By John D Robb, Chairman of IPC
Here is another segment on how important the role of Spirit-led prayer is to the seeing breakthroughs happen in all ministry and especially in the realm of missions to those still unreached by the Gospel of Christ:
1. Spiritual revivals wrought by prayer have powerfully impacted frontier missions.
It has been said that "all the mighty spiritual revivals which constitute the mountain peaks of missionary annals had their roots in prayer." Jonathan Goforth, missionary revivalist in the Far East at the beginning of this century, described the powerful revivals and awakenings that took place in Korea and China, which not only revived the church but brought tens of thousands from unreached peoples to Christ. It all began with small bands of believers deciding to pray together regularly for an outpouring of God's Spirit upon them and upon the unconverted. Goforth later discovered it was not only the missionaries who had been praying, but someone in his home country:
"When I came to England, I met a certain saint of God. We talked about the revival in China and she gave me certain dates when God specially pressed her to pray. I was almost startled on looking up these dates to find that they were the very dates when God was doing his mightiest work in Manchuria and China....I believe the day will come when the whole inward history of that revival will be unveiled and will show that it was not the one who speaks to you now, but some of God's saints hidden away with Him in prayer who did most to bring it about."
In Hawaii, the revival known as the "Great Awakening" (1837-43), began in the hearts of missionaries who were moved strongly to pray. At their annual meetings in 1835 and 1836 "they were powerfully moved to pray and were so deeply impressed with the need of an outpouring of the Spirit that they prepared a strong appeal to the home churches, urging Christians everywhere to unite with them in prayer for a baptism on high." There were soon signs of growing interest in spiritual things among non-Christians, and then in 1837, so sweeping a spiritual awakening occurred that the missionaries had to labor night and day to accommodate multitudes anxiously seeking the assurance of salvation. In one day over 1,700 converts were baptized and in six years, 27,000 were added to the church.
J. Edwin Orr, the late historian of revivals, observed that the 19th century spiritual awakenings "revived all the existing missionary societies and enabled them to enter other fields... [and] practically every missionary invasion was launched by men revived or converted in the awakenings." Of four great outpourings of the Holy Spirit in the 19th century, he wrote:
"The turn of the century awakenings sent off pioneer missionaries to the South Seas, to Latin America, Black Africa, India and China. There arose denominational missionary societies such as the Baptist Missionary Society, the American Board, and other national missions in Europe.... Then a second wave of revival reinforced the foreign missionary invasion of all the continents.... William Carey was followed by societies ready to evangelize India. Robert Morrison opened a way for missionaries to settle in the treaty ports of China.... Missionaries pushed north from the Cape of Good Hope as David Livingstone explored the hinterlands of Africa."
Of most importance to this discussion, Orr traced the origin of the spiritual awakenings which launched new missionary enterprises to worldwide prayer meetings which intensified before they occurred. David Bryant concurs with Orr's analysis. He has detected a fivefold pattern in the outward movements of the gospel over the last 300 years:
- A movement of united prayer begins.
- A renewed vision of Christ and His church emerges.
- The church is restored in unity and in its determination to obey the lordship of Christ.
- A revitalization of existing ministries and outreach occurs.
- This leads to an expansion of the gospel among those who have been untouched to that point.
Bryant observes, "God's primary strategy is to bring his people together in prayer... in order that they might seek him unitedly. They pursue in prayer a fresh revelation of the glory of God's son so as to penetrate all levels of society with the gospel and to launch new mission thrusts to the ends of the earth." He has quoted J. Edwin Orr as saying, "Whenever God is ready to do a new thing with his people he always sets them a-praying!"
2. Intercessory prayer enables God's children to possess their inheritance, the peoples of the earth.
In Psalm 2:8 the Lord invites us as His children to "Ask of me and I will make the nations your inheritance and the ends of the earth your possession." The only thing we can take with us into eternity as our inheritance are other people. Our joy and crown, just as they were for Paul, will be others who come to Christ through our efforts. As this Psalm reveals, asking or praying opens the door to God's making the nations, or more specifically, the frontier peoples (those still without an indigenous movement of Jesus followers) our inheritance.
In the history of missions, great in-gatherings into the church of Christ appear to be linked to strong, persistent praying. John Hyde, missionary to northern India, became known as "the apostle of prayer" since God raised up scores of national workers in answer to his prayers. He made a covenant with God to pray for one person to accept Christ each day which resulted in 400 conversions the first year. The following year, he decided to trust God for two a day, with 800 coming to Christ that year. Finally, the next year, as his faith grew, he trusted God for four a day. Through much travail in prayer, four a day came to Christ through his work.
A woman missionary influenced by Hyde's prayer life resolved to devote the best hours of her time to prayer, making prayer primary and not secondary as before. God said to her, "Call upon me and I will show thee great and mighty things. You have not called upon me and therefore you do not see these things in your work." As she began to make prayer the priority in her ministry, enormous changes resulted with 15 baptized at first, and 125 adults coming to Christ during the first half of the following year. Later she wrote, "Our Christians now number 600 in contrast with one-sixth of that number two years ago."
Elsewhere in India, prayer has also proved to be key to great in-gatherings among unreached peoples. Missionaries working among the Telugu outcastes were discouraged to the point of almost abandoning the work because of the lack of response. However, the last night of 1853, a missionary couple and three Indian helpers spent the night in prayer for the Telugus on a hill overlooking the city of Ongole. When the first light of day dawned, they all shared a sense of assurance that their prayers had prevailed. Gradually the opposition broke over the next few years, and a mighty outpouring of the spirit brought 8,000 Telugus to Christ in only a six-week period. In one day over 2,200 were baptized and this church became the largest in the world!
