Pray for Bible Access: Hearing God Speak

Having scriptures is crucial: Scripture is the authority for believers in every gospel movement. Even in non-literate cultures, where it is shared through audio recordings or oral storytelling, it is crucial for guiding believers in obedience and doctrine.

Great progress has been made in Scripture translation–over 90% of the world’s population have at least the New Testament available to them! Among the FPGs in this prayer guide, all 36 have the NT in an “official school language” they can read if they have been educated into their adult years, and all
but 4 of these languages have the complete Scriptures. However, due to speaking a significantly different dialect, low levels of literacy, and poor distribution of inexpensive scriptures, a large percentage of the population of these FPGs don’t actually have access to Scripture.
Being primarily oral communicators, oral Scriptures in a FPGs heart language is essential for the gospel to be heard, understood and for heart transformation to occur–27 of these 36 FPGs have a complete oral Bible in their heart language or mother tongue!

Pray for Literacy: A Bridge to Hope

The benefits of literacy are many: Literacy creates opportunities to learn and develop skills that will help people provide for their family and bring social and economic development to their community. It can benefit health, significantly decrease infant mortality rates and help people gain access to education and government programs. Whole communities can be raised out of poverty by becoming literate in their own language and/or trade languages. And last, but not least, it enables people to read the scriptures. Of the 31 largest FPGs, 20 speak Hindi and 3 speak Urdu, very similar languages.

Great progress has been made: Only 12% of the world’s people could read in 1820, and now 86% can read. Yet, the poorest people are often the least educated and least literate. Over 75% of the world’s 781 million illiterate adults live in South Asia, West Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa and most are women. With few written things in their language, even those who can read often don’t read well.

Blessing families with literacy: Adult literacy is low in many of the largest FPGs and could be a way to bless families. Training in how to train adults quickly to read their own language is available with primers for all the languages of the 31 largest FPG’s at literacyevangelism.org. These primers can also help expat workers learn to read the languages they are learning in Frontier People Groups.

Pray for many workers to gain the vision of using adult literacy training as a bridge into FPGs. Pray for local believers to be trained to teach literacy to their own people. Pray for many families to be blessed as the mothers and fathers, and other family members, learn to read and learn to love the scriptures.

Many of these large groups have translation work done but it is out of date and there are few other resources in their language. Modern translations for the FPGs are being updated by GIFT: www.gifttransforms.org/. For each of the FPGs we have included whether that group has written and oral Scriptures. And for a complete list of Bible translations and resources go to: joshuaproject.net/languages or find.bible/languages/.

Pray for translations, audio and oral Bibles and other resources to be completed, particularly among peoples who are non-literate or oral communicators within each of the FPGs. Pray God’s Word and other resources to be made known and acquired by those seeking them. Pray for each person to find the Word of God in their own heart language and to understand and apply it. Pray for God’s Word to spread rapidly and be honored by all. Pray for many to base their lives on Jesus and his Word, being obedient doers, not forgetful hearers. Ask God to exalt his Word among every Frontier People Group through having modern language Scriptures they can understand by reading and/or listening by 2025 (2 Th. 3:1; Eph. 4:16).

Faith comes by hearing God’s Word and
transformation comes by obeying it.