Building the Kingdom, Prayer upon Prayer
Elana Ray
The staff of International Justice Mission know more than most of us about prayer. Their work advocating for the planet’s most oppressed people requires it. In the faces of slave owners, sex traffickers, rapists, and corrupt officials, they have looked the prince of this world in the eye — and shuddered. But the power of the Spirit that is in them is greater than that of the evil one, and so they begin each day, each meeting, each plan, each operation with prayer. Whether raiding a brothel, providing aftercare for rescued slaves, or pleading a victim’s case month after month until justice is finally done, IJM workers are ever mindful of their great need for God’s strength, wisdom, and direction. Their experiences have taught them about both the power and the privilege of prayer. Here two IJM leaders share their insights on prayer with us. PRISM 2008
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What Can I Do ... Besides Pray? b y B ethan y H anke H oang
“What can I do?” It’s a question I’ve heard more times than I can count since working with International Justice Mission (IJM). Compelled by the biblical call to “seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, and plead for the widow” (Isaiah 1:17), IJM works for those who suffer violent injustice such as slavery, forced prostitution, and illegal detention. For us, being obedient to God’s clear call to justice looks something like this: Identify areas of the world where the poor are most vulnerable to being oppressed; locate victims of violent oppression and document evidence about their situation; work with local authorities to rescue these victims one by one; help each rescued person find healing and a new life through an aftercare program; work with local officials to secure the arrest and prosecution of the perpetrators; and allow the one-by-one rescues to infiltrate an entire system, bringing transformation to whole communities, even nations. God has called his people to the work of justice. But understanding how that call plays into our lives isn’t always easy. Not everyone will work on the frontlines like IJM’s lawyers, investigators, and social workers. But everyone has a role, and, increasingly, people with a wide variety of gifts and skills are asking, “What can I do?” From the first time I fielded this question, I began to notice that, more often than not, it comes in a very particular form. Time and again the question “What can I do?” ends with: “…besides pray and give money?” “Tell me something—anything—you want me to do … besides just praying and giving money.” This is an important question, and it has a myriad of good answers. But despite my appreciation of the question, I cannot help but feel a nagging concern whenever I consider its premise. Tabling the issue of why financial support of justice work matters, what concerns me most is the implication that prayer is either exhaustible or less effective than the more “tangible” ways of confronting injustice. Even more so, I can’t help but suspect that the question “What can I do besides pray?” is being asked for reasons other than the asker’s consistent commitment to praying about issues of injustice. I suspect (and I include myself in this critique) that the asker asks not from a point of satiation, i.e., “I have committed my heart to daily asking God to move against injustice in our world—what else can I do, beyond praying?” but rather from a point of exasperation, i.e., “I hardly even know where to begin when praying, and I’m not sure how it can possibly be as effective as doing something other than praying.”
Perhaps the question arises from suspicions that prayer is too often used as an excuse to remain on the sidelines. Isn’t the real (and perhaps more gratifying) work done in person, on the ground, literally pulling our neighbors out from under the hand of violent oppressors? Maybe. Maybe not. Or perhaps both/and. Being obedient to God’s commands to do justice is certainly a daily, on-the-ground, person-by-person work of physical rescue. However, being obedient to God’s commands to do justice is just as much a daily, on-the-ground, person-by-person work of prayer. But even if we want to believe this is true — that prayer is completely inextricable from the physical rescue work itself — it just does not always feel true. Sometimes we just do not know where to begin with prayer when the need is simply so great. When you hear that Shivaraj’s whole family has been in slavery for years, that Venus’ children are destitute due to the theft of their property after their father died of AIDS, and that little Chanda is being injected with narcotics so she won’t cry when she is being raped — how do you begin to pray? As I think back on the many mornings of prayer we have had together at IJM, interceding for those who are suffering in places of deep darkness, and as I think about some of our nearly 15,000 prayer partners and the ways that I have heard these friends seek the Lord on behalf of those who suffer violent oppression, something about the character of these prayers stands out to me. As we fumble to find words in the midst of such grievous realities, ours are the kind of prayers that simply take the form of an outpouring. In Psalm 62 David exhorts us to “Trust in the Lord at all times … pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.” David seems to make a fundamental connection between choosing to trust in the Lord and pouring out our hearts. On the one hand, I cannot pour out my heart to God if I do not trust him. On the other hand, I cannot learn to trust God unless I pour out my heart to him. But what does it mean to pour out our hearts to God? Isaiah 37 offers compelling insight to this question. At this point in Israel’s history, King Hezekiah is ruling over Judah. The King of Assyria, however, is actively threatening to thwart Hezekiah’s reign and to destroy Hezekiah’s people. He has been waging vulgar intimidation, loudly declaring the ruin he plans to bring. In chapter 37 we are given a window into his taunts: “Do not let the god you depend on deceive you when he says, ‘Jerusalem will not be handed over to the King of Assyria.’ Surely you have heard what the kings of
