Five Prayer for a Life on Mission
“It is your part, believer, to deny yourself, to lose your own life, and in the presence of the Lord to sink down in your nothingness and impotence. Accustom yourself to set your heart before Him in deep humility, silent patience, and childlike submission. The humility that is prepared to be nothing, the patience that will wait for Him and His time, and the submission that will yield itself wholly that He may do what seems good is all that you can do to show that you are ready to lose your life.”
The most important thing an everyday missionary does is look to God—not ourselves, no matter how highly or lowly we think of ourselves—to fulfill His own mission. Instead of relying on facts, strategy, and even logic to know what to do, prayer admits that our best planning and plotting are not enough for God’s mission. To know our mission field, we seek God’s revelation: more than what they think they need, what does He have for them? Instead of the ways we’ve discovered to meet folks, how would God have us engage? God alone chose each of us to bear fruit, but we must acknowledge our dead-branch inability and “ask” the vine to gush new life into and through us, as we “go and bear fruit” *2. As we pursue mission, we abide in Christ and pray for five things:
1. We Pray for Those to Whom God Sends Us
When is the last time you meaningfully prayed for those God sent you to? Jeremiah reminds us that we not only “seek the welfare of [our] city” but that we also “pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you find your welfare” *3. If we love our mission field and those within it, we pray for its general welfare—grace, favor, and blessing—specifically and by name, often.
2. We Pray for Spirit-led Discernment
Different situations, circumstances, and objects surround us every day. Many could be the starting point for gospel proclamation as we see it reflects the world’s brokenness or God’s redemption. But different beliefs, excuses, and emotions also exist in those around us. We pray that God opens doors to share the gospel in normal ways; that he leads us clearly. We pray for the right moment, words, actions, and posture to display or declare the gospel in the most meaningful way for each person.
3. We Pray That God Emboldens Us
For even the most confident among us, speaking the gospel is often nerve-wracking. We worry about offending them; we worry about misrepresenting God. We pray to God to fill us with the same Spirit who is a Helper, a Comforter, and a Teacher. Only God can convict, reveal God, give understanding, and change lives. Paradoxically, then, as we pray that God gives us the boldness necessary to declare the gospel without fear, we find ourselves in humble reliance on Him.
4. We Pray That God Softens Hearts
The best gospel proclamation goes nowhere if God the Spirit has not convicted the hearer and softened them to hear the good news. You likely heard the gospel many times before it actually meant something to you. We both did. As we pray for our mission fields, pray that God goes before us, preparing those to receive the good news of God.
5. We Pray That God Draws People to Himself
Above all, we pray that God will carry out his redeeming work in the lives around us. As He gives us discernment and emboldens us, we must be prepared to play a part in God’s answer to the prayer. But the most loving prayer we can pray for our neighbors, co-workers, family, and those in need is that God will carry out His redeeming work in their lives, however He chooses to work.
Adapted from A Field Guide for Everyday Mission (Moody, June 2014)
1. Murray, Andrew. Experiencing the Holy Spirit. New Kensington, PA: Whitaker House, 2000. 54.
2. John 15:16
3. Jeremiah 29:7
