Did the Global Day of Prayer Make a Difference?

A large crowd gathered in the Jacksonville Veteran Memorial Arena on Saturday night to attend the Global Day of Prayer. There were similar gatherings in cities around the world.

The Global Day of Prayer movement has grown since South African Christian businessman Graham Power launched the initiative in 2000 with a vision based on 2 Chron. 7:14. But some are wondering if all the petitions are making a difference.

Indeed, Doug Stringer, founder of Somebody Cares America, gets asked why we haven’t seen the fulfillment of 2 Chron. 7:14 in the wake of national days of prayer, global days of prayer and various other prayer movements going on in the world. Why hasn’t God healed the land? And did it do any good for millions of people around the world to pray this past weekend? Is the Global Day of Prayer worth the effort?

“Even if 500 million people were to join in and only a million people desperately cried out to God, yes, it’s worth it,” Stringer says. “The point is we need passionate, desperate prayer. Man cannot do or fix what only God can.”

Stringer’s spiritual grandfather, English Christian evangelist and author Leonard Ravenhill, once told him this: God doesn’t answer prayer. He answers desperate prayer.

“The reality is we need a desperation for the presence of God and that has been lacking. We’ve had a lot of shallow platitudes and religious incantations. We try to program prayer rather than prayer being a lifestyle,” Stringer says. “That being said, as we put our hearts into these corporate agreements there is a corporate release I believe God moves on. There is a desperation and it is becoming a groundswell in the hearts of people.”