Pray For Missionaries

Mark 16:15: And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.

There are at least three ways believers can go into all the world. One is to become a missionary. Another is to support missionaries financially. A third is to pray for missionaries. The Lord does not lead all Christians to serve in foreign lands personally, and if He does not lead you to foreign lands, your support and prayers ought to go to them. Most support for missionaries usually comes from local churches and most prayer for missionaries is done by faithful members of those local churches. If you are not regularly attending and supporting a local church, you are probably not going into all the world in any way.

The first way is the hardest. The second way is easier. The third way is the easiest. A very destructive sin of omission of believers who do not regularly attend Biblical churches is that they do not support missionaries financially or pray for them. They don*t have frequent reminders to pray for them. Even though it is the easiest way, praying for missionaries is the most important way because it gets the power of God involved. When the power of God is involved, He often motivates and enables the ones doing the praying to be the ones to meet the need, to support missionaries financially.

Out of sight . . . out of mind. Missionaries need prayer support because they are usually out of sight and often out of mind. They are probably the servants of God that we pray for the least. Because we can be pretty sure that other believers are neglecting praying for them, missionaries should be the ones that we pray for the most. We should create reminders to help us keep missionaries on our minds. Since we tend to pray first for needs that we can see and hear about, we ought to have a daily prayer list with some missionaries at the top. To my shame I myself had the missionaries that my local church supports at the bottom of my daily prayer list. I sometimes did not get to bottom of my prayer list. We should certainly pray for missionaries before we pray for ourselves.

I would suggest that every Christian should place one or more missionaries at the top of his DAILY prayer list as the Lord leads. Then he should put his pastor and other leaders in his church next on the list.

A church I attended in another state supported a missionary to Pakistan. She taught in a Christian high school for girls. One day I could not get her off my mind until I prayed for her. The next Sunday I learned that there had been an earthquake and some of the walls around that school had fallen. NO ONE WAS HURT. It is appropriate for us not to trust in ourselves but it is a horrible mistake not to trust in the Holy Spirit to direct us, to direct our thoughts, to direct our prayers and to pray about what we don*t know to pray about.

Romans 8:26: Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

Care to discuss Pray For Missionaries with Ron?

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