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When Hezekiah received the King of Assyria’s threats and mockery, it came to him in written form. What did Hezekiah do with this letter of lies mocking his God, exalting the ways of violence? He did not burn it. He did not press reply and send an immediate response. He did not run from it. When Hezekiah received the letter from the messengers, he first read it, and then he went up to the temple and spread it out before the Lord. Every day we receive “letters” that in one word or image can lock down our hearts in deep burden. And I guarantee that if perpetrators of injustice knew we were considering together how we might more wholeheartedly pray to our God, they would have some strong words to send our way as well. They would surely tell us that our God does not hear, that our God does not see, that our God is not able to intervene. But all of these “letters” that we receive each day, the discouragements that threaten our commitment to seeking justice, we are invited to spread out before the Lord. When we spread out our letters before the Lord—the lies waged against the reality of God’s reign, the taunts hurled against our belief in God’s power to intervene and to heal and to redeem—when we spread all of this before the Lord, we are proclaiming the truth that God is the good, just, sovereign ruler of the ages over and against the brutality of the moment. The apostle Paul makes a bold claim in Romans 5 that if we hope in the glory of God, this hope will not disappoint, simply because God himself has poured out his love into our hearts through his Holy Spirit. It is this same Holy Spirit who intercedes for us when our words have run dry, when we feel we can no longer even pray.The Holy Spirit pouring God’s love into our hearts enables us, even when we have grown jaded, to pour out our hearts before our God. As we pour out our hearts, we will see that God is using his people through our prayers. And we will see that Shivaraj and his family, Venus and her children, Elisabeth, Chanda, and thousands of others are being freed. And the prayers that have wrought their rescues are crumbling the foundations of entire systems of injustice. But what can we do, besides pray? Quite a lot. And at the same time—absolutely nothing. n
Assyria have done to all the countries, destroying them completely. What makes you think that you will be delivered? Did the gods of the nations that were destroyed by my forefathers deliver those nations? Where are those kings now?” When I read the King of Assyria’s rhetoric and feel his mocking words, when I hear him say that Hezekiah’s God has deceived him, cannot be trusted, and is impotent, experiences from our work at IJM come flooding to mind. When I read the King of Assyria’s taunts, I can’t help but hear the voices of Elisabeth’s kidnappers. Elisabeth was mocked as she cried out to God from her lockdown in brothel room 5 where she was being given over to violent abuse. “Your God cannot hear you in here,” her captors told her. When I hear the King of Assyria threaten violence with laughing hubris, I can’t help but see the face of the rice mill owner in South Asia, throwing his head back and smiling as he bragged in sinister delight about how he prevents his slaves from leaving the mill. I see the faces of the Peruvian officials who coldly considered a mother’s testimony, who unflinchingly glanced over the crime scene photographs of her 8-year-old daughter’s rape and murder. I can feel their limp hand shaking mine after telling us how difficult it is to secure justice. I hear the words of officials throughout the world telling my colleagues that justice for the poor is not possible, trying to convince our tireless staff to go home rather than stay through the watches of the night waiting for these officials to make good on their own laws. When I read the King of Assyria’s words, I see the tears of the innocent boy who collapsed in the arms of the jailers hauling him past me toward the cell where he will spend the next 30 years. His tears are the tears we read of in Ecclesiastes, the tears of the oppressed who have no one to comfort them, for power is on the side of their oppressors. John Calvin says in his writings on Psalm 62, “It is always found, that when the heart is pressed under a load of distress, there is no freedom in prayer.” Indeed, when we open our hearts to the reality of the world around us, when we consider the schemes of those who violate the vulnerable and prey upon the innocent, our hearts become heavy, weighed down. Even our prayers become stale, rigid, and weary. But prayer by its very nature is, in a primary sense, an unloading of the heart. When our hearts are so heavily taxed that we feel we can no longer even truly pray, God leads us back to himself by telling us simply this: Pour out your heart; pour out your heart before the Lord.
