How to Pray for MissionariesSample

For New Ministry Opportunities

On days 1, 2, and 3 of this reading plan, we focused on Bible passages that support the personal needs of missionaries and their families.

Yesterday, today, and tomorrow we are focusing on the mission of the missionary. Paul wrote to the church in the city of Colossae, whom he had never visited. They had received the gospel from one of his converts during Paul’s missionary visit to nearby Ephesus. He told them to “pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains” (Colossians 4:3).

Paul was under house arrest in Rome, yet he was looking for new opportunities, even in that restrictive context, to advance the gospel.

In the preceding verse, Paul instructs his prayer supporters to “devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful” (Colossians 4:2). That command is for us too. Dawson Trotman, the founder of the Navigators organization, asked himself these questions, “Why are we doing what we are doing?" And "Why are we doing it the way we are doing it?”

Pray for field missionaries and their organizational leaders to see the new opportunities that God has placed before them. Pray for the Lord to show them new methods to do their ministries and for new partners with whom to do ministry together.