)? :-)

Prayer and Movements among Muslims

This is repost from The Exchange with Ed Stetzer. Written by David Garrison: “Why We Must Pray for Muslims Around the World.” https://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2021/april/why-we-must-pray.html

---

I recently had the privilege of delivering the sermon at my local church. I took the opportunity to share from Acts 17:26-27,

“From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.”

As the author of a recent global survey revealing unprecedented turnings of thousands of Muslims to faith in Jesus Christ, I used the opportunity to point out that it is God who determines the times and boundaries of the world’s peoples. I shared with the congregation that it is no accident that God has allowed more than 3 million Muslims to find their new homes here in the United States.

The reason for this relocation, I said, was so that “perhaps Muslim immigrants in America might reach out for him and find him.” For this divine appointment to be realized, though, requires us to acknowledge that God has also placed us here in proximity to more than 3 million Muslims, so that we would share with them the life-changing message of Jesus Christ.

During the invitation, I invited the congregation to pray for Muslims, and for themselves, that God would use us to bring them to saving faith in Jesus Christ.

One man, shoulders slumped, walked down the aisle to the altar where I was standing. As he took my hand, it was evident to me that he was weeping. “I lost my son in Afghanistan,” he said, “And I’ve hated those people ever since. But I know that I can’t follow Jesus and hate Muslims. I want to leave that hatred here today.”

Prayer changes things. It changes the hearts of Muslims even as it changes our own hearts. Let me tell you how I became acutely aware of the impact that prayer has in drawing Muslims to faith. In 2014, I published a book called A Wind in the House of Islam. It was the culmination of a three-year journey that took me 250,000 miles throughout the Muslim world where I was able to gather more than a thousand interviews from Muslims who had come to faith in Jesus Christ and were each a part of a work of God within their community that had seen at least 1,000 baptisms.

In my survey, I heard hundreds of stories of God’s miraculous life-changing intervention into the lives of these formerly devout Muslims that prompted them to not only say yes to Jesus, but to follow him in baptism, an act that could garner them capital punishment. The truth be told, not one of these individuals that I interviewed told me that it was because some Christian on the other side of the globe was praying for them that they turned to faith in Jesus.

However, during the writing of my book, I would often share with my friend, Paul Filidis, the publisher of the Muslim World Prayer Guide the stories I had heard from Imams, Mullahs, and common Muslim men and women who had found Jesus as their Lord and Savior. One day, Paul asked me a simple question, “David, when did these movements begin?”

I knew the answer because my research had included a historic retrospective to identify every time that history had recorded a movement of at least a thousand Muslim baptisms within a particular Islamic community. This historic review was not as difficult as it might seem. In fact, such movements were so rare that whenever they occurred, they made church history. Looking over my spreadsheets, I informed Paul that 84% of all the Muslim movements to Christ in history have occurred during our lifetime, in fact, during the past 30 years.

Paul’s eyes immediately filled with tears. “What’s the matter,” I asked. Paul sobbed, “It was 30 years ago, that we began the Muslim World Prayer Guide.” That’s why I know that prayer makes a difference. Prayer is changing the hearts of Muslims.

This is why I urge Christians to pray for Muslims, for their salvation, for their blessing in Jesus Christ. Sadly, many Muslim immigrants to America today see us, evangelical Christians, as their greatest opponents in America. I know that this opposition within the Christian community grows out of fear, and only perfect love can cast out that fear.

None of us can lay claim to the perfect love that casts out all fear (1 John 4:18), no one except for Christ himself. But when we pray, we acquire the heart of God, a heart that was willing to die for us, all of us (including Muslims).

This year, during the month of Ramadan, April 13 - May 12, a growing multitude of Christians all around the world will join together to pray for Muslims, that God will reveal to them his Son, Jesus Christ.

If you would like to join us in that prayer for Muslims, you need to be prepared for God to change your heart from fear, hatred, or indifference, to love for a people for whom Christ gave his life.

See you at the altar.

David Garrison, PhD, is the executive director of Global Gates (globalgates.info) and the author of A Wind in the House of Islam. To help you in your journey of engagement with God’s heart for Muslims, you can obtain a free copy of the Muslim World Prayer Guide, 30 Days of Prayer at www.globalgates.info/30Days.

Prayercast | Ishmael (Music Video)

This video inspires me to pray for Muslims. See www.prayercast.com for videos on many countries and topics.

