Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to the Love Justice Podcast where we share insights behind real impact in the fight against human trafficking. Today we are diving into how prayer and fasting have repeatedly preceded breakthrough and protection in the field. I'm joined by John Molyneux, founder and CEO of Love justice, who has spent decades on the front lines of anti trafficking work. And we're also joined by Nikki, lji's spiritual director and absolute prayer powerhouse, in my opinion, who champions Love Justice's prayer initiatives and rhythms that are found are the foundation to everything we do. Together, we are going to share some of the stories of breakthrough, the rhythms that make prayer central to our work, and practical takeaways for anyone wanting to make prayer a driving force in their own life or their ministry.
Nikki and John, welcome to the Love justice podcast.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:00:57] Speaker C: Hi, nice to meet you.
[00:00:59] Speaker A: Guys are quiet. Tough crowd this morning.
I think maybe to warm us up a little bit, let's start with how you were both called to the work of Love justice, especially since I think both of your stories are specifically connected to prayer in your calling. John, why don't you start us off and then, Nikki, you can share after. John?
[00:01:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm going to answer. I'm going to tell the story a little bit differently. I'm going to tell it well. I'm going to tell it as a story of my relationship with God, because that really is what it is. And probably the best way to tell it.
I would start with an incident that happened to me when I was very young, where on Christmas Eve I was just living in all the happiness, joy, peace and comfort of a little kid sort of view of Christmas, you know, presents under the tree and, you know, just the magic of Christmas and the atmosphere and the stories. And driving home from church on Christmas Eve evening, we saw a homeless guy just walking alone in the snow. And it really affected me a lot. And I went home and I remember going and praying and asking God to take something away from me to give it to this man. And so now I'm going to fast forward. I'm 18 and I'm not a Christian. I kind of reflexively rejected the faith of my household just by reasoning that I was born in a Christian home, somebody else was born in a Muslim or Hindu home. So there's no reason for me to just go on believing it any more than there is for them. But I believed in God and kind of had a relationship with God. And one day I went for a walk and I, I very specifically told God, use my life however you want.
And it was About a couple weeks after that that I went. A friend brought me to a youth group and I responded to an altar call and I began a journey of becoming a Christian. And then my freshman year in college, I went to California Lutheran University and I was playing football there, but I was becoming a more serious Christian. And I started looking into the idea of potentially going to a Christian university. And so I found Taylor University and I went out for a visit and was considering it, but I didn't know anyone there. I was really getting settled in at Cal Lutheran.
And it's one of the only times in my life that I've made a major decision in response to an inner prompting of God that was contrary to my inclinations. And so I went to, into this prayer chapel to pray because I had to make a decision about whether I was going to go to Taylor. And I felt God say, go to Taylor. And that was against what I wanted to do at the time.
And so I did. And I ended up at Taylor University, had a great experience there. And it was out of my experience at Taylor that I, you know, and my friends at Taylor, you know, a group was going into Nepal and you guys have maybe heard the story from there, I ended up going to Nepal. And then a couple years later, when Peace Children Home was starting and Michael Hara, who's now the chairperson of our board, was really involved in starting it, he called me and said, I'm going back to Nepal. And I got a one way ticket thinking I'd be home by Christmas. And when I got back to Nepal and saw the contrast between the street children and children in that home, that's when I just felt like, this is what I was made to do. This is what I want to do with my life. And so I stayed and spent my first Christmas alone in Kathmandu. And it was that Christmas that I first reflected back and remembered that incident that I just told you about.
And I'll say one other thing, like, going to Taylor was a hard decision for me. All my friends from high school, we had won a state championship together, played football together. And then everyone went all around the country and then everyone their sophomore year transferred back to play football together in our hometown and lived together. And it was like the dream.
And every time I would leave Helena, Montana, my hometown, and my friends are all, you know, living together and playing football together.
It was, it was, I wept. You know, it was, it was really hard. But I later realized that's what prepared me to leave behind my family and friends and everyone I knew and just move to Kathmandu and live there on my own. So yeah, all of it. That's kind of how my involvement with Love justice really did flow out of in moments, these decisions that ultimately were born out of prayer.
[00:05:49] Speaker A: What I'm hearing from you, John, is like, I've known you to be so like non emotional about living overseas and now I know that you did have that, but it was like, it was a long time ago.
Sorry, that's not very nice of me to make a joke about this, about
[00:06:03] Speaker C: that, but that he, he had to shower in cold water for how many years before you got hot water?
17 years?
[00:06:15] Speaker B: No, not 17 years.
I'm not, I'm not exactly sure. I don't even, I can't even trace the timeline very well. But it. It be a couple or a few years or something like that.
[00:06:27] Speaker C: I remember when I came to to in Kathmandu and like it was so cold and it was colder inside than outside sometimes. And I was like, that's something John, that you just had cold showers all these times. You end up a notch in my, in my books.
[00:06:43] Speaker A: Yeah. Nikki, let's hear from you. I. Your story is also equally quite compelling, in my opinion.