Bethany Hanke Hoang serves as director of the IJM Institute (IJMInstitute.org) for International Justice Mission. She is responsible for equipping leaders of the global church and academic communities with tools and resources for bringing others into a deeper level of understanding, passion, and commitment to seeking justice on behalf of those who suffer abuse and oppression in our world.
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RSVPrayer: Answering God’s Invitation b y S haron C ohn W u
because of five people?” And so the conversation continues. Two things, in addition to Abraham’s brazenness, are worthy of mention here. First, this story is sometimes characterized as Abraham bargaining with God, because he seems to move God from 50 righteous people required to spare Sodom down to 10. But note that Abraham has nothing to bargain with. He has nothing but God’s mercy to put up against God’s justice in that conversation. Abraham has nothing that God does not already own. Second, at the end of the story we are told, “When the Lord had finished speaking with Abraham, he left.” This is an important reminder that not only does God initiate communication with us but he also does as he wills, and when he has finished, he leaves. God is not at our beck and call. He is holy; he summons us and we respond. We should not understand the extravagance of the invitation to mean that we approach a near equal. No, it is an audience with the Great High King who has stooped to conquer. It is a fearful and wonderful thing to commune with the author of creation and the redeemer of our souls.We must approach— how can we dare not?—but we should approach with reverence. P.T. Forsyth, a Congregationalist theologian writing at the beginning of the 20th century wrote, “Our egoism retires before the coming of God, and into the clearance there comes with our Father, our brother.” We do not have a prayer meeting because it is the Christian thing to do but because we believe that God summons us. The second and most glorious truth is that God hears our prayers. Without this we are without hope. Perhaps you remember the film Bruce Almighty where the main character is given a temporary assignment to take on God’s tasks. He develops a variety of systems but can neither keep track of nor wisely manage the millions of prayer requests that he receives each moment. But we need not spend any time considering how God can hear the cries of millions of people. This is a mystery for which my curiosity is completely eclipsed by my dire need. That God would hear us—that God would answer our prayers—what can we do but give thanks and worship him? I recall a widow in Zambia recounting her defense to the man who sought to strip her of her property. “Oh no,” she said, “because there is a God in heaven who looks after the widow and the orphan.” The promise she is quoting might barely register for me during my typical Bible study time, but to her those words are life itself, reflecting the certainty that what God says is true—that God hears her cry and has promised to defend the defenseless. 1 John 5:14 says, “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever
Years ago, when rooming with one of my law school friends, I took a moment as we cooked dinner to extol on the virtues of the Christian life. “It’s a life of peace and joy and hope,” I said. My friend, who did not share my views on faith, listened politely and then said, “Um, okay. That’s fascinating, but that’s not you.” Duly checked, I could only reply that while that was true enough, I knew where I had come from, and I knew where I was going, and I was at least heading in the direction of peace and joy and hope. I mention this to say that the idea of reflecting on prayer for a public audience prompts a certain cold fear in me. There is something about entreating others to prayer that exposes my own poverty. But the Bible invites us to prayer not to shame us but to give us an opportunity to partake in what Jesus himself found so irresistible. God invites us to prayer with an outrageous promise: “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you.” With this promise before us, we might imagine that Christians would do nothing but pray, would literally pray without ceasing. These are not words from the most recent self-help wishfulfillment profiteer or even a hearty encouragement from our favorite pastor or poet. No, Jesus himself was so thoroughly sold on prayer that the Scriptures repeatedly tell of Jesus rising in the cold of an early morning to have time alone to talk to his Father. I’d like to highlight here just two truths about prayer. The first is that God initiates prayer. This realization came as a tremendous relief to me, setting aright the odd sense I once had that prayer was basically reporting in to God, who somehow needed to be informed in spite of his omniscience. We read in 1 John that we love God because he first loved us. It is out of this same love that God initiates communication with us. Why should God accord such dignity to us? In this shockingly embarrassing highest compliment, God invites us into his divine confidence — not in the Gnostic sense of secret knowledge but in the profoundly personal sense of the sharing of intimacies between a parent and a child. The first recorded intercession in Scripture has Abraham crying out to God for the city of Sodom. But that interaction happens only because the Lord had said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?” And so the Lord tells Abraham what is about to overcome Sodom, and Abraham pleads for Sodom, entreating the Lord, “Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?” And God replies, “If I find 50 righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.” Abraham counters in a wonderful lawyer’s fallacy, “Well, what if the number of the righteous is five less than 50? Will you destroy the whole city
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against me to devour my flesh, when my enemies and my foes attack me, they will stumble and fall.” Out of her great need she cried out to God and he heard her. After her rescue, I asked her to read Psalm 27 for us, but she said, “Oh no, Psalm 27 was what I read when I was in the brothel; I want to read you Psalm 34: ‘I sought the Lord and he heard me, and he delivered me from all my fears.’” I just saw the pictures from her college graduation. She knows that God heard her. She knows because God has delivered her from both her bondage and her fears. Another girl, Mary, was 11 years old when she was sold into sex slavery. The evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that Mary’s mother sold her to an American who for months drugged her, tied her up, and raped her. I met Mary in an aftercare shelter and saw a letter she wrote to her mother, now in prison for her crime.
