Their smiles are on your fridge door. You see them among the missionary photos at church. You might even hear your pastor mention them in a prayer.
Now, you want to pray for your missionaries.
Pray more.
Even pray regularly.
Here are five simple suggestions to start you toward praying more!
1. Open their latest newsletter.
I often miss a missionary newsletter. It might go to my promotions. It might arrive at a busy time in the morning. Whatever the reason, if I don’t open it that day, it inevitably gets buried in the unread emails.
In fact, I’m not alone. Most friends and family on our mailing list do not open our newsletters. If the number of people opening our newsletter reaches 45%, I’m thankful.
So, when you think of praying more for your missionaries, it’s important to develop the habit of spotting their email newsletters and opening them. You’ll get the most pressing prayer topics and latest answered prayers.
Please don’t email a missionary and ask how you can pray! It might give the impression that you don’t value the hard work they are putting into their newsletters and want some additional news.
If you can’t find their newsletter, then contact them about just getting their newsletter.
2. Pray with your family.
After reading the latest newsletter, why not share the news and prayer requests with your family?
When you pray together before your evening meal, add a request for your missionary. Or mention an item of praise in your prayers with the family before bed.
My experience has been that mentioning our missionaries leads to more discussion. Someone will ask how I heard about the prayer request. Someone else might ask what else I heard about our missionaries. Or it might lead to a discuss about others we should pray for.
So, make it a practice to note one or two topics that you want to share with your family. You’ll be surprised by the blessing you receive in return.
3. Share on social media.
Another way to pray more is to share one or more requests on social media. If you have a prayer chain, you could share that way as well.
Before you do this, though, be sure to ask your missionary friends if they mind. They might be fine with you sharing exactly what they write in their newsletter. In some cases, though, they may want you to leave out names or possibly not share at all.
If you get their agreement to regularly share, they will be encouraged by what you are doing on their behalf.
I think you’ll find that an unexpected benefit of sharing is that you will think more about your missionaries and pray more as well, whether your social media friends comment about praying or not.
4. Share with your Bible study.
It’s been my experience that I meet missionaries for the first time at a Bible study or at church. In most cases, we pray for these missionaries when they visit and speak, but not for very long afterward.
Over the years, I have been part of various Bible studies. It’s customary to take prayer requests for each other and those in our lives. However, it is not common for someone to regularly ask for prayer for missionaries.
If your Bible study or class has adopted a missionary, you could be the person who regularly shares prayer requests on their behalf.
If you know a missionary who has no connection to your Bible study, I wouldn’t mention them regularly, though. It would be better to encourage the study to pray for a missionary they already support or have some relationship with. And to do that by your own example.
5. Organize a regular time of prayer.
If you would like to pray even more for a missionary, why not organize a regular prayer meeting?
As you share with others, you’ll notice that some respond positively. They may thank you for sharing or join you in praying for the missionary at the Bible study.
Take not of those who share your heart for the missionaries and invite a couple of them over for a time of fellowship and prayer! Or invite them to a virtual time of prayer with Zoom or a similar tool.
Such gatherings will become a wonderful time for you and your friends.
It will also be a great encouragement to your missionary. When they visit on their next furlough, you could even invite them over and spend the evening listening to all the answers to your prayers!
A Heart for Prayer
Whether we pray alone or with our family, at home or in our Bible study, we need a heart committed to prayer like Polly had.
For fifty years, Polly was bedridden because of paralysis. Her condition worsened until she was only able to move her hand and write notes to communicate. Despite her hardships, she never stopped writing her older brother, a missionary. Whether alone or with groups that met around her bed, she prayed for him daily.
The Lord answered Polly’s prayers and used her brother in incredible ways.
You may never have heard of Polly, but you probably have heard of her brother, William Carey, the “father of modern missions.”
Heavenly Father, give us a heart committed to pray for our missionaries. And may you accomplish more than we could possibly expect through their lives and ministry, for your glory and the advancement of your kingdom!
Some Resources
I wrote a short review of a book that will greatly help you as you strive to pray more for your missionaries. Read the review here.
I also wrote a prayer for missions based around Jesus Christ’s command to pray to the Lord of the harvest which you can read here and use as you like. And I wrote another prayer focused on the ministry of Bible translation; you can read it here.