What might your 30-day journey look like?
*Name changed for security purposes.
The following reflection was written by Suzanne Heegaard, our Prayercast editor-in-chief.
Where I live, I mostly see cornfields.
I don’t have the privilege of rubbing shoulders with many cultures. I don’t know any Muslims personally. But my friend Arsalan* does.
He works and plays alongside them. They are his neighbors in his beautiful mountainous homeland of Pakistan. Yet, that is where their similarities end.
Arsalan loves Jesus. Fearing Allah alone, his neighbors see Jesus as just another prophet. For a long time, he prayed that they too would experience the love of Jesus, but with a heart full of fear, his mouth stayed shut.
Until five years ago.
It was mid-April when Arsalan saw his neighbors preparing for Ramadan, the holiest month of the Muslim year. It is a month to focus on deepening a connection to Allah through spiritual reflection, self-improvement, and heightened devotion. Muslims trust that fasting, pilgrimage, and prayer will please Allah and earn favor.
As the start of Ramadan approached, a friend sent Arsalan an email with a Prayercast resource that piqued his curiosity– a 30-day Ramadan prayer challenge, to pray that Muslims could learn about the love of Jesus. He sensed Jesus calling him to the challenge, and as a pastor, he encouraged his church to join him.
That month of participating in the prayer challenge brought change. But Arsalan did not expect the change that came.
He had been praying for Jesus to reveal His love to the hearts of his neighbors, but instead, his own heart changed! He began to see his neighbors as people who needed to know the love of Jesus and thus, needed someone to bravely tell them. Up until this point, he led his church to pray for Muslims, but he had never given a Bible or shared the love of Jesus with a single Muslim neighbor. Now, God made it clear to him that there was no more time to waste.
Together with his church, they set a goal of sharing the love of Jesus with 300 Muslim neighbors within the year. In the workplace, at hospitals, and through holiday gatherings with lots of cake, they hit their goal by the end of the year!
Unbelievably, just three years later, they reached a much larger, audacious goal of sharing Jesus with 10,000 Pakistani Muslim neighbors! And every year since then, they continue to share relentlessly. All because of a 30-day prayer challenge.
Here in the cornfields, I may not have the privilege of sharing the love of Jesus with 10,000 Pakistani Muslims, but I know I have the privilege to pray. And when God’s people pray, He moves!
Who knows? Could it be that the Moroccan woman I met at the gym last month would allow me the privilege of getting to know her personally? What if she celebrates Ramadan? If I take the Prayercast 30-day prayer challenge during Ramadan this month, and remember her in my prayers along the way, maybe I’ll have the courage to ask!
As Muslims around the world fast and seek Allah (February 28-March 30, 2025), we have a powerful opportunity to pray that they will encounter the love and truth of Jesus. You can also sign up like Arsalan did and receive daily videos to join this global prayer movement!
Praying during Ramadan. This is my fourth year, and God has really given me a burden for the Muslim people. One thing I pray for them is that they will read the Injil (New Testament), even if they’re doing it to prove it’s wrong, because I believe that ‘God’s word is quick and powerful and sharper than any two edged sword, piercing, even to the dividing asunder bones and marrow, soul and spirit’, and if they read it, God will challenge them with his precious gift of salvation! Thank you so much for this ministry!