"Ask me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession" -- Psalm 2:8.
These words promise that all the earth will be our Lord's inheritance and possession. The command to ask of God has been widely applied to believers today, leading us to pray for the spread of the gospel throughout the earth. Perhaps the best-known and most comprehensive resource to help the church pray for the world is Operation World.
The first edition of Operation World was published by Patrick Johnstone in 1964. The seventh and most recent version, the first to be spearheaded by someone other than Johnstone, came out in 2010. The mission and purpose of OW is to inform and encourage prayer for the world by providing statistics, trends, information, and prayer points for each country. OW is widely regarded as the definitive resource for praying for the world.
OW can be used as a prayer devotion, providing prayer information for each day of the year. The book begins with information and prayer points for the world, then for each continent, then for each country (alphabetically). Many of the major countries are spread across multiple days, while the smaller countries typically are covered in one day. The information for each country includes statistics on population, religion, and economy. A summary of the political, economic, social, and religious atmosphere in the country follows, with an emphasis on prayer points in each area. Typically, each day includes both items of thanksgiving and praise and items for intercession.
In addition to the book, OW is available on CD as a searchable pdf including rights to reproduce the content for personal use. A more comprehensive edition on DVD-ROM provides not only the book but each country as an individual PDF and includes rights to reproduce the materials for ministry use.
The OW website (www.operationworld.org) includes a prayer calendar that provides summarized prayer points for each day - excerpts from that day's entry in the book. Visitors to the site can sign up for a 60-day prayer experience, which includes daily e-mails with links to the site to pray for a different country each day. After the 60 days, the e-mails continue with links to the current day's country from the prayer calendar. One of the more interesting features of the site is the links to PrayerCast videos, which feature natives of various countries offering a 2-3 minute prayer for their country, accompanied by a video of landscapes and people from the country.
If you're looking for a place to start praying for the world, Operation World is the place. And if you're looking for a group to pray with, check out the Operation World group here on PrayNetwork.org (http://www.praynetwork.org/group/operationworld). You can post prayer entries in the "Pray Today 2015" discussion forum in this group (http://www.praynetwork.org/group/operationworld/forum/topics/pray-today-2015).
Ask the Father to make the nations the inheritance of His Son!!
PrayNetwork.org Spotlight by Andrew Wheeler.
See Andrew's website at www.togetherinprayer.net
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