International (MNN) — The International Day of Prayer for Persecuted Christians (IDOP) is this Sunday, November 3.
Before we look closer at this opportunity to pray together, let’s remember how much the concept of “family” means to God.
(Photo courtesy of Voice of the Martyrs, USA via Facebook)
From Genesis 1, God instituted family into human society. In Scripture He invites us to call Him our Father. He calls Christians His children, the sons and daughters of God. Many believers today follow the early church’s pattern of calling each other sister or brother. (See Romans 16:1, Philippians 1:14, and James 2:15 as just a few examples.) Family language is everywhere in the kingdom of God!
Todd Nettleton with The Voice of the Martyrs (VOM) says this truth of deep family relationship in the Church is part of what led to the International Day of Prayer.
“When my brother is in prison and is being beaten on, you don’t have to guilt me into caring about him, and you don’t have to try to manipulate my emotions to make me care about him. It’s my brother. Of course I care,” Nettleton explains.
“It becomes very, very natural for us to pray for our persecuted brothers and sisters, to want to be a voice for them. It becomes natural once we understand, once it really takes hold in our heart that these are our family members.”
Even young children can grasp what this means.
“You don’t have to go so much into the specifics with a young child of what that persecution looks like, or what that level of suffering is,” Nettleton explains. It’s often enough to tell a child that people who are their family, some of them kids just like they are, are suffering for faith in Jesus.
(Image courtesy of Voice of the Martyrs)
Would you commit to pray for your persecuted brothers and sisters in Christ? It’s their first request when VOM ask how the West can help. (Learn ways to do so with a VOM prayer guide here.)
It’s also not too late to get involved with the International Day of Prayer throughout November! Find free digital resources from VOM for you and your church to use to pray together this month. It doesn’t matter how big or how small it looks.
“Many churches are just going to add persecuted Christians to the normal Sunday pastoral prayer time. Some are going to have a special extra prayer time for persecuted Christians. Some are going to give the whole day to it,” Nettleton says.
“The important thing is, is your church going to do something to raise awareness? To tell your people, ‘Hey, we have family members for all eternity who are suffering right now. We need to lift them up. We need to honor the [Scripture] that say[s], ‘Remember the prisoner as if you were in prison with them.’”
Connect with Voice of the Martyrs for IDOP 2024 here.
Header photo courtesy of The Voice of the Martyrs.
