As I raised our family and our first young ones were still too young to read, I would read aloud missionary stories. It was so exciting to read the amazing things God did through these heroes of faith! Around our kitchen table, a longing to experience those same things grew, but I never imagined it could happen to me. Slowly God led Tom and I to take small steps of faith. Soon we had an opportunity to teach English in China and were able to see God begin to do some of those very things in our lives.
I found out that, 2,000 years after Jesus came, more than 6,000 people groups still have never heard His Name EVEN ONCE! Jesus’ told His followers to make disciples of all ‘nations’ or ‘ethnê’—not geo-political nations such as China or Iraq but rather people groups such as the Han Chinese or the Persians. One in four people lack an indigenous community of believing Christians with adequate numbers and resources to evangelize their group. What difference could we make in this massive challenge, I prayed?
As our family served, day by day I would spend time with the Lord in His Word and prayer at the kitchen table, systematically praying through the unreached peoples. I guess my daughter, Joy, wondered what on earth I did every morning as she asked, “So what are you praying for?” “The world,” I said simply, never imagining what God might do with those prayers.
Later that year, Tom and I were invited to help launch Ethnê ( www.ethne.net ), a multi-organizational and multi-denominational global network serving these peoples without access to the gospel. Much of the work originated praying around our kitchen table: God would give connections with others or ideas how to serve.
Until this point, laborers usually focused on one people group, city or area at a time; but in 2009 a couple of us asked the question, “Would it be possible to ignite such movements in whole families of related people groups?” The Ephesus Vision grew from this simple question, aiming to catalyze movements to Christ among the most neglected families of people groups such that the resultant movements cascade throughout each family. We now serve these emerging movements as part of the Ethnê Global Ephesus Team right from our kitchen table!
Global Prayer Digest has been partnering with the Ethnê movement’s prayer initiative since 2006. As the prayer working group spread the word globally, and more field teams heard and synchronized their efforts, more breakthroughs emerged, closely timed to the month of prayer. Here’s just one of many recent examples: A field worker knew their megacity was listed for prayer at that particular time so they decided to send out extra short term teams, believing God for extraordinary results. One team went to a hospital, entered and prayed; the Muslim patient saw an open vision of Jesus and was completely healed. He immediately wanted to follow Jesus. The second hospital room the team entered, as they prayed for the Muslim patient, he too saw an open vision of Jesus, felt fire all over his body, was healed and also became a follower of Jesus. Praise the Lord for believing in the power of prayer and being ready to share good news.
Dr. Eric Alexander said in his message at Urbana 1984: “The frontline of world evangelization is the word of God and prayer.” Every believer, wherever we are, can help by praying along with Global Prayer Digest as a regular part of your daily devotion from your own kitchen table. Visit www.globalprayerdigest.org and subscribe to the printed digests, text emails, or visit their website daily. Then, recruit two or three others to agree with you in prayer and do the same thing.
Every prayer releases the hand of God to move in the lives of those who still need to hear and to follow Jesus. Time is short and the hour is urgent. Won’t you join us in changing the world one prayer at a time from your kitchen table?
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