September 1, 1999

Advice given on praying for nations
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___GLORIETA, N.M.--Prayer reaches where missionaries can't, Minette Drumwright told participants in the Glorieta Prayer Conference.
___Drumwright, who now lives in Fort Worth, is a retired director of prayer strategy for the Southern Baptist International Mission Board.
___Praying for the nations is the ultimate expression of prayer, she said. "The biblical basis for praying for the nations is the Bible--all of it. It runs throughout the Bible."
___Praying for the nations also reflects God's desire, she added, explaining that seeking God's desire should be a major focus of Christian prayer.
___"Kingdom praying is praying for the lost of all the nations, praying that people of all the world will have opportunity to come into God's kingdom," she said.
___Two-thirds of the world's population is non-Christian, Drumwright reported.
___And since the world population surpassed 6 billion this summer, that means 4 billion of the world's people are not Christians, she explained.
___"That 4 billion begins in your neighborhood and mine and in some of our homes," she added. But it also stretches to remote parts of the world where no missionaries can go.
___Perhaps half of the non-Christians in the world today live in areas with restricted access to the gospel, Drumwright explained. These 2 billion people "have no missionaries, no pastors, no Bibles."
___"There are so many people in so many nations who need our prayers," she asserted. "What can we do? Throw up our hands? Well, yes."
___Like Moses, modern Christians should throw up their hands in prayer to God on behalf of the world's people who need to know God, Drumwright said.
___She listed seven points Christians should understand about praying for the nations:
___ Prayer begins with God. "Prayer is his idea," she said. "Prayer is our response to God's initiative. ... Everything we say about prayer needs to begin with God's concern that all the people of the nations be saved."
___ Prayer is powerful and effective. It's not that God is powerless without the prayers of Christians, but "he has made a holy decision to give us this awesome role of partnership with him," she said.
___ The reach of prayer is absolutely total. "Prayer can reach into every home in your neighborhood and all 237 nations of the world. It goes places you can never go."
___ Prayer is something every believer can do with great impact. "Everyone cannot go personally, ... everyone cannot financially have an impact. Yet every believer can intercede and make a difference in the nations of the world."
___ Prayer takes us into the realm of spiritual warfare. "Kingdom praying is the only strategy that breaks the power of darkness," she said. "As we lift God's concerns to him, that breaks Satan's power."
___ Prayer calls forth laborers to go to the nations. Christians ought to pray that more believers will respond to God's call as missionaries, Drumwright said. "I'm pretty sure God is calling more than are responding."
___ Prayer is the most crucial work Christians can do. "It is work," she said. "Praying for the nations requires our attention, our focus."

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