If you’re anything like me, your prayers tend to be fairly simple—and mostly local. Prayers for a family member, a fellow church member, a job, a class, a financial need.
Those are all worth praying about, for sure. No need or concern is too small to take to our Father, who knows even the number of hairs on your head (see Matthew 10:30).
Similarly, nothing is too big to take to God in prayer. After all, Jesus told his earliest followers, “Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ it will happen” (Matthew 21:21, ESV).
Nonetheless, it is hard to pray knowledgeably and meaningfully about places, things and people that are distant and unfamiliar to us. You may pray for a child you sponsor or a missionary you support overseas, but it seems much more difficult to pray, say, for a whole nation and its people.
Believe it or not, however, with the help of your computer or smartphone, you can pray your way around the world, every day, in just a few minutes each day, thanks to a ministry called, “Operation World,” which invites you to “pray through the nations.”
The Operation World website offers short “prayercast” videos for dozens of nations around the world. Each video allows you to pray with a narrator while watching video of the nation and people for which you are praying. Each videos is approximately three minutes long and helps you to pray with insight for specific needs in each place.
For example, here is the “prayercast” video for China:
Here is another prayercast, this one for Tanzania:
By playing and praying one of these videos each day, you can pray your way from Afghanistan to Yemen, from Armenia to Vietnam. You can even learn more about each country by reading the “country profile” offered on the website (such as this profile of Vietnam).
After just a few days of praying your way around the world, you will probably find your vision lifted, your praying changed and your heart softened for those in need far beyond your daily life.
