Praying for Your Missionary

How Prayers from Home Can Reach the Nations

Eddie Byun

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780830845569
• eBook ISBN: 9780830873739
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Being a missionary is a noble calling, but it's also a difficult one.

Missionaries face many challenges, whether adjusting to a new culture, learning a new language, or guarding against spiritual attacks. They need the support of the church and a faithful covering of prayer. But for many Christians, missionaries are out of sight, out of mind. How can we effectively intercede for the missionaries in our lives?

Eddie Byun provides a handy guide to praying for missionaries. He shows the vital connection between prayer and missions, how our prayers are connected to both the well-being of missionaries and the fruit of their work. This book offers ways to pray for the various needs that missionaries have on the mission field, to prevent burnout and protect them from harm. We can partner with our missionaries as individual intercessors and as sending churches.

The fields are ready for harvest. Your prayers for the workers and their ministry can make a difference.

1

Pray for More Workers to
Finish the Mission

MATTHEW 9:35-38

MY STOMACH WAS HURTING from laughing so much. Amir kept doing his impersonations of famous American actors and presidents with great accuracy. He was a gifted entertainer! I had only known Amir for three days, but he opened up his home and his life to me. Whenever we were waiting for his wife to finish making lunch, he would act out scenes from famous Hollywood movies and leave us in tears with laughter. I couldn’t get over how kind he was. Amir fed me like a king and loved me like family. He didn’t know the Lord yet, but his heart was so open I sensed it was only a matter of time before he received Jesus as his Lord and Savior.

After leaving Amir’s home, my friend Amy, who was a missionary in that city, said to me, “Eddie, I wish you could be here serving with me and our team. You connected with Amir and the other men in ways I never could because I’m a female. Their hearts are so open right now, but there are so few believers here.” Amy and her team had been in this part of the Middle East for the past two years building relationships with the women of the area. She was noticing how the Spirit had been opening many hearts to the gospel in ways that were never seen before. But unfortunately she knew of only ten believers in that city, and four of them were the missionaries on her team—and they were all female. I returned home with a new resolve to not only support Amy’s work but to challenge our church to prayerfully consider being a part of Amy’s team. The harvest was ready, but the workers were few.

So where do we begin? We begin by making sure we keep the main thing the main thing. The first prayer request in this series is to pray for more workers to finish the mission. Part of every church’s purpose is to finish the mission Jesus gave us, and that is to make disciples of all nations.

Why do we need to pray for more workers? One reason is because Jesus commands us to. In Matthew 9:37-38, Jesus tells his disciples how huge the harvest is but also how few the workers are. So he tells them to pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers to his fields. We must begin with prayer because he asks us to pray.

There also is a great need in this hour for more laborers to love the nations. According to the Joshua Project, there are still 3.14 billion people out of reach of the gospel, and less than 1 percent of Christian resources are directed at reaching the least reached and unengaged people groups of the world.1 Another study found that there are 4.19 million full-time Christian workers, but 95 percent of them are working in the Christian or reached world.2 This great call from Jesus and the great need in this hour confirm the importance of having this prayer request as a high priority in our lives.

So we want to pray for more workers, but what kind of workers should we pray for?

WORKERS WITH A PASSION FOR THE KINGDOM

One thing to pray for is that God would raise up and send out workers in the mission field with a passion for the kingdom of God. Matthew 9:35 says, “Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction.” We must pray that God would raise up, release, and unleash people with a burning passion for his name to be known in all the nations.

We live in challenging days. Christians are dying in many parts of the world. Terrorist attacks are spreading throughout Africa, Europe, and into the West. The moral compass of nations is eroding. It can appear bleak, but as people of faith, we do not worry; instead, we pray and trust in a good and sovereign God. As the days grow darker in a world that does not love God, we must pray for the Light of the world to burn brighter through the church.

As Jesus went through all the cities and villages, he was teaching and preaching the kingdom of God. Pray for men and women who have a passion to do the same. Pray for a people whose love for Christ and passion for the kingdom will also bring them to the cities and villages of the world—teaching the kingdom; preaching the gospel; and bringing hope, healing, and love to a broken world. In other words, pray for a people who will declare and demonstrate the gospel through kingdom living. We want to pray for people who understand that their lives are created to be lived for the kingdom of God and to the glory of his name. Pray that in this generation God will revive a people who take the Great Commission seriously and who, as followers of Jesus, want to make the Great Commission great again.

This means we are interceding for God to stir up a people who know that the Great Commission is not optional. We are living in the last days before Jesus returns! Hear the words of Jesus again:

Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20)

Pray for a people who will obey this call to go! To go! To make disciples of all nations, all people groups, all tribes, and all tongues. Since these are some of the final words of Jesus before he ascended to heaven, these last words hold great meaning. He clearly focuses the mission for his followers: “make disciples of all nations.” All the nations matter to God! All nations are called to turn from their sins and find life eternal through trusting in the person and work of Jesus Christ. That is why we must pray for workers who have a passion for his kingdom.