Prayer Calendars for the Unengaged

From a friend:

We are excited to share that you can now download prayer calendars for the unengaged from Joshua Project on PDF at http://www.joshuaproject.net/prayer-resources.php . We hope you will take advantage of this wonderful resource and share it with those in your communities.

Prayer: the Work of Missions

From the famous sermon by John Piper in 1988, Prayer: the Work of Missions:

Not only has God made the accomplishment of his global purposes of salvation hang on the preaching of the Word; he has also made the success of the preaching of the Word hang on prayer. God's goal to be glorified in a world full of white-hot worshippers from every people and tongue and tribe and nation will not succeed without the powerful proclamation of the gospel by people like you and me. And that gospel will not be proclaimed in power to all the nations without the persevering, earnest, global, faith-filled prayers of God's people. This is the awesome place of prayer in the purposes of God for the world. They won't happen without prayer.

Listen to the whole thing.

I Have A Dream!

This adaptation of MLK's famous "I Have A Dream" speech was written by my friend Tim in 2006.  I hope your reaction is similar to mine when I first read it; I was impressed, I wept over it, I prayed about it, then I went out and tried to do something about it. 

Pray on 9/11 Video Online

Download it here.  I give it 3 out of 5 stars.  There were a couple aspects I didn’t like.  It was definitely something only an American church could show.  Loritts was calling for a revival in America.  And it appeared at times to mix Biblical faith with Americanism.  For instance, Rankin says,

“…Our international relations are strained, we find ourselves embattled with a global terrorist enemy that has created fear and paranoia.  What a difference it would make in the future if we moved from fear to faith, believing that God’s love could sweep over the Muslim world through our prayers and witness.”

I think unclear language like this only perpetuates the syncretistic confusion between American politics and American Christianity.  But Richardson and Piper were on the right track on in giving a prophetic call to the church to sacrifice that Muslims may come into the Kingdom.

I would love to hear your reactions to the video.  And especially if your church watches it on Sunday morning 9/11.

9/11 Prayer Initiative

Here is something you might consider taking part in on Sunday, September 11. The ten year anniversary of 9/11 will be all over the news, so it might be good to bring a biblical perspective on it during church that day.

www.prayon911.com:

Allow us to share a five minute presentation during your Sunday morning service on 9/11/11.Ten years ago our nation was attacked by Muslim terrorists. Many agree that event forever changed the world. Our international relations are strained; our battle against an elusive global terrorist enemy has created fear and paranoia. What a difference it would make in the future if we moved from fear to faith, believing God's love can sweep over the Muslim world through our prayers and witness.

The 5 minute video will be available for download on 9/1/11.

Ramadan Begins - 30 Days of Prayer for Muslims

Ramadan begins today, August 1.  Might I encourage some of you to fast for all or part of the month, asking the Lord to move mightily?

Learn all you need to know about praying for Muslims during Ramadan:
www.30-days.net 
www.30daysprayer.com

Praying for Iranian Christians

It's actually a relatively new term.  To say "Iranian" and "Christians" together when referring to the ethnic Persian majority of that nation, and not to the ancient Armenian Christian minority, is really something amazing.  The fact is, tens of thousands of Iranians inside Iran are now professing to follow Jesus, and perhaps hundreds of thousands outside of Iran.  Because of this, we can now begin to speak of a new expression of Christianity arising that is authentically Persian (for more on this, have a look at Abu Daoud's article on Iranian Christianity).  However, as expected, there is a major backlash coming from the Islamic government in Iran.  The following video will help you get an idea of how to pray for our Iranian brothers and sisters who are suffering for their faith in Christ.  We need to pray particularly for Yousef Nadarkhani, a pastor with a wife and 2 young children who is facing the death penalty if he does not recant, as well as for Farshid Fathi, who has been in prison since December of 2010.   Our prayers for Yousef are very urgent, as his case, which is filled with intentional ambiguity on the part of the Iranian Islamic courts, is at a critical phase where he could be killed or released any day now.  Let us pray for him to have the peace of God to hold on to his faith in the face of hanging.