[00:06:53] Speaker C: Yeah, so my story, I watched a video about human trafficking. It was played at our church. And I think I was, I mean it must have been close on 20 years ago now.
And I never heard of human trafficking. I didn't know it existed. And I was utterly like floored by this. And I thought, you know, that to be raped was for me one of the most horrific things that could ever happen to me. And then to think of it happening daily for an indiscriminate amount of time just never ending by multiple people was just horrific.
And I sort of let that simmer. I didn't really know what to do with it. It just sort of put it in my heart and sort of maybe, maybe prayed about it. I can't even remember. But a few years later I was having a.
I was praying with. With a couple of friends.
We used to pray before our.
We all used to meet on a Wednesday night before life, you know, like life group. And I used to pray with these people before and then sometimes we PR during and this friend of mine, Chris, invited this guy called Jeremiah who came from the Congo and he was, you know, I'm from a. Our church was like a kind of a Baptist. It was non denominational, but it was largely led by Baptists. And this man like prayed like I'd never experienced. And he prayed for me and I'd never experienced prophecy I'd never experienced like someone speaking to me from God.
And he prayed for me and I just felt this incredible power and warmth on my body. And I actually was like a struggle to breathe a little bit. I was like, wow, something big is happening right now.
And he had this image for me and it was me sitting at a desk with this lamp over the map of Africa.
And he sort of explained the vision to me. And there was this fire that started in South Africa and started moving all the way up into Africa.
And it was an incredibly profound moment. Like I knew something very big was happening because it was not something that I had. You know, like it was just a very supernatural experience. The presence of God was very tangible to me.
And I remember that so clearly. And I just knew in my heart that that whatever it was, this fire was going to be a part of prayer. It was going to be started by prayer, sustained by prayer. I didn't know what it was. I thought it was actually just going to be in the first place, just a prayer movement. I remember even trying to like start prayer movements. 24, seven prayer movements which just never got off the ground.
But I, round about that same time, I had started getting really sick. I had started developing chronic fatigue. Just didn't know what was wrong with me. Just incredibly tired. Age of sort of like 28. Went to many, many doctors, tried many things, not much sort of succeeded.
And I got to a point where I had to stop working.
So I had, in early 20, 2012, I stopped working. And at the same time we were actually planting a church, my husband and I with another couple.
And I wasn't working. And I just met this girl through this church plant who was doing this.
She was working in the human trafficking space. And that sort of conversation just started emerging again. And I started thinking about human trafficking and now I wasn't working.
And this burning of my heart just started wanting to really do something about it. Like John talks about the brokenhearted anointing. And I think that's what, what was happening in me.
So I just started praying into it. I had experienced through my journey of, of seeking healing that the Holy Spirit was just doing amazing things in me. Just healing me of, of thought patterns and mindsets and just things that, you know, as I, as I went and, and see seeked him for healing, he was just showing me just a miss in my life.
And I was like, I want to give this away. This is what I want to do. I want to. And how, you know, the Holy Spirit is the person that can Heal all these victims of trafficking. Like, you know, they've been through all the horrors. Why don't I set up a safe house, you know, that can help people and we can minister them to them and the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit can heal them of things that, you know, talk therapy or whatever just is not able to do.
And so I just started praying into it. And I. I mean, I was really sick at this point. I was in bed a lot of the time. I had very little energy, but I just prayed and I prayed for the safe house. I prayed for the people, I prayed for the money, I prayed for the strategy.
And as I prayed, I started talking to people and I just would, you know, like, I'm like, oh, let me. I think I need a safe house. Let me go speak to this person about it and this person about it. And as I did that exploring, I realized that, firstly, I was not cut out to lead a safe house. I just didn't. It's not how God has built me.
And secondly, that actually what we need is not to help people post that is obviously needed, but rather, if I was going to dedicate my time to this, I wanted to make sure it was the most effective thing we need to stop people from being trafficked in the first place.
So I did some research, some Internet research, and I literally came across Tiny Hands website and it outlined the strategy of prevention. That for me was just amazing.
And so I just emailed like, info at lovejustice at that point, Tiny Hands and John replied to me, I think within two days, which was pretty amazing in any sense, you know, just that the CEO of the organization would respond to a request like that.
And John and I started talking.
But it was many. It was probably a year of praying before that point of just like, I didn't have any energy. I had no experience in human trafficking. I did not know anything about it, but I was just responding to what God had placed on my heart in prayer. And I prayed for, like, the people. I prayed for the strategy, I prayed for the energy, I prayed for the money. Like, I would sit there and I'm like, lord, this is. I'm going to need a lot of money for this. You know, let me pray for this and pray for that. And it was just this amazing journey that I had with God of, like, partnering with him in his heart for justice and seeing how I could be a part of it and what he wanted me to do and seeking him and trying to figure out, like, what is my role in this, you know, and I had so little energy, but I knew that, like, prayer was really powerful.
