Praying for missionaries: supporting them behind the scenes
Men, women, whole families have left their country, their language, their comfort to live elsewhere and share the Gospel. Their life is not always as glorious as we think: loneliness, fatigue, misunderstandings, sometimes danger. This quest invites you to carry them in your prayer.
What it looks like in your day
If you know a missionary personally, start with them. Otherwise, choose one or two names or an organization your church supports. Here are concrete focuses for prayer:
- For their health and their family. Missionaries often face illness, distance schooling for their children, separation from loved ones.
- For loneliness. Many live in great isolation, far from friends and their home church. Pray for friends on the ground.
- For learning the language and culture. A long job, often humbling, that takes a lot of patience.
- For relationships. With local people, with their colleagues, with the local church.
- For fruitfulness. That their work would bear fruit, even slowly, even invisibly.
- For courage and protection, when the context is risky.
If you have news from them (a newsletter, a website, a message), read it before praying: you will pray more accurately. If you are short on time, simply name them before God with one request. If you are shy, you can write them a short message to tell them you are praying for them.
What the Bible says
Jesus himself invites us to pray for workers:
“Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest.”
Workers are sent by God: prayer comes before the sending, goes along with it, and follows it. In the book of Acts, the church of Antioch sends Paul and Barnabas after a time of fasting and prayer (Acts 13:2-3). When they return, they tell what God has done:
“And thence sailed to Antioch, from whence they had been recommended to the grace of God for the work which they fulfilled. And when they were come, and had gathered the church together, they rehearsed all that God had done with them, and how he had opened the door of faith unto the Gentiles.”
“Recommended to the grace of God”: the church had entrusted them to God, and it meets them again to listen. Praying for missionaries means taking part in their mission. John also greets those who have gone out for the name of Jesus and urges us to welcome them:
“Beloved, thou doest faithfully whatsoever thou doest to the brethren, and to strangers; Which have borne witness of thy charity before the church: whom if thou bring forward on their journey after a godly sort, thou shalt do well: Because that for his name’s sake they went forth, taking nothing of the Gentiles. We therefore ought to receive such, that we might be fellowhelpers to the truth.”
Welcoming such people, says John, makes us “fellowhelpers to the truth”: whoever supports a missionary becomes their coworker.
Pitfalls to avoid
Making them heroes. Missionaries are people like you, with their frailties, discouragements, mistakes. Putting them on a pedestal isolates them. Pray for them as for friends.
Praying only for “success”. Many missionaries work for years before seeing fruit. Ask for perseverance, joy and health for them, not only results.
Forgetting their families. Spouses and children also carry the mission, often behind the scenes. Pray for them by name.
Praying vaguely. “Bless the missionaries” is a good start, but specific requests (a visa, a translator, a healing) anchor your prayer.
Stopping at prayer. If you can, send a message, a small gift, a card. Missionaries often say that moral support counts as much as financial support.
Today, name a missionary or a mission before God. Ask one specific thing for them.