How to Pray for Missionaries

Missions has changed. Harsh realities in the modern world soon dispel the imagined glamour of pioneer missionary work. Team work and an ability to work with, and under, leaders of other nationalities make great demands. The missionary's personal walk with God is vital.

Today's missionaries need the support of intercessors. Pray for:

· Vital, supportive home fellowships of believers who are willing to pray the missionary out to the field and keep him there.

· The supply of financial need. Missionary ministries are more expensive to maintain than those at home. The problems of money exchange, export of currency, inflation, endemic bribery, etc., are constant points of concern.

· Adequate preparation for missionary work. Theological training, ministry experience, language learning, and adaptation to a new land may take years.

· Cultural adjustment. Culture shock is the subject of much humor, but is very real. Many prospective missionaries cannot make the adjustment to new foods, life styles, languages, value systems, and attitudes. Some return home disillusioned and with a sense of failure, others react wrongly on the field and hinder their fellowship and witness; yet others go too far in their adaptation and compromise their health and sometimes their faith. Balance and objectivity are needed.

· Protection from Satan's attacks. In many areas Satan's kingdom has never been challenged before. Missionaries need discernment and authority to resist attacks he makes through health, the mind, opponents of the Gospel, and even well-meaning Christian workers. They need the victorious faith that will "bind the strong man and spoil his goods."

· Family life. For some the missionary call may mean foregoing marriage for the sake of the Gospel. The loneliness of single workers can be a heavy burden to bear. For others, family life may be made difficult by living conditions, inadequate amenities, lack of finance, or be disrupted by long separations, many visitors, and overwork. Missionaries' children may have to be separated from their parents for long periods because of education, and can become resentful or rebellious in their teens. Pray that missionary families may be an effective witness and example of all that a Christian family should be.

· Commitment to God's will. The assurance that God has guided to a particular ministry is the only anchor to retain workers in difficult situations, misunderstandings, broken relationships, and "impossible" crises. Pray that none may leave a place of calling for a negative reason, but only because of a positive leading from God.

· Fruitfulness. All workers desire an effective ministry that bears fruit. They need clear objectives and time to achieve them. Too much time can be spent on survival and handling trivial interruptions, and too little on the real task. Only the Holy Spirit can give a worker that constraining love of Christ for sinners-human pity is inadequate.

· A sense of urgency. Expulsions, or enforced departure from the field, could suddenly terminate a ministry. The missionary needs to work hard to train his successors and help local believers to maturity.

· Homecoming for furlough, or for home ministry, which can be traumatic. Returning missionaries need the continued support of God's people for overcoming re-entry shock and establishment of an effective rapport with churches at home, and of an effective ministry.

Jim and Jeanne Lowell . . . . .until the whole world knows

Regions and areas where there is no Bible Schools we pray that God will help us to start new Bible schools and train a new generation of church planters for pioneering churches where there is no church.