And it was incredible how after that point, God just brought all these amazing things together. We got permission to operate in an international airport, which was just unbelievable because God had brought this person who was a Christian, who had a heart for human trafficking to be in that position of power. And I was put in touch with that person and was able to find, you know, have this meeting. And we got this permission, and I found tiny hands who, you know, at that point had some.
Had this desire. I mean, you guys were a part of it. You were praying for, you know, the ability to give what you'd done away. Like, in Nepal, I think you'd reached maybe 25 stations, and at each point, an additional station wasn't bringing as much impact as, you know, you had hoped.
And so you were like, we want to give it away and can we do this somewhere else? And I was the answer to that prayer, and you guys were the answer to my prayer. And God just moved these pieces, like, that could never have been orchestrated by humankind in any shape or form. He moved them in response to your prayers and our prayers and the prayers of the donors and prayers of that border control guy in, you know, Otambo Airport. He was like, I don't know what to do with this human trafficking issue. I need help, you know, and it was just.
It was the first time I had seen the power of prayer to bring together something that was so otherworldly and couldn't have happened on my own. I was so weak. I had so little energy. But God did something so big, and it's something that changed my faith completely because I was like, he is so real, and he is working and he's powerful, and he wants to partner with me.
And I saw for the first time the power behind something of God compared to something that I had tried, like, I shared with you. I tried to do these, like, 24, seven prayers, and I tried to get all these things, and it just ran out of energy, and nobody joined. And. Oh. And I just was. But this thing that God had built, you know, had this power and this force behind it, and. And I could just coast on the. On the coattails, what God was doing.
So it was really an amazing, amazing journey with God and one that just set me on a different trajectory on my faith completely.
[00:16:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:51] Speaker B: If I could just jump in here, Hannah.
[00:16:53] Speaker A: Like,
[00:16:55] Speaker B: at the time that Nikki reached out to me, and I just.
We had intercepted, like, 10,000 people, and we had failed. We had several failed Pilots recently in Bangladesh and in Thailand, and we didn't know how to scale, and Nikki would.
South Africa would end up being our fourth country. We had Bangladesh, India, and Nepal. We were eventually able to get Bangladesh to be effective. But the process I went through with Nikki, you know, she became what we call a champion. She was our original point of contact who sort of put together the board and is the chair of the board. And the process I went through with her became a template for how we select champions. And now someone besides me, Sean Mullins, is in charge of that, who does a much better job of it than I do.
But now here we are. We've moved here. We live in South Africa now, and we have intercepted over 65,000 people in Africa, most of them in Africa.
And so, yeah, Nikki, you don't know this. And to our listeners, we at Love justice, we do some legacy things where we recently made a video kind of honoring Nikki. And one part of what we try to do for people, their legacy is to create, to give them a plaque or something. And so, Nikki, Nikki, I think you've seen this, but I don't know if you knew what it was. I'm gonna share my screen here.
We created this painting. We have it here at the office. We've ordered it, and we're just waiting for Nikki to come visit to receive it.
We shared it the other day. Was it a huddle?
Where we made a video honoring Nikki and her legacy and shared this, and we love to give it to her.
And I heard about this. I haven't actually. I don't think I've even spoken to you about it, Nikki, but that you sent a voice note to, I think, Kirk saying, like, wow, that was so amazing when you shared about Jeremiah's prophecy.
That.
And so, yeah, the whole thing is just one big constant, one big just set of reminders of the ways that God answers prayer and orchestrates our lives?
[00:19:14] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I don't think I had heard that prophecy, actually.
Like, I don't think I had heard that prophecy that Jeremiah had.
Yeah. Prayed over your life. And it's just crazy thinking about, like, that is. That is true right now. Like, there are these Love Justice. There's Love justice presence in, like, all these different countries in Africa. And like John mentioned, we were only in three countries in Asia before connecting with you. And you were God's means of, like, opening the door to Africa. And we've piloted in over 25. I want to say, maybe even 30 countries. Right now. We're in 17 countries, but just yeah, like, blown away. Yeah. I could go a bunch of different directions, but I think, like, one of the powerful parts of prophecy is actually the reflection in hindsight of, like, oh, my gosh, that is. That is so true. And also, like, Jeremy's been praying for the work of Love Justice a lot longer than I. Than I knew he was.
And what I hope, like, just to. Just to set this conversation up, is that more than anything else, what I hope listeners experience is just a stirring of faith of, like, through these stories that we're about to share and some of the information and testimonies that just something would stir in the hearts of our listeners. Be like, man, God is so much better than. Than I even fully understood or knew, or like, there's so much more. Or what would it look like to take this faith and build on it in my own life and just acknowledging and experiencing the power of God because He has shown up for us in such crazy ways that I just don't think we've really had a platform to really share about. And that's what I hope we get to do. Just a glimpse of today.
And so, John, I think just to set us up well for that conversation.
You have often talked about how prayer should be central to all that we do, not just in our personal lives, but also you've. You've taken that principle and really applied it to the Love justice culture. Can you just share a little bit about what that actually looks like in practice at Love Justice?
