Quick: What’s the big event that’s happening this Sunday?
Chances are extremely good that the answer that popped into your head, without even having to think about it, was “the Super Bowl.” Whether you watch football or not, you probably know that America’s biggest and best-loved game takes place this weekend. There’s always so much hype surrounding the Super Bowl, it’s almost impossible not to know about it.
But here’s something that you might not know: Major sporting events like the Super Bowl tend to cause an increase in sex trafficking. It’s tragic, but true. As WANE.com in Indiana reported last year, “Girls as young as 12 to 14 are being shipped to Super Bowl host cities and sold as prostitutes to meet the demand for sex at the event. And it’s getting worse.”
Ernie Allen of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children added, “The operators of these enterprises will use these kids as commodities, bring them to a community, and will literally sell them to people who are partying and having a good time and think there's nothing wrong with what they're doing.”
The magnitude of this horrific problem can seem so overwhelming that it makes us feel helpless. Is there anything that you can do to help save these kids? Well, yes, you can start with one very simple but very important action: prayer.
Super Bowl Sunday will mark the second annual Pray for the Johns Day. The event was created by Christian writer Anna Broadway, who has long been interested in the subjects of “relational brokenness” and human trafficking. It occurred to Anna that while many Christians are making laudable efforts to help trafficking victims, we haven’t paid much attention to the men who are paying for the sex.
But these men, she reminds us, are spiritually lost and in great need of prayer. That’s why she created Pray for the Johns Day. Anna says: “[We’re] praying that they would turn from the sin and the harm and the wrong that they’re doing, and repent of it. That their lives would transform and they would become the men God made them to be.”
That kind of transformation can be nothing but a blessing, not just for the men themselves, but for our entire society. Wherever there are men who think it’s okay to buy little girls for sex, that it’s all just a natural part of “partying and having a good time,” that’s the sign of a very sick culture. These men are mired in evil, and they’re destroying both their own lives and the lives of innocent victims.
The only thing that can possibly help them is repentance and restoration through Christ — which is why Anna’s idea is such a great one. And moving it to Super Bowl Sunday, when sex trafficking is at its height, was a particularly inspired touch.
So here are her three recommended steps: “(1) Pray for the johns before, during or after the game on Sunday, Feb. 3. (2) Encourage your church to pray for the johns during corporate worship that day. (3) Tell other friends about this event.” So come to BreakPoint.org, please click on this commentary, and we will link you to “Pray for the Johns Day” and a downloadable prayer guide.
I hope you’ll consider taking part in Pray for the Johns Day, and telling your friends about it. Prayer might seem like a small thing, but through it, you can help change even the darkest and most depraved lives. Again, come to BreakPoint.org, click on this commentary to get all the information.
Eric Metaxas is a co-host of BreakPoint Radio and a best-selling author whose biographies, children's books, and popular apologetics have been translated into more than a dozen languages.
BreakPoint commentary airs each weekday on more than one thousand outlets with an estimated listening audience of one million people. BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today's news and trends via radio, interactive media, and print.
Publication date: January 30, 2013
