In many parts of the world, prayer is not a habit but a heartbeat. For persecuted Christians, the most persecuted religious group in the world, it’s the one thing no one can take away. When homes burn, when churches are razed, when survival itself feels uncertain, they keep praying. Their prayers carry a wisdom that the church in the West needs more than it realizes.
For most Americans, prayer fits somewhere between convenience and duty. We pray for safe travel, for smooth plans, for things to go our way. Yet Christians in Nigeria, India and Chad remind us that prayer was never meant to be optional. It was meant to be a lifeline.
Pray When Comfort Fails.
Paul, who ministers in a displacement camp in Nigeria, leads a congregation who are among the 2 million Christians displaced by extremist-led violence in recent years. His people have lost homes, loved ones and their livelihoods. And yet, in the midst of deprivation, their daily prayer is simple: gratitude. “We don’t have anything but gratitude,” he says.
Their faith is not naïve, but a bold trust that God will provide. In the West, our prayers often revolve around convenience and preference. Theirs are shaped by dependency and joy.
This kind of prayer strips away pretense and isn’t efficient or polished. It’s raw. It’s what’s left when all the options run out—and what’s found when all idols and distractions fall away.
Pray With a Vision Beyond Yourself.
When Mamta was dragged from a prayer meeting in her home in northern India and thrown into jail, she could have prayed for one thing: release. Instead, her prayers went further. In her prison cell, she prayed for the women around her. Without a Bible, she prayed the Scriptures she had memorized, and she prayed that her accusers might one day meet Jesus.
From Jesus to Paul to the early church, the Bible shows us that the boldest prayers are focused on how to spread and expand Christianity. In the West, our prayers often circle around ourselves, our health, our comfort and our success. There is nothing wrong with bringing those requests before God, but if they are the whole of our prayer life, we miss the vision Jesus gave us. Mamta’s prayer teaches us to lift our eyes beyond our own story to God’s greater story.
Pray With Joy and Hope.
Amina in Chad greets each day with a song: “Today is the day of joys.” Her life has been marked by abandonment, poverty and loss. She knows the ache of hunger, the strain of carrying burdens alone, the grief of watching her small church struggle after losing their pastor, who was killed in an accident. And yet, she sings.
Her praise isn’t denial; it’s defiance. She rejoices even before her needs are met.
Joy in suffering sounds foreign to most of us in the West. We live in a culture wired to avoid pain at all costs, and our prayers often reflect this. Joy in suffering is a declaration that Christ is greater than pain. The sovereign God who rules over every disaster and disappointment is the same God who bends them to serve our everlasting joy. So let our prayers not only plead for relief but sing with gratitude in the night.
Prayer is our first line of defense.
We may not face persecution like Paul, Mamta and Amina, but we face its quieter cousin: distraction. Our faith rarely costs us anything tangible, and that can be its own danger. The persecuted church reminds us that prayer is not a last resort or a polite ritual. It’s our first and only defense.
Paul, Mamta, Amina and others around the world teach us to invite a posture that trades comfort for courage, safety for risk and suffering for joy. Their prayers call out our apathy but also awaken our hope.
To pray with the persecuted church is to rediscover the miracle of dependence and intercession is not one-way charity but a shared heartbeat among the global Church.
Earlier this month, Christians around the world united for the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church, which serves as a reminder that we are all Christians, together even across borders and hardships. Millions set aside time to pray for those who suffer for their faith. But this act of intercession is not just for their benefit; it’s also for ours as it goes beyond awareness to participation. As Americans pray for the persecuted, we also let their faith reshape ours. Their endurance shapes our impatience. Their risk exposes our caution. Their joy confronts our complaint. This is the two-way gift of prayer. We give and we receive. We intercede and we are transformed.
It can be challenging to step into this posture. I encourage downloading Global Christian Relief’s prayer guide to walk through this process and help answer the question What can I learn from the persecuted church? rather than just What can I pray for? Because when the persecuted pray, they remind all of us what prayer truly is: not a habit to maintain, but a lifeline to cling to.