If I ever tell you I am praying enough, I’m lying. There will never be enough to be found while I’m still on this planet. Yet, there is one place where my prayer life has always faltered more than anywhere else: praying for the nations.
But in the last few weeks, God has gently been working on my heart with a singular prompt: Let horror lead to prayer.
There is no better example of this working in reality than the crisis in Afghanistan. We have become so desensitized to horror that it is extremely easy to read a headline, shake our head in dismay…and then keep scrolling. And I was ready to tweet my political take about this and keep going, but God stopped me.
He prompted me to pray. To pray through what I was seeing on my screens. To read through the stories of struggling Afghans, especially the underground Church in that nation, and PRAY.
I’m not writing to you as an expert on prayer. I’m writing to you as someone who is decidedly NOT but who had a breakthrough lesson from God that she wants to share.
We often make prayer too complex. I think one of the reasons I struggle to pray for the nations is that the concept is so BIG and often seems vague. How can I pray for what I don’t know to pray for?
But praying for specific needs I’m seeing play out in practically real-time? That I can do. That I can put into words when the world altogether seems to be too big for me to make a dent in prayer.
If praying for the nations is as hard for you as it is for me, think smaller. Pray for Christians across the world, that the Gospel would advance. Then, stop when you’re horrified by a current event and pray for that. It’s a learned habit, and I’m not completely there yet, but by God’s grace I even have the chance to advocate for others, and by His grace, I’ll grow in this discipline.
KELVEY OLIVIA VANDER HART 