[00:21:36] Speaker B: Yeah, well, to go back, I would start with my, like, it's, It's. It's just individuals praying. You know, I think what, what, what it means is we want to be a culture of people who pray individually and on their own. And, and there definitely, like, there were a lot of years where I actually would maintain these prayer lists of the specific things that you're praying for. And I've gone through. I've. I've gone through those before. And, and you can just see, like, the history of the organization comes out of those lists. In. In there would be a place where I would record answered prayers.
And everything that happened that brought Love justice into being is kind of there in those prayer lists, in a list of answered prayers. And not that I've been particularly faithful in praying. I haven't. And I have not been faithful in praying.
I've been 1% faithful in praying. But out of that 1% faithfulness, God has brought, has responded with 100% of his faithfulness. And so, yeah, so, I mean, from 2009, when a prayer initiative called Project 58, named after the scripture in Isaiah 58 that tells us to loose the change of injustice, set the captives free, break every yoke, and there's these promises that follow out of. So that Project 58 prayer and fasting initiative. In 2009, we went from intercepting one or two potential victims each month to more than 50 and over a hundred in a matter of, I think two months, you know, like three.
Two months. Actually, three months before we were over 100.
So.
And, you know, now we have what we call Project 58 core process. Nikki is our spiritual director and she. One of her roles is to mobilize prayer. She prays for staff regularly. She has regular prayer meetings with staff and just prays for them. She does it with me and many others. It's a voluntary thing that people sign up for. And I don't really even know who is taking advantage of it, but I know I am, and it's been a huge blessing on my life.
And we have spiritual directors in our field. Part of their job is to mobilize prayer. And we have corporate prayer at Love justice once a week, it's 30 minutes where we just get together and pray. And it's been really powerful. And fasting is something.
We encourage everyone to fast on Wednesdays. Again, we don't really track who does what or whether it really happens. I know I have not done it that much recently, but.
Yeah, even just the way we conduct meetings, meetings begin in prayer. We have a beginning of the meeting. Prayer that is kind of like a template to make sure that we're covering some things that most meetings, I would say, begin with.
And.
Yeah, so it's just trying to. But for all this, all the things that we do, we're constantly becoming stale.
We're constantly forgetting and needing to remind ourselves of these things and revitalize our commitment to prayer.
Because it's just something that.
Yeah, I mean, I think as. As humans, we live in this natural physical world and. And. But we're called to believe in the supreme. The supreme reality of the invisible world. And.
And I think we're. We're still growing in the faith that. That by which we would do that.
[00:24:50] Speaker A: Yeah. And we're going to get to talk about some of. A little bit more in depth about some of the rhythms that you mentioned. But I think before we do that, I want to talk about some of the most profound breakthroughs that we've had as an organization and that we've seen in this work as a result of prayer and fasting. And I think, you know, all of us kind of have a primary breakthrough that we think of when we, when we think of this question.
So John, why don't you go first and then we'll kind of. Yeah, maybe I'll share mine and Nikki, you can share yours.
[00:25:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
So you can see my screen here. This is the original Project 58 prayer initiative in May of 2009. And you can see how God came through in such a big way. And then we don't have this on the same scale, but you can see like we tried to put it on the same scale here. We made it really small.
If you see there on the left is that map. And we went on intercepting around 100 or so potential victims. And then those two red months, one thing is we had a leaders gathering. Nikki and another South African staff, Michelle came, came to Nepal and there was just this like there was this excited chatter about prayer and the power of prayer and that's. And, and we kind of end fasting in particular. And then, and then you can see there In June of 2018 the South Africa team starts praying three times per week. And then shortly after that we see this just spike in impact and, and then we start a weekly prayer update which is something that we send out to this day. That's what informs the prayer times. In fact, even on the Searchlight engagement page that I have up in my screen, there's the things that we're praying for. Prayer requests are scrolling across that.
And I send out a weekly prayer update asking for prayer.
And then some time goes by and then okay, so here's where we have the 15 spiritual care coordinators and part of their job is to ignite prayer. And then we see this huge massive spike. And then we have, we begin our corporate prayer calls. The one, the Kenya. So spiritual care coordinator, he gets this image from God to pray first for 50, which seemed impossible for Kenya at the time. And then 300 intercepts per month.
And then you just see this explosive growth of impact. So it's just been again and again like God has over and over again shown us the amazing power of prayer that yeah, it's almost something that we can't even.
[00:27:29] Speaker C: A 17 year old girl was intercepted in Nepal. Gun Jain Hall.
[00:27:32] Speaker B: Sorry, that's our engagement page now where we get live reports about intercepting happening in real time.
So yeah, but I know Kenya now. I mean they first prayed for 300 and now they're regularly over 500 I believe.
So yeah, God has, I think you
[00:27:54] Speaker A: see a pattern of that you see. Sorry, you see a pattern of that. We're particularly in the beginning with P58, just to, like, put numbers to what you were talking about. Like, I think in Nepal, you were getting what, like, maybe 10 intercepts a month, like in the. The teens or something really low like that. And you guys just had the sense, like, man, we know that there's more.
