Prayer for Korea

This morning God impressed upon me that we need to pray for Korea. Oh, not that we would somehow be safe from nuclear attack, but that the Korean people would be released to serve Him in power.

Everywhere I go the Koreans have been there first. They went to Russia before communism fell and started churches ­– churches that are strong disciplemaking churches today. All across Asia and into the Middle East the Koreans have gone first. They most often start businesses.

A retreat center and prayer garden in a Middle East country that desperately needs a place for Christians to come together and pray. Another in Central Asia that provides the same opportunity. Often the businesses are restaurants and other small businesses serving the people with grace and honesty. The Korean church trains the people who go out in business and mission. There are medical people in China that I have worked with. People who stick through thick and thin. These are the things that the South Koreans have done – faithfully for many years. Their bravery and simple faith is exemplary.

Little is known about the Korean church in the North. Except that it was even stronger than the South before the evil of the Kim regime took over. We can only surmise that even though it is deep underground and severely persecuted, it is also following God faithfully.

A few years ago I was privileged to go into the DPRK (North Korea) to visit a couple of businesses in the very north. Where I was you could see both China and Russia. The rules of business are very different there. The foreign business owner doesn’t pay the people, but pays the government for their work. When I asked what the worker gets for working in a foreign business I was told they are allowed to bring in food for them. There was a “Free Trade Zone” that was seeking foreign business. I was invited to come back. There were no private Korean owned businesses in sight. I did not see a store or place where a local Korean could buy or sell. There was a bazaar that was open a few hours a day that sold foreign goods.

What I saw in the city and countryside has never left my heart. I wasn’t allowed to take pictures of so much of it, but this kind of poverty lodges itself in your heart. People so poor they were picking up any bit of grain they could from the fields (the harvest belonged to the government). I saw them walking along roads carrying wooden rakes like my great grandparents did generations ago. I saw children in kindergartens with nothing to play with, but eager to engage with this funny white woman (picture above). I saw medical facilities with no medicine.  I saw workers in businesses that had very little to show for their hard labor. The North has never left my heart.

So today the Lord impressed upon me that we need to pray. Not for peace for our own lands because there is a crazy leader there, but that the faith of the Koreans be released and show forth God’s glory and His faithfulness. That a mighty flood of faith be released that spreads across this sorry, divided planet.

Pray with me?

Nora