World Weekend of Prayer for Children at Risk

Plead for the Children

“Rise during the night and cry out. Pour out your hearts like water to the Lord. Lift up your hands to Him in prayer. Plead for your children as they faint with hunger in the street” (Lamentations 2:19).

The first weekend of June Mission To Children's staff invites you to join the mighty prayer force lifting up children at-risk to the Lord.

With half of the world’s children at risk we need God to intervene. (Scriptures from Isaiah 61)

Pray that God will bestow a crown of beauty instead of ashes

A million children taken into the commercial sex trade every year

Every child is precious, made in the image of God and infinitely valuable to Him. In the commercial sex trade they are treated as worthless and their childhood is stolen.

• Pray for the many Christian ministries that are working to care for children who have been abused. The rehabilitation process is a long and difficult one.
• Pray for the Heavena Home in Sri Lanka that MTC supports.
• Pray for efforts in Costa Rica that are currently being implemented to stop trafficking.

Pray that He will comfort all who mourn and provide for those who grieve

Over 15 million AIDS orphans worldwide (Estimated by 2010 - 25 million)

• Pray that God will pour His comfort, unconditional love, and strength into the lives of these grieving children.
• Pray for camps MTC supports in Malawi that minister to hundreds of AIDS orphans.

Pray that God will proclaim freedom for the captives

Child Soldiers

Children are often caught up in war: 300,000 children around the world are involved in fighting, in 30 separate war zones. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Colombia and many other nations, children are either involved in conflict, or still recovering from the trauma it causes.

• Praise God, Mission To Children has been able to conduct character training seminars to over 10,000 youth workers in Liberia—many who are responsible for rehabilitating child soldiers who are the next generation of leaders.
• Pray that the love of God and His abundant forgiveness would break through these hardened and traumatized child soldiers.

Pray that His Good News reaches the poor

Over a billion children living in poverty and severe deprivation

Many of them have no access to clean water, vaccines, nutritious food, or education.

• Pray for MTC-sponsored children who now have food, shelter, and Christian education.
• Pray for the countries across West Africa facing dangerously high levels of child malnutrition. Further east, drought has caused up to half of the herds to die. With their families’ livelihoods damaged, 40,000 children are now so malnourishedthat they could well die in the coming months.
• Pray for rain to replenish water supplies, bring good harvests, and revive herds.

Pray that He will bind up the brokenhearted

An estimated 160,000,000 street children who are among the poorest of the poor. They often beg or scavenge to survive, and are at risk of abuse and exploitation.

• Pray for those abandoned, orphaned, or running away from violent homes that they can come to know the God Who loves them.
• Pray for MTC homes that rescue street children in Romania, India, and Central America.

Pray that He will release the prisoners from darkness

Over a million children in prison

Some have committed offenses, others were picked up off the streets, and still others came with their mothers when convicted of a crime.

• Pray for their safety: Prisons are often overcrowded, lacking in sanitation facilities, and have inadequate food and heating. Children can end up in cells with adult prisoners, where they are at very high risk of abuse.
• Pray for the daycare center that recently opened in the Chikurubi Women’s Prison in Zimbabwe. It is already a source of light for these children in a very dark place.

Pray that God bestow a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair

218 million classified as child laborers

• Praise God that the number of child laborers has fallen considerably for the first time. It is down 11% from 246 million in 2002.
• Pray that governments would demand better and safer conditions for young workers
• Pray that the poverty which forces children to work will be addressed by governments.

A Prayer for Children at Risk

“Father God: Thank you for Your love for each child in the world. Thank You that You know all their names, and that each one is made in Your image.

We come before You today to ask for change in the lives of the 1.2 billion children at risk across the globe.

After a year of “unprecedented emergencies for children” in 2005, we ask that this would be a “year of the Lord’s favor” for those who are suffering from neglect, fear, poverty, exploitation, and abuse.

We ask for the poor to hear Your Good News and step into Your abundant life; for the captives to be freed and given the chance to fulfill the potential that You have given them; and for those who are grieving to be comforted by Your infinite love.

Would You give them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, and clothe them in praise instead of despair, in the knowledge that You are their loving, heavenly Father.

As we unite in prayer with Christians all over the world, please hear us and bring transformation in children’s lives. In Jesus’ name, Amen."