Yeah, one, two. Like, you knew. You just knew. You're like, I. We know that there's more.
Yeah, 61 in the three years. Is that right? Yeah. And then you guys had that prompting for prayer and fasting, and it was like, you got 61 the next month or something crazy like that, like, after. And then it just kept growing and growing, and that kind of set the tone. And then. Then I think, you know, there's a little bit of a lull, like you said, like, we're at risk of going stale all the time.
And I just remember. I can't. I can't remember exactly the conversation, but we were having a. We were in. In the very, very beginnings of expansion. So we had been working in South Africa. We. We were still working in Asia, and we are specifically trying to expand into the rest of. Of Africa. Um, which is cool, even coming off the heels of. Of Nikki's story.
And I can't remember who said it, it might have been you, John, but we just. We just kept hitting a wall with the pilots. Like, they weren't getting a lot of intercepts. It was kind of like a very pivotal moment for us in our history of, like, are we going to grow or are we not? Like, we don't know. And it was either you or maybe one of our South African staff at the time.
I can't. Michelle. Michelle Butterworth is. And she was just like, we need to pray. We need to, like, stop everything that we're doing right now, and we need to pray. And that was the momentum that kind of started, reignited that Wednesday prayer and fasting for us. And it was crazy. Like, a couple months later, we looked at the intercept numbers of those pilots, and it had, like, you mentioned it shot through the roof. And we were all like, oh, my gosh. Which is like a side note of, like, how cool that we keep track of the data to then, like, see, our intention was never to, like, measure the effectiveness of prayer, but we just. We have that. That data to show, like, wow, that's really cool.
And then, Nikki, like, I know that you've been mobilizing those spiritual care coordinators for the last three years, like, you have really gone to bat of, like, this is important.
We need this. You've personally trained all of them.
And how cool. Like, I would just. How cool to hear, like, the testimony coming out of Kenya. Like, I'd love for you to just share a little bit more about that, because I think it's such.
I think what it captures, that story of Kenya really captures the broader story of your role, which is, like, you're praying into the tiniest of seeds when no one else is. Is praying into them. And, like, you guys have this sense and you're believing and you're trusting, and it turn, like. And God uses that and turns it into something far more than I think you guys could ever imagine. So. Yeah. Nikki?
[00:30:53] Speaker C: What?
[00:30:53] Speaker A: Like, share a little bit more about that breakthrough. Any other breakthrough that. That sticks out to you as a result of prayer and fasting.
[00:31:01] Speaker C: Yeah, thanks. Yeah. So I think. Yeah, just the.
The great thing about many African Christians is that they are very good at prayer. They are amazing at prayer. I remember when we first launched the spiritual care coordinators. We went to Kenya. You were with us, Hannah.
And we walked into the room that a whole bunch of them had read, had arrived before us, and they were all on their knees, like, praying.
Like, they'd just been, like, just soaking in prayer and interceding. And us little, you know, South Africans and Americans, you know, like, commit half an hour once a week or whatever. They just, like, nighttime prayers, vigils, whatever. They're just so inspiring with their heart of prayer. And Glenn is one of those people. He just. He, like, really commits a lot of time to prayer. He sees it as incredibly important.
He fasts every week for the work. He's the spiritual care coordinator for the team in Kenya.
And in some of those prayer times, the Lord just revealed to him, like, they were really struggling.
They were getting, like, 5, 10, 20 intercepts a month. I mean, I know there were conversations of, like, how we. What are we going to do that here? You know, like, we need to.
Something needs to change.
And at that point, like, he just got this, like, instruction from God, like, to start praying for 50.
And I think he put it up on the wall. And, I mean, his team were, like, they quite embarrassed, actually, about how little support they gave him.
And they sort of laughed at that, thinking, okay, you know, well, good luck, well done. You know, Glenn, that's your job to pray for us, whatever. But he was just steadfast in that. And he was praying for that number 50. And then. And then they reached 50, and then he Was. I think it was actually first two, which is huge. I mean, not many of our stations get 200.
It's huge. It's not a.
Our countries get 200. It's a lot of people.
[00:33:06] Speaker A: It's a big.
[00:33:06] Speaker C: And they had a small team, actually. They weren't like hundreds of monitors. I think they had two or three sites with two monitors at each. So that's a lot of people that they're conversing with and interacting with and finding who are at risk.
And God just did this amazing thing. And then after they reached 300, he was like, we're praying for 500. And actually then I remember talking to him and he said, you know, I said, like, what have you learned from this? And he said, well, when you pray for the big numbers, you got to pray for the capacity to handle them as well. You know, like, that was his takeout. And I just. I think that's been one of the best things that I've, you know, enjoyed about being part of Love justice is the commitment to prayer that comes from the top. So it's led by John, it's led by the leadership. It's like, I remember actually at one point saying to John, I feel like I need to leave Love justice because I feel the Lord is calling me to more prayer. Like, I wanted to just invest more of my time in prayer.