In 1902, two lady missionaries with the Khassia Hills Mission were challenged by the need to pray and Khassian Christians also began to pray for their unconverted fellows. In a few months over 8,000 were added to the church in that section of India.
Wesley Duewel of OMS International, known as a kind of guru on prayer for missions, once told me that the first 25 years of their mission's work in India was very slow. Only one church per year on the average came into being. Out of a period of intense heart searching by the team of missionaries, the decision was made to recruit 1,000 people in their homelands to pray 15 minutes a day for the work. Not long after, things began to move substantially. Over the next several years, the mission went from 25 churches with 2,000 believers, to 550 churches with more than 73,000 believers. Duewel believes the massive amount of prayer, harnessed and specifically focused on their efforts, turned the tide. One of his Indian coworkers exclaimed to him: "All of us are seeing results beyond anything we could have imagined!"
Jonathan Goforth, in writing about the Korean revival of 1907, said: "[It was] intense, believing prayer that had so much to do with the revival which... brought 50,000 Koreans to Christ. We are convinced too that all movements of the Spirit in China which have come within our own experience may be traced to prayer." One missionary remarked to him, "Since the Lord did so much with our small amount of praying, what might He have done if we had prayed as we ought?"
3. Effective mission strategies come from research immersed in prayer.
Joshua was one of the original "researchers" who spied out the land of promise in Numbers 13. Because he knew the facts about the land and its peoples so well, he was prepared to become the great military strategist that he later became during the conquest. However, in the book of Joshua, we see him continually seeking God for His guidance in the development of effective strategies. He did not lean on his own understanding but relied upon God's direction given through prayer.
The principle is still the same. I am becoming more and more convinced that coupling research findings concerning the people group we are trying to reach with ongoing persevering prayer is an unstoppable combination in the process of developing effective mission strategy. John Dawson's book Taking Our Cities for God: How to Break Spiritual Strongholds insightfully ties together ministry-related research and intercessory prayer.
4. Prayer is the supernatural way of multiplying and sending out Christian workers into frontier missions.
As in the days of Jesus, the harvest is still plentiful and the workers are few. The unevangelized world, still claims only a smidgen of the missions’ force and the Church's material resources. We have talked about the issues of redeployment and mobilization for this unreached part of humanity. Jesus' answer in a similar situation faced in his time is still the answer today: "Pray the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest field (Matthew 9:37-38)." Jesus did not tell the disciples to go all out and round up as many Christian workers as possible or to raise a million dollars for mission. Instead he said that prayer to the One who owns the harvest was the priority. Because He can call, equip and send those workers who will be best able to reap the harvest.
I am convinced that the mightiest missionaries to the Muslims are not even converted yet. But God is waiting upon the prayers of His people to turn Muslim zealots around as he did the Apostle Paul, so they become missionaries to their people. I am convinced that as prayer networks are formed, focusing on particular peoples, cities and countries, we will see God raise up armies of new workers to reap the harvest in the unevangelized world.
In 1880, when the China Inland Mission had only 100 workers, and then again in 1887, when additional workers were required, Hudson Taylor and his associates spent protracted time in prayer until they received the assurance of faith that the number required would be granted. Both times, after an appeal for 70 new missionaries in 1880, and 100 in 1887, the full number reached China within the specified time and with all their support supplied. A.T. Pierson is said to have exclaimed that, except for the prayers of praying mothers and fathers who prayed their children out to the mission field, there would have been no Student Volunteer Movement!
5. Prayer opens closed doors for occupation by a Christian presence.
The Apostle Paul urged the Christians of his generation to "devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. And pray for us too that God may open a door for our message so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ" (Col.4:2-4). Don McCurry of Ministries to Muslims International years ago gave me a striking illustration in this regard. When he visited the West African country of Guinea, Sekou Toure, a Marxist leader, had just kicked out all the missionaries except two, and was busy torturing political prisoners. The two remaining missionaries, McCurry and 12 national pastors met to intercede for the country.
First, they interceded with God for the removal of this Marxist tyrant who had closed the door to further mission efforts when most of the people groups still remained unoccupied by the church. Then they put up maps around the room in which they were meeting, and together laid their hands upon those areas of the country and groups that had no Christian presence. They prayed and agreed together for a breakthrough and the establishment of Christian ministries in them. Within a year, Sekou Toure was gone, replaced by a benign leader who opened the door to missions once again, and McCurry reported that every one of the people groups they prayed for had been occupied by a national or missionary effort!
When Jonathan Goforth planned to launch a new work in northern Honan Province in China, Hudson Taylor wrote to him with these words: "Brother, if you are to win that province, you must go forward on your knees." His advice still holds today.
In the past, we have seen God open up anti-Christian bastions in the Communist world. Can we not expect Him to do the same with Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and secular humanist ones if God's people will laser-focus their prayers on the large number of unreached people groups still held in captivity by these false belief systems?
For more information on how to do this and to choose particular unreached groups to adopt in prayer or to pray for one of them each day, please go to www.joshuaproject.net where you will find many excellent resources for missional prayer. The International Day of Prayer for the Unreached will be May 20th and there are additional resources through the article and link that follows.
John Robb, IPC Chairman
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