Practicing Muslims pray five times daily (Salat) at specific times every day from dawn to night. Salat is a requirement. I took pictures of a Muslim praying at an airport in China, where hundreds of people waited to board. A young white man headed toward the Kaaba in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.
Although this was not my first time seeing a Muslim man praying in public, his faith action challenged me; Am I bold enough to share my faith in Jesus in any form or way in public, like him? Do I pray diligently?
Open Door's World Watch 2026 Report reads that more than 388 million Christians suffer high levels of persecution. Roughly 5,600 Christians were murdered, more than 6,000 were detained or imprisoned, and another 4,000-plus were kidnapped. More than 5,000 churches and their facilities were destroyed. The top 10 persecuted countries are: #1 North Korea, #2 Somalia, #3 Yemen, #4 Sudan, #5 Eritrea, #6 Syria, #7 Nigeria, #8 Pakistan, #9 Libya, #10 Iran.
Here is a testimony to the power of prayer, written by a North Korean, that I found on a Mission agency's website. Seun met Han in China, across a river from North Korea, who gave 100 yuan ($13) and asked her to do unusual things: write down the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles' Creed. And the lady said, 'When you return to North Korea, pray these words again and again, and God answers your prayer.'" Seun didn't fully understand what it meant, but remembered it. Back in N. Korea, the money and food ran out, and there was nothing to eat. She was desperate. One night, she shut every door, covered the windows with blankets, and whispered the words Han wrote down in China. One day, after repeating the Lord's Prayer many times, she closed her prayer, saying her own trembling plea: "God, I am hungry. Please give me rice." It was the first time she had ever prayed. She fell asleep with an empty stomach.
The next freezing morning, she opened her door and found four pounds of noodles. "It felt like an earthquake in my head," Seun wondered who could give the noodles. Days later, no food. She prayed the Lord's prayer again. The next morning, a woman came and gave her a sack of rice, saying her rice sack had torn and spilled the rice on the ground, making them dirty. She had no time to wash the rice, and she brought it to Seun to have it. Seun held the sack in her hands, stunned, thinking there must be something to this, and kept praying the prayer. For a year and a half, provision came—again and again—in ways she couldn't explain. Each answer deepened her curiosity and her trust in God. Later, when she encountered the words of Romans 10, she said, " I prayed even though I did not fully know who God is, and God heard me and answered my prayers." Please know that in North Korea, if it is discovered that you are a Christian, you will face imprisonment in a labor camp for life or the death penalty.
Jesus says, "Ask and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find" (Matthew 7:7). What does God speak to you through Seun's testimony? Perhaps we don't get it because we did not ask!? Do we take God so much for granted? Don't we have answers because we don't pray? Would you include the persecuted nations and their people in our prayers?