Related Posts:
Three Reasons the Church in Iran is Growing
Pray for Farshid and our Iranian Brothers and Sisters

Hiebert on why it’s not always God’s will to heal

In the very influential article by Paul Hiebert “The Flaw of the Excluded Middle,” Hiebert uses a case study of an Indian pastor named Yellayya in Muchintala whose village had an epidemic of smallpox.  The village elders decided a water buffalo should be sacrificed to appease the angry Goddess of Smallpox.  A crisis developed when the Christians in the village refused to chip in for the cost of this sacrifice and when a Christian girl became sick herself.  Hiebert reflects on his prayers for healing for this little girl:

Church and mission must guard against Christianity itself becoming a new form of magic. Magic is based on a mechanistic view — a formula approach to reality that allows humans to control their own destiny. Worship, on the other hand, is rooted in a relational view of life. Worshipers place themselves in the power and mercy of a greater being.

The difference is not one of form, but of attitude. What begins as a prayer of request may turn into a formula or chant to force God to do one's will by saying or doing the right thing. In religion, we want the will of God for we trust in his omniscience. In magic we seek our own wills, confident that we know what is best for ourselves.

The line dividing them is a subtle one as I learned in the case of Muchintala. A week after our prayer meeting, Yellayya returned to say that the child had died. I felt thoroughly defeated. Who was I to be a missionary if I could not pray for healing and receive a positive answer? A few weeks later Yellayya returned with a sense of triumph. "How can you be so happy after the child died?" I asked.

"The village would have acknowledged the power of our God had he healed the child," Yellayya said, "but they knew in the end she would have to die. When they saw in the funeral our hope of resurrection and reunion in heaven, they saw an even greater victory, over death itself, and they have begun to ask about the Christian way."

In a new way I began to realize that true answers to prayer are those that bring the greatest glory to God, not those that satisfy my immediate desires. It is all too easy to make Christianity a new magic in which we as gods can make God do our bidding.

4 Days of Incredible Prayer – Hajj 2010

 

Praying Through the Arabian Peninsula has put together this video to mobilize prayer for the world of Islam and Muslims going on Hajj during Nov 14-17, 2010.  Download the 4 day prayer guide here.

The Vanguard of all Mission Activity

From Church Planting, Prayer and the Sovereignty of God, by Matt Green:

Our response to the plight of the unreached reveals the depth of our view of God. Do we truly believe it is the mission of God to reconcile the nations to himself? And, as counterintuitive as it may seem, do we believe that our proclamation of the gospel is the means that he has ordained to accomplish this? The Indonesian church planters I met are deeply aware of this truth—and it is what gives them faith when their efforts seem frail in the face of spiritual opposition.

It is what drives them to prayer—the vanguard of all mission activity. As S.D. Gordon writes:

We can do no thing of real power until we have done the prayer thing. Here is a man by my side. I can talk to him. I can bring my personality to bear upon him, that I may win him. But before I can influence his will a jot for God, I must first have won the victory in the secret place. Intercession is winning the victory over the chief, and service is taking the field after the chief is driven off. Such service is limited by the limitation of personality in one place. . . . Prayer puts man into direct dynamic touch with a planet.

Conquering Prayerlessness

Have you ever been prayerless?  I sure have.  Here is a nice, brief article (1 page PDF) by Andrew Murray called Conquering Prayerlessness.  Here is a quote that jumped out at me:

If the question is put: “Is a change possible?”  Our sighing heart says: “Alas, for me it is entirely impossible!”  Do you know why that reply comes? It is simply because you have received the call to prayer as the voice of Moses and as a command of the law.  Moses and his law have never yet given any one the power to obey…

EVENT: 30 Days of Prayer for the Muslim World

From Missions Catalyst:

It’s coming up again! Join the largest ongoing international call to Christians to pray for the Muslim world. Millions of Christians worldwide participate in this strategic prayer focus annually. The dates this year are August 11 to September 9. Is there someone new you can invite to participate this year?

In the US, 30 Days prayer booklets are available for US$3.00 from WorldChristian.com or call 800.936.6397. Bulk discounts and a new Just-for-Kids version are also available. Check the Pray4Them website for more resources, as well as the main, international 30 Days website, where you can access blog, email and Twitter editions of the material as well.

>> Editor’s Note: Although we love to see people praying together through these materials, we’ve noticed many mission teams, churches and groups writing up their own prayer points and using the season to mobilize friends and partners to lift up their specific ministries serving Muslims. Any idea you can use? Go for it. Everybody needs more prayer.

See also http://www.30daysprayer.com/muslim/