And John said to me, well, why don't you do that with Love Justice? And I was like, can I? He's like, yeah, let's do it. And that's when we started those three week prayer meetings. And we'd pray for an hour. And you know how that changed me?
I think it changed the organization and it set us up for the growth that we've experienced. But it changed me in the most profound ways because I, you know, prayer can be a real slog sometimes. Like, you just like, are. I really don't want to pray. Like, I'd just rather do something else or nothing or whatever.
And when you pray with people, and Michelle was on that team and she's an amazing prayer warrior. Cyan was on that team. God brought these people who had such a heart for prayer that it was when we prayed together, it was like the most amazing time of communion with God and with our brothers and sisters in Christ. And we were crying out for, like, real, you know, like, we pray for a case.
There was this case in South Africa where there was this trafficker who was just.
He was at large people, you know, he was just able to continue trafficking people. We knew about him. There was so much going on in the press about him.
And we were, like, praying, you know, lord, like, bring justice. Like, put this man away so that he can't, you know, hurt more people. And, you know, like, this heartfelt cry of, like, this can't go on, God. Like, it cannot. Like. And we had no power, really, to do anything about it. And.
And this was like. It's. It's a. It's quite a sad story in many senses, but it's.
We were interceding very strongly about this guy, and we.
I don't know how much detail to go in, but this man ended up, like, he was driving from one place to the other, speeding recklessly. I think they said his car was going at about 250ks an hour, and he had a car accident and he died.
I'm not saying that we killed him, but I'm saying there was this crying out for justice. This man was just hurting so many people. And we watched this unfold. Like, how will God bring justice? How will he protect his people? You know? And we know that God gives so many opportunities to people to repent, and so many people.
But this case, this guy just did not seem to want to repent.
And although we were devastated in some senses because we're like, oh, we wish he'd come to know Christ, because we had prayed that as well, you know, and it was just. It's such a journey because you have these huge highs and you have these incredible lows, and you crying out with, like, everything that's in you. You know, the Bible talks like this. You know, this. That you need the Spirit to intercede for you with these, like, the morning of prayer, like that real, like, travail before God where you. Like this. What we see is so against your character and so against what we know to be right and good and perfect. And so God, we need you to intervene, you know, and that Luke 18 passage has always been such a good encouragement to me. He says, you know, will.
You know, in my elect, will cry out day and night until God brings about justice for his elect. And that's been like, one of my driving scriptures, just to keep praying. Like, when you don't see the breakthrough immediately, when you don't see it happening, like, knowing that God is partnering with you. God is moving. God is moving the pieces. God is doing something always in response to prayer.
[00:37:55] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. John, why do you think prayer and fasting preceded a lot of these breakthroughs? And what do you. What does that teach us about God's role in our work, especially since, you know, we recently just had a conversation, a different podcast about injustice and God's sovereignty.
[00:38:16] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I would say when we work, we work, but when we pray, God does. And you know, the story of love justice is a little bit similar to Nikki's story of just being weak, weak, powerless to do the thing that you want to do and then pray and then God doing it. You know, in a sense, like we can't do anything without God. And that really remains true even as we've become an organization that sort of is set up to. We figured out how to scale, etc. And we feel some confidence in our ability to scale. But really if that's almost in danger of being a false confidence because it completely depends upon God. He created all the people. He's the one that called them. And we can't do anything without people who are called by God.
Our mission just relies on that. We need champions who are not getting paid. We don't have a lever other than God moving in people's hearts by which we could hope to start anything. And so, and he's behind everything. You know, like love justice is made up of people that God has called to and broken their hearts about injustice. And so but you know, even in our actions, you know, if we, you know, do something like have a call with a champion and do an onboarding process and teach them, you know, like, we're just these, we're these light touch middlemen, you know, like the real work that's happening, God's already done and doing in their hearts and he's going to continue doing in their hearts. And so, but you know, like, if our mission really is God's will, which I think it is, I think God really does, and I think we can know that God wants to share his love by fighting injustice. You know, he wants to drive the downfall of slavery in the places it's most rampant, then, then we can know and believe that God is, is orchestrating it all. But, but it does kind of depend on our prayers. We need him to work. And when he works, what we're able to accomplish is so much more than we can accomplish without him, which is really nothing.
[00:40:20] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, we talked about this. Like, I think what's, what's really amazing about Nikki specifically is that John, you've taken this idea and you've like put a person behind it to say, like, okay, it's this person's pretty much their full time job to make sure that we are constantly putting ourselves in the position where we are relying on God in this work, and he's the one that's going to make it possible. And we're participating in his justice work. And so, Nikki, that is your role as a spiritual director, is that you champion prayer at Love justice at all levels. Like, we're talking about our corporate prayer meetings, which are twice a week.
You do individual staff prayer. You're doing leadership group prayers. You are doing prayer blitzes over the field team. You're training the spiritual care coordinators in the field. Like, you know, you've got a pretty robust, like, prayer assignment at Love justice that we've also. And, you know, for people who love data, like, try to track also the breakthroughs and the impact of that.
