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δέομαι

7 Days of Prayer: Sunday, 11 to 17 October, 2026

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Each day’s prayer entry is drawn from this week’s headlines, noted in my Weekly Roundup. For each we provide four prayers drawn directly from Scripture, just to give some ideas about how to pray. You can pray along with us with these, or freely as the Spirit leads you to pray.

11th Oct. On 4 September a special police force raided a humanitarian institute 25 kilometres east of Oran, where Christians had met in a side building since their chapel was sealed by court order in 2021. Middle East Concern reports that twelve women and men were interrogated, the men into the early hours, and that police took their identity papers, phones, and every piece of Christian literature on the premises. They will probably be charged with "holding non-Muslim worship without permission," which could bring two to five years in prison. Of the 47 churches of the Église Protestante d'Algérie, all but one have been sealed or forced closed since 2017. On a Sunday when most of us will simply walk into church, we pray for the twelve as they wait for a court date, and for the one public church still open.

Twelve phones sit in a police office near Oran, and twelve names sit on a file. To another small, pressed church You said, "Don't be afraid of the things which you are about to suffer." We pray that the twelve would wait for their court date without fear, and stay faithful whatever the judge decides. (Revelation 2:10)

The police carried out every Bible and booklet in the building. Paul wrote from his chains that "God's word isn't chained," and we pray it is so in Algeria. May what was taken from the shelves stay written on these twelve hearts, and may the officers who leaf through the confiscated pages meet You there. (2 Timothy 2:9)

This morning many of us will walk through an unlocked door and sit down without thinking about it. You tell us to "remember those who are in bonds, as bound with them." Let us carry the twelve into our worship today, and keep praying for them by name in the weeks before they stand in court. (Hebrews 13:3)

One public church of forty-seven still has its doors open. You know its works, and You speak of "an open door, which no one can shut" to a church with "a little power." We pray that this last door stays open, and that the sealed churches of Algeria would one day open again too. (Revelation 3:8)

12th. Clalit Health Services, Israel's largest health fund, has looked at the children and teenagers among its five million members in the three years since October 7. Their psychiatric emergency visits have more than doubled, up 121 percent on the level before the attack, while among adults there was no real change. Anxiety diagnoses among Israeli children are up 40 to 70 percent, and pediatricians' referrals to mental-health care are up by half. Among children evacuated from towns in the south, prescriptions for a bedwetting medicine have risen by nearly half. Followers of Jesus are a small fraction of Israel's Jewish population. We pray for Israel's children and teenagers, carrying fears too heavy for their age, and for the One who binds up the broken-hearted to meet them.

Somewhere tonight a twelve-year-old in Israel will not fall asleep unless a parent sits by the bed. You said, "As one whom his mother comforts, so will I comfort you." We pray for that kind of comfort for children too frightened to explain why, and for the mothers and fathers who sit up with them. (Isaiah 66:13)

Among children from the towns of the south, more are wetting the bed than before the war began. We pray Your promise over them: "You shall not be afraid of the terror by night." May the sirens fade from their dreams, and may the pediatricians and counsellors who see them have the time and skill to help them heal. (Psalm 91:5)

Jesus was indignant when children were kept away from Him: "Allow the little children to come to me!" We pray that Israel's anxious children and teenagers would meet Jesus as the One who welcomes them, Israel's own Messiah and the Saviour of the world, and find in Him a safety that no shelter could give them. (Mark 10:14)

The followers of Jesus in Israel are few, and many of them are parents carrying the same fears at home. We ask the God of all comfort to comfort them, so that they "may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction": the anxious child next door, the classmate who has stopped talking. (2 Corinthians 1:4)

13th. Six months into a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, the bombing has not stopped, and The New Humanitarian reports "it isn't clear who will return and when." More than 341,000 people remain displaced, most of them Shia families from the south, and 68 villages behind Israel's "yellow line" are occupied, 24 of them levelled. From Chakra, Haidar Koteish, 36, points to the burned fields where his family grew wheat in Houla: "Everyone is a farmer here, even the doctors, teachers, and mechanics." Youssef Cheaito, a 64-year-old beekeeper who left 500 hives behind in al-Tiri, says being taken from his land "is like being cut down, like a tree." We pray for the fighting to end and the displaced to go home, and for the churches and movements serving neighbours who, in one woman's words, "have nowhere else to go."

