It’s #GivingTuesday, the day when we all plead with you to send us any spare pennies that remain after the joys of Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday. We’re changing it up a bit this year, though. We aren’t asking for your pennies, but rather something that probably feels even more scarce to you—your time. But before you click off to read something else, let me at least say—we’re just looking for you to commit an hour a month for the next 12 months—that’s all. You can breathe easier now.

As you probably noticed if you’ve been reading any of our blogs lately, we are on a big drive to mobilize prayer. We believe it’s part of how we partner together in seeing God’s kingdom built, it changes things, and, in short, it’s essential. We also believe that our ability to have an impact as an organization is directly tied to our ability to mobilize prayer. We’ve seen God do massively amazing things in answer to prayer, and we are believing for more miracles—like women being treated as valuable all around the world. (How’s that for something that will take an act of God?)

One of the big parts of our work is changing beliefs. Beliefs such as ‘we are hopeless,’ ‘we can’t do anything,’ ‘girls are a burden,’ or ‘the differently abled are the result of a curse.’ Lies that are destroying lives. We don’t believe that just great training is enough; we believe it takes God, and prayer. We’ve seen God turn up as we have taught—whether it is in Myanmar where one community all decided to start to educate their girls and give them an inheritance, something that never had happened before. In other parts of Asia they decided to love rather than beat their wives, meaning the young girls who were no longer fearful of marriage stopped running away into trafficking situations. In India, a doctor became a pastor and stopped practicing medicine, but came to understand that he could honor God by using those talents as well. As he started to serve his community using his health knowledge, his church doubled in size. In other areas they realized they no longer had to wait for the government to help them and they built their own bridges and roads, enabling them to triple (or more) their income. In DRC, Pygmies came to realise they were humans too, and thus, valuable to God. Beliefs matter and understanding God’s truth can set people free. However, changing beliefs, big ones like these, takes God turning up—and He invites us to be part of that through prayer.

In some of our early work we were amazed when we discovered the legacy of prayer that went before us. In one area where we first witnessed communities moving out of poverty in just three to four years, we were initially confused by the fact that all our staff turned out to be orphans from the same orphanage. Then we found out that the orphanage director had gone to New Zealand when he was forced to leave the country 30 years earlier. In New Zealand, prayer groups were formed to pray for that people group and those orphans. Thirty years later God used someone from New Zealand and those orphans to bring amazing transformation to that people group. While we certainly don’t pretend to understand everything about the spiritual realm and how God works, we also just don’t believe that was a random coincidence.

We still believe we are building on the prayers that have gone before us. But we also believe as we go to new areas, address new challenges, and grow as an organization that God has told us to mobilize more prayer—both because we need it and because we want you to have the joy of being part of the journey. We believe that you too, can play a role in changing the world—an essential role. A role that transforms lives. We aren’t saying it’s easy—in fact everything we try to do around prayer is extraordinarily hard, so expect chaos!  But we do believe that it’s an amazing opportunity to impact lives around the world.

We’d love for you to celebrate #GivingTuesday by committing to pray for us one hour per month. Please consider inviting a friend or three to pray with you, as we all need to be kept accountable sometimes, and because Jesus promised to be in the midst of our small groups (Matthew 18:20).

You can see our current prayer requests and sign up to get our monthly prayer mailing here.

If you’re already praying for Reconciled World, let me take #GivingTuesday to say,

Thanks!