I know that you probably have so many testimonies of just the impact of those rhythms, but if you could just speak to one, like, kind of one profound breakthrough that you've seen connected to those rhythms. And maybe, you know, we've talked a few of, like, on the organizational side, maybe about just individually with just our staff and our teams.
[00:41:55] Speaker C: Yeah.
So, yeah, I have the great privilege of praying with people individually. And, you know, as John mentioned, it's voluntary. They don't have to pray with me.
But, you know, our staff are the people who do this work. You know, they're the ones who are there day in and day out, and they can come across as many obstacles as anyone. And even more, there's a spiritual attack, I think, that comes upon the work of people who are trying to fight injustice.
We are at war, right, with the powers and principalities that, you know, are against the advancement of the kingdom, and that. That includes the kingdom in our own hearts.
So I get to just, yeah, pray with people. And I think I have. I have seen Jesus meet with people in their deepest, most painful moments of their lives and bring life and healing to those places in. In ways that nothing else can.
And that's what actually. Remember when I told you my testimony how that's what got me so excited about, like, this Holy Spirit prayer was that, like, prayer is partnership with God and he can reveal the things of people's hearts that are just holding them back and where they're struggling or, you know, incidents that happened in their lives that they just stuck on and.
And just having someone with you just bringing those things into, you know, to Christ and bringing his perspective and bringing his spirit and he heals stuff that, like, people, you know, might have been in talk therapy for, like, two, three years and never got to, you know, and so I've seen.
I've seen that in so many, many people's lives. Like, and I get to be on this forefront. I'd see the power of Jesus in everyday people doing extraordinary things.
So I feel like I have been so blessed because it builds my faith every time.
And I get to see how tender he is. He often gives me insight into something like a word or a scripture that is very pertinent to them. And that's grown with me over time. I've learned to hear his voice in ways I obviously still get it wrong.
But it's such an adventure seeing Jesus speak to the very heart of others and see him unlock the freedom that he died for on the cross in them. It's such a gift.
[00:44:30] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And imagine if we didn't have that, where our teams could possibly be. And just thinking about when you've got a team of people who are fighting the world's greatest injustices, and they're doing it from a posture of freedom, they're doing it from a posture of forgiveness, they're doing it from a posture of healing.
Like, that is a powerful force to be reckoned with. And, John, it took you, like, seeing that and recognizing that to be able to empower Nikki to be like, Love justice is going to be at its healthiest when our staff are constantly being put in the presence of Jesus to do the work that only Jesus can do in our hearts. And I can confidently say 1000% that I would not be here if it weren't for Nikki on the Love justice team. And just the amazing, like, prayers that she's. And like, breakthroughs that she's, you know, facilitated, not her herself, but, like, she's put me in those postures to receive the gift of breakthrough because she's helping put me in the. In a place before Jesus.
That I think is also something that makes, like. Makes Love justice unique. Like, that's the theme, I think, of our podcast episodes right now is we're just talking about the things that make Love justice unique and uniquely impactful. And this is one of them.
So we kind of have our internal prayer rhythms for the LJI kind of international staff. But Project 58 is an internal initiative.
That part like that, that is an outworking of our core competency of finding the right people and places and giving them the tools to maximize mission impact. One of those tools is our kind of Project 58 curriculum, if you will. Nikki, very briefly, can you just share what Project 58 is and why it is important to our transit monitoring strategy?
[00:46:28] Speaker C: Yeah. So essentially Project 58 embodies our spiritual. The spiritual embodiment of our work and drives that and ensures that it's.
It's happening and it's at the forefront. So it basically centers around, firstly in prayer. That prayer is the bedrock of what we do. It's the foundation, like, God has to do this work. We are unable to make sure that every little. We unable to get permissions to operate in certain places. We are unable to, like, you know, find this trafficker or even die, uncover. Find a person who's on their way to being intercepted without God going before us, preparing us, you know, preparing the soil of those places. So prayer is the bedrock. And our teams, we've chosen people who. And it's part of our mandate is to find people who are passionate about prayer and evangelism because we know that if they've got that already, they will continue that culture.
So it's prayer and then gospel.
You know, our work is to share the love of Christ by fighting the world's greatest injustices.
We want to share the gospel. Jesus is the reason we're doing this. We use the intervention as a means of introducing them to Jesus, meeting them in their most, you know, watershed moment of their lives, and saying, you know, Jesus is the reason we're here. Do you want to know this God? Look what he's done. He sent us to protect you. That's what he does. He loves you. He wants you to know him, and he wants to do life with you.
And so we have spiritual care coordinators in all of our countries that we've chosen who specifically have these evangelistic, prayerful discipleship, pastoral hearts who then are responsible, like me, for ensuring that the culture is one of. That. One of faith, one of reliance on God, one of growing in maturity as a Christian.