Six months into a ceasefire, the bombs still fall on south Lebanon. You are the God who "makes wars cease to the end of the earth" and "breaks the bow." We pray that the strikes and the shooting would stop on both sides of the yellow line, so that families in Chakra can start the road home. (Psalm 46:9)

Youssef says that losing his land is like being cut down, like a tree. We have no quick answer for him. Jesus said, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." We pray for that blessing on the families of Houla and al-Tiri, who are grieving their fields as well as their homes. (Matthew 5:4)

In the south the doctors, teachers and mechanics were all farmers too, and this year nobody sowed. We pray for the seasons they have lost, and that those who "sow in tears will reap in joy," going out again with seed for sowing and coming home with their sheaves. (Psalm 126:5-6)

The Samaritan saw a man beaten on the road, "was moved with compassion," and took him to an inn. We pray that Lebanon's churches and the movements beside them would do the same for Shia neighbours with nowhere else to go: binding wounds, paying for rooms, and staying long enough to be trusted. (Luke 10:33-34)

14th. Maharashtra's new anti-conversion law defines "allurement" so broadly that Todd Nettleton of The Voice of the Martyrs USA warns even a church's coffee and doughnuts could qualify: "they can point to that as an allurement." Some 4,000 Mumbai churches now have worshippers sign forms saying they came of their own free will. The main court challenge, in the Bombay High Court, was filed not by Christians but by a 70-year-old Islamic scholar. We pray for courage and fairness in India's courts, for the Muslim scholar and the Christians who now stand on the same side, and for churches that keep their doors, and their coffee pots, open.

The judges of the Bombay High Court will decide what "allurement" means for millions of people. You spoke of the one "who rules over men righteously, who rules in the fear of God." We pray for that righteousness on the bench, and for a ruling that protects every Indian's freedom to choose his own faith. (2 Samuel 23:3)

A seventy-year-old Islamic scholar has gone to court on behalf of Christians as well as Muslims. We thank You for him, and pray he would be heard as he does what Scripture asks: "Open your mouth for the mute, in the cause of all who are left desolate." Keep him well through a long case. (Proverbs 31:8-9)

In four thousand Mumbai churches, worshippers now sign their names to prove they came freely. "Stand firm therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free." We pray that no form, register or police visit would frighten them away, and that they would sign without shame or fear. (Galatians 5:1)

Your invitation was always free: "Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price." We pray that Maharashtra's churches would keep the coffee on and the doors open, and that their neighbours would see a welcome with no hook in it and come to the One who gives Himself away. (Isaiah 55:1)

15th. Turkmenistan has announced an electronic visa which, under a 2025 change to its migration law, should not need a prior invitation, the letter tourists obtain by buying tour packages that can cost thousands of dollars. Peter Leonard writes that it "exists more clearly on paper than in practice": the portal asks applicants to sign in but gives no way to create an account. The country has gestured at openness before: a 2022 proposal for a special visa regime at the Caspian resort of Avaza came to nothing. It remains one of the most closed and least-reached nations on earth, where the few Turkmen who follow Jesus mostly keep their faith hidden. We pray that if the door is real, it will be used well, for the sake of those believers and the Turkmen who have never heard.

A sign-in page with no way to sign up is a door with no handle. You said, "Knock, and it will be opened for you." We pray that Turkmenistan's e-visa would become real in practice and not only on paper, so that ordinary visitors can come in without buying their way through a tour. (Matthew 7:7-8)

Paul saw a man begging, "Come over into Macedonia and help us," and he went at once. We pray that if Turkmenistan opens, You would send the right people through: patient workers who come to serve, and who will not put hidden believers at risk through careless zeal. (Acts 16:9-10)

Most Turkmen believers keep their faith out of sight. You promise "the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places." We pray for these hidden believers as Your treasure: kept safe from informants, strengthened in their own homes, and known by name to You even where no one else may know them. (Isaiah 45:3)

