Asking God for the Nations
By Douglas LeRoy, Assistant Director of Church of God World Missions
Unreached groups are distinct cultures of people who have not yet heard the gospel. Many of them have no Bible in their language and no known Christians.
Praying for Unreached People Groups
“Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession” (Psalm 2:8).
The Rif Berbers are an unreached people group consisting of 19 different tribes scattered throughout Algeria and Morocco. They are a tough and hardened people eking out an existence on the harsh, uninviting slopes of the Rif Mountains.
They are predominantly Muslim; however, their religious practices are based on traditions rather than on the Qur’an. For a century they had no Christian witness living among them.
A Church’s Prayers
In the 1980s the Christian Life Center in Yakima, Washington, committed to pray for an unreached people group, and they chose the Rif Berbers. For five years they prayed for God to open the door to this people group.
In 1986 God called a medical doctor in Argentina to go to Spain and to spearhead a medical missions program to reach North Africa for Christ. The YWEA project provided funds to purchase a hostel to be used by the local church and to house a medical clinic to reach Arabs.
When the church in Yakima heard of this project, they sent a Men and Women of Action team of workers to help in the renovation of the building. When the medical clinic opened, who do you think was the first patient? A girl from the Berber-Rif tribe! The doctor treated her medically and through it led her and her mother to Jesus Christ.
You, Too Can Join!
You can join the global prayer warriors who pray for unreached people groups. Unreached groups are distinct cultures of people who have not yet heard the gospel. Many of them have no Bible in their language and no known Christians.
“Operation World,” available through Pathway Press or your local Christian bookstore, offers a guide in praying for the nations of the world. It identifies more than 3,000 unreached people groups. Most of them appear within the 10/40 Window, the nations between 10 degrees and 40 degrees above the equator. Why not adopt one of these people groups for your prayer focus?
You can visit the Joshua Project (www.joshuaproject.net). This site provides a country index and hundreds of profiles of unreached people groups. Ask God to redeem people and raise up a viable church in the unreached groups. Everybody should have a right to hear the gospel.
How to Pray:
*Select and identify an unreached people group
* Ask God to reveal Himself
* Ask the Holy Spirit to remove blindness to the gospel
* Ask the Lord to raise up believers
* Ask God to break all barriers that hinder the light of the gospel from shining through
* Ask that the Lord of the harvest will send out workers into His harvest field.