Sometimes I wonder if the American dream is heaven’s nightmare.

The enemy seeks to diminish our kingdom passion by tempting us to stay in our comfort zones. The temptation to pursue the American dream: pampering, prosperity, and white picket fences. Sometimes I wonder if the American dream is heaven’s nightmare, taking away passion, people, and resources from kingdom advancement. Few things have done more to water down passion for God’s kingdom than the lure of building our own kingdom where the throne is a La-Z-Boy chair in the living room, and men dream of building a man cave with multiple big screens while souls perish, angels plead, and God weeps over this generation.

Few things have done more to weaken affection for God than affluence. It’s so easy to fall into the lure of comfortable, self-centered living. This is why we must spur one another toward love and good deeds until the day of Christ’s return (Hebrews 10:24). We can do this by surrounding ourselves with people who can sharpen our love, character, and passion for Christ—as “iron sharpens iron” (Proverbs 27:17). I’m so thankful for people like my good friend Eddie Kim, who I met in seminary. Whenever we met, I left wanting to love Jesus more. He had a deep love for the Word of God and meticulously studied the original languages. His passion was contagious. His unwavering devotion to the kingdom keeps fanning the flame of my own heart to burn when I want to fade away.

Likewise, let’s pray for God to raise up workers in this hour who have an unwavering, single-minded focus and passion to see the name of Jesus known and spread throughout the nations.

Spiritual powers will oppose us, which is why Jesus reminds us in his Great Commission that all authority belongs to him. We need to be reminded of that because life is war. Life is a battle that tends to keep us off our mission with God. It is a battle of faith. It is a battle over what our souls will treasure more. It is a battle because the eternal destiny of souls is one of the highest priorities of God’s kingdom. And the only way we will finish Jesus’ mission is for God to raise up a generation who will love him more than life, more than death, and more than comfort. Pray for it. And pray that we will be that generation.

WORKERS WITH COMPASSION FOR THE LOST

Another thing to pray is to ask God to raise up people who have a deep love and compassion for the lost. Matthew 9:36 says, “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” Jesus genuinely cared for those who were spiritually lost. Pray that God would send out workers who have his heart of compassion for those who don’t know Jesus. Pray that the church would become concerned for the billions who are harassed and helpless because they are sheep without a shepherd. Pray for God to send out workers who love people, so that they would not view others as a project to be worked on or a problem to be solved, but as a people to be loved.

Pray that Jesus’ compassion would lead us to prioritize life and ministry around reaching unreached peoples. In light of this, we need to familiarize ourselves with two sets of numbers: the 10/40 Window and the 4/14 Window.

The 10/40 Window is the region of the world 10 degrees north to 40 degrees north of the Equator, spanning from Africa to Asia (see fig. 1). It is within this window that the least reached people groups of the world live—those who have never heard the life-saving message of Jesus Christ. In fact, 69.1 percent of all unreached people groups are in the 10/40 window.3 This is where the largest number of the Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists live.

We must be not only familiar with and prioritize the 10/40 Window, but we also must prioritize the 4/14 Window. This window represents the ages between four and fourteen, when children are most open to receiving the gospel message. One study found that 85 percent of adult Christians in the United States came to faith in Christ from the ages of four to fourteen.4 We’d be wise to make these children our priority. When our church was preparing for a church plant in Thailand a few years ago, the 10/40 Window and the 4/14 Window were two key filters determining where we began. We wanted to be in the 10/40 region of the world and knew we placed a high priority on the children in that community.

Figure 1. The 10/40 Window

I also encourage you to become familiar with the Joshua Project (joshuaproject.net), which publishes updates on missions’ progress in the least r...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Introduction: Why a Book on Praying for Missionaries?
• 1 Pray for More Workers to Finish the Mission
• 2 Pray for Intimacy with God
• 3 Pray for Spiritual Coverage
• 4 Pray for Strong Singles, Marriages, and Families
• 5 Pray for Incarnational Love for the Nations
• 6 Pray for Oneness in the Teams
• 7 Pray for Never-Ending Devotion
• 8 Pray for Successful Ministry in the Eyes of God
• 9 Pray for Churches to Partner Well
• 10 Pray for Agencies to Partner Well
• 11 Pray for Reentering Well
• 12 Pray to End Well
• Epilogue: Let’s Finish the Mission and Go Home
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Praise for Praying for Your Missionary
• About the Author
• Also by Eddie Byun
• More Titles from InterVarsity Press
• Copyright