How to pray for Missions: The power of Focus

The difference between the lightbulb that sheds diffused light so that you can see your surroundings, and a laser beam that will cut through metal is Focus.  There is certainly a use for both.  In fact the light bulb will be more necessary on a daily basis for most people.  But when you have to cut through resistant things, Focus becomes necessary.

The same is true in prayer.  We are all called to pray.  In the Lord's Prayer Pattern that we covered early in this series, Jesus taught us a basic method of prayer that will work in our daily lives and the lives of our families.  But as we focus specifically on praying for missions, we become aware that there are places and people groups that are hidden from the gospel behind steel walls of demonic resistance.  There is a reason that 59 percent of all human beings TODAY live in Unreached People Groups!   That's right...59 percent, well over half of all living people  TODAY as I write this, live as part of Unreached People Groups.  An Unreached People Group is a tribe or ethnolinguistic grouping of humanity that is less than 2 percent responsive to the Gospel.

In many cases, UPGs have no access to the Gospel whatsoever.  Focused, Laser beam Prayer is needed.  There is no excuse for the body of Christ to ignore these facts and blithely go about our lives as though all is well.

But the problem that many people have is that they don't know how to focus....because they don't know any details about who these peoples are or how to pray for them.  So let me give you some advice on how to become a part of a Focused Prayer Team aimed at the UPGs in our world.

1.  Become a part of the Research Team.  Connect with us at WME and find out how you can begin to research Unreached People Groups that WME is focusing on in the western Hemisphere.  Currently we are trying to get basic information about 362 of the world's UPGs to open the door to Disciple Making and Church Planting outreach through our INSTAR project.
To learn more about who these unreached people groups are worldwide, check out the website:
www.peoplegroups.org
To become a part of the WME Volunteer Research Team, email me at :  dparish9@cs.com

2.  Focus on Specific Needs:  Your research will lead you to a deeper understanding of the needs of your specific people group.  Focus your prayers on those needs.

3.  Practice Luke 10 Prayer for them.  The Previous Blog article was about how to do this.

4.  Persist.  Be faithful to pray for your people group every day!

5.  If possible, take a short term trip to the region to engage in onsite prayer.

6.  Connect with, financially support and pray for the workers, missionaries, and projects deployed to the specific group for which you are focused.


WME has a goal that everyone of the 362 Western Hemisphere UPGs would have a focused prayer team aimed at them with the 6 commitments listed above.

Next week, I will finish this series of blogs with one final thought!

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