24 Hours of Prayer for the Nations unites believers worldwide

Mark and Dee Dickson see prayer and missions as inseparable, which motivated them to passionately participate in Converge’s 24 Hours of Prayer for the Nations in October.  

The prayer event included Converge global workers, pastors and believers. Hour after hour, hundreds of people asked God for a gospel movement because 70,000 people die every day without hearing a credible presentation of the gospel. 

“We feel like [prayer’s] our best weapon” against unbelief and darkness, Dee said. 

Dee’s mother and father often hosted missionaries in their home as she was growing up. Similarly, Mark’s faith as a young man, plus his call to pastor churches, came through global workers. 

The two have been serving Sun Prairie Baptist Church in Salem, South Dakota, for three decades. They’re on the prayer team for a Converge initiative targeting two of the world’s most unreached countries. 

Related: Join a Converge Global Prayer Network

In the next few years, Converge International Ministries hopes to have 200 more global workers and 20 fully-staffed initiatives, said Kevin McGhee, director of Converge’s U.S. Engagement Team. We need a lot of prayer for that to happen,” he said. 

That’s why there will be future 24-hour prayer gatherings and other intercession opportunities. 

Faith and power — yesterday, today and forever

Bill Ankerberg first joined Converge’s movement of churches 62 years ago. So, the director for the Nordic-Baltic Initiative has seen God’s people faithfully practice prayer repeatedly.

In 1970, he and other young adults began to pray in a basement near Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota. 

"We wanted God to use us,” he said.  

So, they “put themselves on the love and mercy of God,” he said, asking the Lord to hear their prayers and do what couldn’t otherwise be done. 

Related: Converge asks God for a gospel movement among least-reached peoples. Join us. 

Within a month or two of the students’ first meeting, there were 200 men and women in that basement, asking God to do his will on earth. 

That same faith and power continues today, even if hundreds of people gather online instead of in the basement to ask God for a gospel movement. This October, more than 50 or sometimes even 100 people prayed together during several of the 24 hours.  

In all, people prayed for more than 700 combined hours during those 24 hours, giving believers like the Dicksons confidence that Christ will build his church. 

“To have people [praying] from all over the country and the world, I think it was really impactful,” Dee Dickson said. “It’s important."

Converge is asking God for a gospel movement among every least-reached people group — in our generation.