Turkmenistan is one of the places where Christ has hardly been named. We pray the promise Paul carried: "They will see, to whom no news of him came. They who haven't heard will understand." May herders, students and grandmothers who have never heard the Good News hear it in Turkmen. (Romans 15:20-21)

16th. In March a Chinese company launched DeepZang, China's first Tibetan-language AI model, trained on nearly 70 million Tibetan texts and more than 30,500 hours of audio across the language's three main dialects. At a seminar in Hohhot earlier this month, its founder, Tenzin Norbu, spoke of using technology to "foster ethnic interaction and integration." It follows a new Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress, in force since July, which the South China Morning Post says lays the legal foundation for assimilating minority groups. The tool was built for the state's purposes, yet it can now listen and answer in the mother tongue of one of the least-reached peoples on earth. Lamin Sanneh called Christianity "at home in every mother tongue"; we pray for Tibetans living under that pressure, and for Scripture to reach them in their own.

At Pentecost the crowds were astonished: "We hear them speaking in our languages the mighty works of God!" We pray for that same astonishment among Tibetans in Amdo, Kham and Ü-Tsang, hearing the Good News in their grandmothers' dialect as if it had always belonged to them. (Acts 2:11)

DeepZang was built to draw Tibetans closer to the state. Joseph told his brothers, "You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to save many people alive." Whatever its makers intend, we pray that a tool built to absorb a people would become a road for Your word to reach them. (Genesis 50:20)

Since July a new law has pressed Tibetans to become something other than themselves. "The LORD, you have heard the desire of the humble." We pray that You will hear the families who want their children to keep their language and their name, and "judge the fatherless and the oppressed." (Psalm 10:17-18)

Thirty thousand hours of Tibetan voices went into one machine. "How will they hear without a preacher? And how will they preach unless they are sent?" We pray for translators, recorders and Tibetan believers sent to put Scripture into the ears of their own people, in their own tongue. (Romans 10:14-15)

17th. Japan's National Police Agency counted 76,941 people found dead alone in their homes in 2025, and 208 of them had lain undiscovered for more than a year. A government working group calls the cases found more than a week after death koritsushi, "isolated death," and among them men outnumber women nearly four to one. Japanese need relationships, and in a country where the elderly now outnumber children in nearly every prefecture, the Gospel will travel along friendships more than programmes. Some are also reaching Japanese outside Japan: last week while teaching Perspectives, I met a couple who have a ministry to thousands of diaspora Japanese in Texas. We pray for Japan's church, under one percent of the nation and small enough to know people by name, to become the friend the lonely have been missing.

No one came for more than a year. Jesus said that not one sparrow "falls on the ground apart from your Father." We grieve that no one in Japan noticed, and we take some comfort that You did. You saw each of the 208 when they fell, and none of them was unseen by You. (Matthew 10:29)

Scripture names the danger exactly: "woe to him who is alone when he falls, and doesn't have another to lift him up." We pray for Japan's older men living alone in apartments and small towns, that someone would notice the mail piling up and knock on the door while there is still time. (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10)

Japan's church is small enough to know people by name. We pray it would be what Proverbs describes, "a friend who sticks closer than a brother": believers who visit the same neighbour every week for years, and through whom the lonely meet the Friend who will never leave them unfound. (Proverbs 18:24)

Thousands of Japanese in Texas live far from family and from their own language. We thank You for the couple serving them, and pray that many would hear "you are no longer strangers and foreigners," find the household of God, and carry that belonging back home to Japan. (Ephesians 2:19)

Where do these prayer requests come from? This is a weekly guide to beseeching (δέομαι/deomai, Matthew 9) the Lord of the Harvest for the unreached peoples and places of the world. AI helps me create this, using the Weekly Roundup, my notes, prayer suggestions from the field, prayer guides, past deomai prayer requests, and pre-approved Scriptures. I read through the whole issue before publication. If you're interested in the longer Roundup (out each Friday), click the link below to see a sample.

Check out the free Weekly Roundup, out each Friday