International (MNN) — We’ve been encouraging you to pray for Muslims during Ramadan, which runs until June 24th in the United States. But did you know there’s a resource to help you know what to pray for?
(Photo courtesy of Frontiers USA)
Frontiers USA has a Ramadan prayer guide for Christians called ‘Searching for a Father’. Every few days, you’ll get an email with prayer points and the next chapter in an intimate fictional story. It’s about a Muslim young man and his family during Ramadan, a broken relationship, and a search for God’s truth.
Bob Blincoe, President of Frontiers USA, explains, “You could say it’s a true story in that it happens all the time with the factors that are in this story of a lost love between father and son and the reconciliation that might take place. But, you know, wait till the end and see.”
Spoiler alert! The Gospel plays a big part in the story. Frontiers has released this prayer guide for a few years now, and have received positive responses to the message and the prompts to pray. Blincoe says, “People are very interested to know what’s going to happen next!”
(Photo courtesy of Frontiers USA)
Even the title of ‘Searching for a Father’ is meaningful because, as Blincoe explains, “In Islam, there’s no recognition that God is a father or God is a shepherd. There are 99 names for God in Islam, but all of them are objective. The Merciful One, yes, that is a great word, but none of them are tender and endearing and relational like Father.
“So once you see Jesus Christ revealing what He is really like, what God is really like in terms of love and desire and ‘come to my table and let’s start the feast’ — wow, this is what we know attracts human beings back to God.”
The Ramadan prayer guide is just one aspect of Frontiers USA’s ministry, which seeks to make Christ as Savior known among Muslim communities.
“Our mission is: ‘With love and respect, inviting all Muslims to follow Jesus’. This is the way we want to be treated ourselves, so with the Golden Rule in mind, it’s love and respect. When you treat people with dignity and respect, then you do find there is reciprocation,” shares Blincoe.
(Photo courtesy of Frontiers USA)
“We always go where we’re invited. We go where someone in the country of stature wants us there. We live legally in every country, and there are 40 Muslim countries in the world. I believe that the Lord would have us live in peace [and] bring the Gospel of peace…. I lived in northern Iraq, I opened up the work for Frontiers in northern Iraq, and that was because the Kurdish people wanted us there. It was a strong sense of invitation.”
If you’d like to sign up for the prayer guide ‘Searching for a Father’ this month, click here! You’ll start with the first email in the series, and get the next one every few days.
As you begin praying for Muslims’ eyes to be opened to God the Father, the God of the Bible, Blincoe suggests you can also begin with this prayer: “This is what we should pray for through Ramadan, that the great purposes of God will not be thwarted by the darkness of humanity or the darkness of the Devil, but that His great purposes will find the way of peace between the nations and bring about reconciliation with Himself and with one another in these last days.”
And it’s ‘in these last days’ indeed, as reports of Muslims seeing miraculous visions of Jesus and embracing the Gospel are becoming more and more frequent. God is moving in the Muslim world, and Frontiers USA bears witness to the spread of Christ’s hope in these communities.
“We have seen amazing things happen in the last 30 years, and in the last 10 years, in particular. Some of our teams have borne faithful witness without seeing results, and some of them are now seeing results the kind of which Abraham was promised, families coming to faith.”
How do I sign up for the prayer guide?