Pray for the Poor: Addressing Root Problems
Pray that the Lord would give wisdom to workers among the poor, giving them insight into root problems and long-term solutions. Pray that the poor will experience God’s great love for their families through workers.
Some of the largest Frontier People Groups are very poor, though others are wealthy or mixed.
Causes of poverty are quite complex, and attempts at development often fail. A 2021 United Nations report showed that poverty levels vary immensely between different ethnic groups in a country. For instance, in India five out of six poor people were from lower tribes or castes. Poverty levels were assessed based on health, education, housing, clean water and other standards of living. (https://hdr.undp.org/en/2021-MPI, https://stratus.earth/)
Great progress has been made with the arrival of electricity, transportation, cell phones, and help with water supply and health. In just the last twenty years more than a billion people left the most impoverished living conditions behind, and the number of people living on more than 10 dollars per day has increased by 900 million. (http://iresearch.worldbank.org/PovcalNet/povDuplicateWB.aspx)
But, even though extreme poverty has decreased, many people still go hungry, suffer from poor health, lack education and live in substandard conditions, and Covid lockdowns have made things worse. 85% of the world lives on less than $30 per day, two-thirds lives on less than $10 per day, and 10% live on less than $1.90 per day. And what they spend their money on makes a huge difference. (https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty, https://urgentneeds.org/)
Drug addiction results in poverty and sex trafficking as addicted families try to survive. Many people in Frontier People Groups struggle with addiction to alcohol or drugs, consuming the few resources of the poor people. Women in the slums of N. Africa and India both said “alcohol is our worst problem.” Under Western dominance Afghanistan rose to produce over 90% of the world’s illegal heroin, with an addiction rate of 8% of their own population, also high in nearby Iran. Since the Taliban took over in August of 2021, they have denounced the “narco-state” and banned opium growing and set up rehab clinics for adults and children, as the Qur’an bans intoxicating substance use. This desire provides an opportunity of shared concern for workers.