North America (MNN) — Yesterday, we told you about the team of 47 young Native American believers working with On Eagles’ Wings. This summer, they are traveling to 12 Native communities across North America with the Gospel.
Ron Hutchcraft with Ron Hutchcraft Ministries says the team has five more Native American communities to visit, and prayer is paving the way.
For example, in the first community the team went to, “A man came up to me. It turns out we went to college together, believe it or not! He said, ‘Ron, back in 1992 when God broke your heart for Native America and you were just starting to talk about this new thing, I began to pray that someday God would bring you to the reservation near us right here.’
(Photo and header photo courtesy of On Eagles’ Wings)
“He was standing next to me on that reservation watching in living color the answer to his prayers — 1992 to 2018 praying for a breakthrough among the Native young people of his community — and he was standing there watching it happen.”
Hutchcraft says, “It takes that kind of fervent, prevailing prayer to change the course of spiritual history in Native America. Fierce, fervent, faithful prayers.”
At each community, the On Eagles’ Wings team gathers on the local outdoor basketball court for their ministry. This is often the hub for local Native young people to hang out. The basketball court may even be the place where drug deals and violence take place. However, when the young men and women with On Eagles’ Wings arrive, the court is transformed into a platform for building relationships and sharing Jesus.
The team hosts competitive games and sporting events for several days, plays music, and starts conversations with the teens and young adults who show up.
Towards the end of their outreach, young Native men and women with the team publicly share their stories and how Jesus changed their lives. Because their stories are the same stories of Native young people nearly everywhere, their hope stories resonate and open hearts to Christ in ways nothing else can.
(Photo courtesy of On Eagles’ Wings)
Hutchcraft is with the On Eagles’ Wings team and he shares, “We are in right now and going to be on some reservations where there is even some physical danger because of the enormous amount of drug activity, gang activity, violence, and beyond that. Some of it I don’t even want to talk about because it is so broken and even sordid. Our team is so very, very needed.”
In the world of missions, prayer is not the lazy last resort the world often perceives it as.
“Your prayer is not just helpful. It is decisive in these battles. We just ask you with all our hearts to join God’s little army of Native warriors in this battle with your prayer.”
As you pray, Hutchcraft offers these requests:
- Open hearts – Please pray, “That God would break through, first of all, to what I would call sin and pain-hardened hearts. Yet, that mask of hardness is only to protect [Native young people] from anything hurting [them]. But it also keeps Jesus out and makes them unwilling to talk about anything else and about feelings whatsoever.”
- Pleasant weather – “Let’s pray for great weather because our most effective place to do our events is outside on a basketball court…. How great it would be if a place that now is a place where you go to buy your drugs would become known as the place where many of that generation chose Jesus.”
- Strength for the team – “Let’s pray for the 47 young warriors of On Eagles’ Wings who are God’s little army — but they are Satan’s big target and every button he can push from their broken backgrounds, he is pushing to try to bring them down.
“We really need prayer for supernatural strength because it has been grueling — it’s spiritually grueling, it’s physically grueling, it’s mentally grueling. So we really need prayer for supernatural strength to carry us all the way to the finish line and then to sustain them as they get back home to become an agent for change back home.”
- Growth of Native Christian leaders – “Many of these young people are feeling for the first time that God could really use them to be part of the answer for their people. For some, that will be a call for what is perhaps the most desperate need in Native America — for Native Christian leaders.
“Let’s pray that those who God calls from this team to begin to train and prepare to be Christian leaders for their people will hear the call, answer the call, and become that generation of Native leaders that we’ve waited for.”
- Many commitments to follow Jesus – “Pray for a public demonstration of choosing Christ on these reservations that will represent a milestone event that no one will ever forget — that will mark for a generation a Jesus breakthrough.”
You can continue following the On Eagles’ Wings team and getting updates over the next few weeks! Hutchcraft shares, “If you go to HopeForNativeAmerica.com, you’ll hear from some of them how you can pray and how you can support them because there is no way they can go unless somebody sends them.
(Photo courtesy of On Eagles’ Wings)
“If you’d like to follow the video reports that we do after every reservation and let the warriors tell you the story of what God has done, that you can find at Hutchcraft.com.”
Today, Hutchcraft estimates only four percent of Native Americans have a relationship with Jesus Christ. However, through Native Christians reaching out to fellow Natives, the tide is shifting and their communities are experiencing spiritual revival.
Hutchcraft says, “When this Summer of Hope is over, we just beg the prayer warriors to continue to pray for these young warriors who are the point of the spear of what I believe to be a historic move of God among Native Americans.”
