World Wide Day of Prayer

Today Campus Crusade for Christ staff from around the world gathered to pray during our annual World Wide Day of Prayer (WWDOP). This is my 5th WWDOP (at least!). It’s really cool to think that as the sun is rising and setting all across Asia, Africa, Europe and across America, staff are focusing their hearts to pray and partner with God in making a significant difference in our ministries and world. I have to admit that I always approach WWDOP with a hesitant and reluctant attitude, knowing that it really is tough to persevere through a whole day of prayer! But I *always* come through the day blessed and glad that I get to do this for my job

Jeremy Story, founder and president of Campus Renewal Ministries, lead an encouraging devotional about prayer. He shared a finding from George Otis (who directed the documentary “Transformations”) that certain parts of the world were not seeing any major spiritual movements, particularly in the West. He attributed this to the observation that people in the West had a drastically different concept of time. In the West, our concept of time requires us to “move on” rather than stay with an activity until we see an event through. Instead of persevering in prayer and waiting on God, we move on to the next thing on our agenda. Jeremy Story shared about a prayer center he visited somewhere overseas where he had to fill in a sign-in sheet with his name and a time period of how long he planned to stay there. He was about to jot down 30 minutes next to his name, thinking that he would stroll through the gardens and check out the place as he prayed. But he noticed that others who signed-in put down times like, “1 week,” “3 months,” “a year.”

I feel torn about this, because while it IS true that we often keep a tight timetable on prayer, it doesn’t seem practical or even healthy to have “all-night prayer retreats” (interestingly enough, I have heard this done often in Asia). Then again, God doesn’t seem to prioritize practicality.

In any case, I definitely feel convicted that I need to pray more! As Dr. J. Edwin Orr said: “When God is about to do something He sets His people to pray.” Who wants to join me in seeing God DO SOMETHING in a world today?