Zambia Hunt

Some of the most encouraging conversations with gospel partners are those where we are asked specific feedback on requests we shared for prayer.

Why?

Because we know that God has chosen prayer as the means by which His will is accomplished on earth. E.M Bounds once wrote, “God’s greatest movements in this world have been conditioned on, continued and fashioned by prayer. Persistent, prevailing, conspicuous and mastering prayer has always brought God to present. How vast are the possibilities of prayer! How wide its reach! It lays its hand on Almighty God and moves Him to do what He would not do if prayer was not offered. Prayer is a wonderful power placed by Almighty God in the hands of His saints, which may be used to accomplish great purposes and to achieve unusual results. The only limits to prayer are the promises of God and His ability to fulfill those promises.”

I encourage you as you pray for your missionaries. Pick one or two, reach out with a short, thoughtful note or text.

As you pray, Missiologist Jim Reapsome suggests these prayer points for your intercession for missionaries under the heading, “Protection From What?”:

1. Protection from Satan’s attacks on their faith and calling, tempting them to quit and go home.
2. God protect their marriages and families. Protect them from doing so much work that they neglect their families.
3. Protect them from getting so busy doing things for God that they forget to sit and listen to Him.
4. They could forget to find unhurried time for Bible meditation and prayer.
5. Protect them from losing their spirit of worship, love, and devotion to you, Lord.
6. Protect them from divisiveness, criticism, and crankiness with each other.
7. Protect their unity in Christ, their love for each other, their commitment to each other.
8. Protect their willingness to serve one another and to esteem their sisters and brothers better than themselves.
9. Protect them from conflicts with local believers and national church leaders.
10. Protect them from squabbling over budgets and properties.
11. Protect them from misinterpreting each other’s motives.
12. Protection from even hinting that the way we do it in America is best.
13. Protection from using their control of money to get their own way.
14. Unity in Christ among missionaries and believers is so important because unbelievers watch them. So they can see and grasp the good news that God loves them so much that He sent Jesus to this world.
15. Protection from defection for their souls, not their bodies.
16. Our primary concern should be for our missionaries’ perseverance in faith.

Jesus did ask God to protect his disciples, but not the kind of protection we usually think of. He warned them of what might happen. He simply asked His Father to protect the disciples “so that they be one as we are one.”

1. They needed protection from fighting, jealousy, and clamoring for position.
2. If the evil one cannot destroy their faith, he will disrupt their work by sowing dissension in their ranks.
3. If he can get our missionaries or us to believe gossip and suspect each other’s motives, Satan does not have to resort to terrorism.
4. If he can maneuver them into head-on collisions with the national believers, he doesn’t need car crashes to wipe them out.

Lord, teach us to pray for our missionaries more effectively daily.