How to Pray for MissionariesSample

For Deliverance from Despair

Yesterday we prayed that God would change the circumstances of our missionary families so that they would be out of danger. We should pray for this, but God does not always say “Yes” to that prayer!

When he doesn’t, we can support our missionaries by praying for God’s perspective in their hearts and minds. Paul tells the Corinthian believers, who were the recipients of his missionary work, that “we are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed” (Vv. 8-9). Paul could say this because he was aware of God’s purposes behind the problems he faced.

Like Paul, today’s missionary can testify that cross-cultural ministry, whether it is pioneer church planting, relief work or local leadership training, inevitably brings “great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life” (2 Corinthians 1:8). Sometimes that despair comes because you feel like no one understands you or because you’re not seeing the results that you think your great sacrifices would produce. Other times it is because a fellow missionary or a local ministry partner abandoned the team to chase after worldly pursuits, like Demas did to Paul (2 Timothy 4:10).

And sometimes it is because of credible threats of harm toward them or toward the local believers (2 Corinthians 1:9).

Today, pray for missionaries “to fix [their] eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (v. 18). Missionaries are people, too, and although they have taken a strong step of faith to leave the comforts of home, that faith can waver. Ask the Lord to fuel their faith and to remind them of God’s promises and his eternal purposes in their daily lives.