we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.” God hears us as we cry out. And when we pray for victims of oppression around the world we join a chorus of others calling out for help from heaven. We don’t just ask for help for them, but for us as well, as we seek to be instruments of God’s great help. We ask because we are so persuaded by the goodness of God’s character and by his love that we believe he cannot help but be moved. I have wondered what it was like for Zechariah the high priest when his name was drawn by lot and he was chosen to go into the holy of holies that year. God had been silent for a long time, and much fear was attached to entering into the presence of God. What was it like for Zechariah to be the sole person permitted in the altar area and yet to see someone else there? What ran through his mind as the angel Gabriel announced, “Do not be afraid; your prayer has been heard”? I imagine the “do not fear” part of Gabriel’s announcement didn’t quite make up for the cardiac shock Zechariah was experiencing at the sight of an angel! And what of “your prayer has been heard”? “What prayer?” Zechariah must have wondered in the split second before the angel continued. Had God, after centuries of silence, heard the prayers of the people for whom Zechariah was interceding? But the angel goes on, “God has heard your prayers; your wife will bear you a son.” Zechariah was just doing his job, interceding on behalf of his people’s salvation, but here is an angel telling him that God is concerned about Zechariah and Elisabeth. God has heard Zechariah’s most private and fervent prayer and is answering him. Let us be encouraged by this story as we set aside our own concerns and pray for people and places we will never know, far from our immediate circumstances. God knows the cries of your own heart — for yourself, your loved ones, your community. You honor God by sharing his concerns for those he sees but you may not.You honor him by asking that his will be done here, on earth — in places like La Paz, Tegucigalpa, Chiang Mai, Phnom Penh, Manila, Nairobi, Kigali — as it is in heaven. You do not know them personally, but God does. And just as he knows them, he knows you. When you bring these people to the altar, doing the hard work of prayer on behalf of victims of oppression, God hears not only those prayers but also your most private and fervent prayers. And he answers. Time and again in my seven years at International Justice Mission I have seen the evidence of God hearing these prayers. One of our favorite stories at IJM is about Elisabeth, a girl in Southeast Asia who wrote on the wall of her brothel room Psalm 27: “The Lord is my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life—of whom shall I be afraid? When evil men advance
Dear Mom, ow are you? I’m very fine because I stay in a very good H center. There are many skills to learn here. They teach me English, computer, music, Khmer. I will study hard to look after you when I grow up. Because of me you stay in the prison and are very miserable. I am sorry. Mom, I miss you very much. Now I believe in Jesus, and I pray for you in prison. I pray that you will believe in Jesus like me. If you believe in Jesus, he will help you. Please do not be hopeless. Do not give up until you are free. When you get my letter please tell Grandmother, Daddy, and my brothers not to worry about me. I want you to pray to God and ask him whatever you want. If you do not get what you ask him for, please try and continue to ask him until you receive everything you ask for. Don’t forget to follow my example when you pray. Close your eyes and think of God and ask him for what you want. God bless you, Mary At God’s invitation, with Mary as a co-laborer urging us on, and with Jesus himself interceding for us, let us draw near to him who has drawn near to us. n Sharon Cohn Wu is senior vice president of Justice Operations at International Justice Mission. Directing operations in Africa, Latin America, South and Southeast Asia, she develops intervention strategies and advocates with local and national authorities. (To learn more about IJM and read stories of hope and restoration, visit IJM.org.)
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