Their role is to disciple and to ensure that people are being trained in the ways of the Lord. Like they're addressing what they see through the lens of the gospel.
They will fall away.
Particularly our guys on the front line, they see.
They see really difficult stuff. They see people in abject poverty. They see people escaping abusive situations. They see people, you know, just.
They see the. They're on the coal face, and they can so easily fall away, and they can so easily become hard towards people or towards God if they're not nurtured and they're not having their perspectives renewed by God's perspective.
So we have these spiritual care coordinators who's. Joel, Rob Joel, whose job is to also disciple them and ensure they're flourishing. Like I do with our staff.
And it's very, you know, we choose project managers who are passionate about the gospel and of God. And so we try to keep the whole organization embedded in that. And then the spiritual care coordinator is, are like calling it and you know, sort of encouraging it and have time committed to doing these spiritual things.
[00:49:52] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
And you know, the, in this conversation this morning, it's morning time where we're at right now, we've gotten just a small glimpse into the history and the impact of prayer at Love Justice. I mean, we could probably have three one hour conversations about all of the stories and the testimonies.
But just from that, from that scratching the surface of it, what do you hope that listeners take away about make about making per. Central to action and making per central in your life, in your work, in your every, you know, just central.
What would, what would you say or hope that listeners take away? John, why don't you go first?
[00:50:40] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I don't want to, I don't want to give the impression that this is something that I've really internalized because if I had, I would do it more. So I almost feel like rather than giving a takeaway for our listeners, I'm going to give one takeaway for myself, which is this. John, your prayer is more powerful than your most effective actions. And if you will believe that you'll pray more and you'll benefit from instead of your petty, weak, helpful, helpless little actions, God's enormous mountain moving, kingdom building, world redeeming actions.
[00:51:12] Speaker A: Yeah, that's good.
[00:51:13] Speaker C: I love that.
[00:51:14] Speaker A: And so like, profound.
Nikki, you.
[00:51:20] Speaker C: Yeah, I would say I think prayer is the most enjoyable thing that I can do with my time if I'm honest. Like.
And I think if your life, if you don't have, if your prayer isn't enjoyable, like, do something about it, you know, because it's supposed to be enjoyable. It's not supposed to be this huge slog where it's just so boring and you're just like, oh, I'd rather be doing anything but this, you know, because prayer is when meets. When we meet with God. And so I would encourage people to first meet with God, you know, just see it as this place where I get to be with him, where I get to love him, I get to be loved by him, and then I get to present the requests of my heart to him in this partnership, in this, like, hey, this is what I'm seeing around me that I hate. This is what I'm seeing around me, that I can't do anything about or I'm powerless to do and seeing it as this, like, avenue for pouring out the angst that, like, I get so much angst when I see suffering around me. And prayer has been this way of really just, like, processing it with God and bringing it to someone who can actually do something about it, you know? And so I think the first thing would be is to make it enjoyable. Like, it shouldn't be boring. It should be amazing. You're partaking in the divine nature. You're meeting with God. And I think what I did, I didn't really elaborate too much of it. But that prayer time when we started in South Africa with those, like, three or four people, like, find people who are passionate about prayer and pray with them. Like, pray find people who have, like, caught the vision or caught it, you know, and there's something incredible about being in the room with that.
And I learned so much from those people.
I think my Internet dropped. Am I here?
Yeah.
You know, there were days when I didn't feel like praying, but I would go into the room and they were just having the most amazing, you know, like, I would get caught up in the presence of God and it would be rejuvenating and strengthening and life giving to me.
And I started feeling where maybe I would feel that peace and that calm, like, maybe every now and then when I started praying with those girls consistently for longer periods of time. I'd never prayed that long ever for anything. I'd never prayed for, probably particularly with people.
And I started feeling this overarching feeling of peace and joy that I had never experienced. The level of God's spirit in me, I guess, was just grown.
And so pursue that just for yourself, and the outflow of it becomes one where you pray for others as well.
And I think that should be the heart of it, is just like, meet with God, enjoy him, bring the things you see around you to him in this childlike dependence of, like, dad, please fix this. You know, we need you.
And in the meantime, like, just love me and let me know that you love me, you know, and that, for me, is the heart of prayer.
[00:54:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
Thank you so much, Nikki and John, and for our listeners, if today's conversation has just sparked a seed of faith in you, like, has you wanting to do something.
Now that you've heard this conversation, I have one really easy way for you to join us. Each month, Love justice sends out prayer updates so that you can join us in praying over our teams, our projects, our staff, and those who are at risk of being trafficked if you are interested in receiving those updates, visit lovejustice NGO prayer update and get signed up for those. John and Nikki, thank you so much for your time, your wisdom, the stories. And again, I think my prayer is that this would just stir faith. That it would just stir faith to do exactly what you're talking about, Nikki. Take the next step in your prayer life and in your prayer journey to experience just the richness of who God is.
[00:55:48] Speaker B: We are grateful for the generation generous support of the Love justice community. Please consider joining our family of donors. Learn more at lovejustice ngo.
