Prayer is the Gunpowder of Global Missions

Prayer has always been the fuel of Christian missions. Jesus Himself set the standard when he began his ministry with forty days of fasting and prayer. Afterwards he returned in the “power of the Holy Spirit” and people flocked to his message.  Later Jesus chose twelve apostles after a night of prayer, and sent them out to share the Good News.  In  Matthew 9:37, 38 we see Jesus engaged in mission activity in various towns that made his heart ache and caused him to exclaim: “What a huge harvest! “How few the workers!” He then announced the key to future success: “On your knees and pray for harvest hands!”

Though we don’t fully understand the whys of prayer, we do know that God has designed the moral universe around its efficacy. Without prayer, God doesn’t act. Through prayer, people’s lives are changed. It might be said that prayer gives an impartial God a reason to be partial in someone’s life.  Prayer is the gunpowder and the work of the Holy Spirit the bullets in God’s redemptive arsenal. As our hearts ache over lost individuals and nations as Jesus’ did, we will also fall to our knees and pray to the Lord of the harvest. His answer will be to multiply workers (missions) around the world.

The Early Church fueled its missions outreach by prayer, beginning with a ten-day prayer meeting and confession time in the Upper Room that brought the fire of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. Peter preached and thousands were saved.  The disciples continued to pray and daily people were added to the church.  In Acts 4:23-31, Luke records a corporate prayer of the early believers where “the place where they were assembled was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with boldness.” There’s the success equation: People pray—the Holy Spirit comes—powerful outreach ensues. The U.S. Center for World Missions estimates that prayer-propelled missions in the Early Church brought the ratio of unbelievers-to-professing Christians to 360:1 by the year 100 A.D.

During the Middles Ages, the power of the Church ebbed because of worldly success which diminished the need for and power of prayer. Its rebirth came in the monastic orders where a life devoted to prayer and Bible-reading eventually became the center of medieval society.  From Anthony in Egypt to Patrick in Ireland to the Nestorians in China and eventually the Franciscans, Dominicans and Jesuits traveling the globe, men and women of God began to fervently pray against the evils of their time and share their faith. They came in all shapes, sizes, and espoused various creeds--but their common denominator was a life devoted to prayer. God honored their efforts and much of Europe was Christianized—bringing the global unbelievers-to-professing Christian ratio to 69:1 in 1500 A.D. at the dawn of the Reformation.

Following the renewal of the Church under Martin Luther, John Calvin, and others, Protestant missions emerged in 1727 through a young nobleman named Nicholas von Zinzendorf who established a community for persecuted believers in Moravia. After years of turbulent growth, God visited the 300-member Moravian community in revival showers that gave birth to a twenty-four hour prayer thrust at “Herrnhut”—the watch of the Lord. This fervent, continuous prayer meeting lasted for over one hundred years and launched the first Moravian missionaries into Scandinavia, other parts of Europe, the West Indies, and around the world.  It was through a Moravian missionary named Peter Buehler that John Wesley  found salvation in Christ and launched the Methodist revival in England—all of it fueled by prayer.
 
On the other side of the Atlantic, the great American theologian, Jonathan Edwards, was spreading revival fire as a part of the American Great Awakening that rocked the colonies from 1734-45. Edwards’ long-titled book said it all: A Humble Attempt to Promote the Agreement and Union of God's People Throughout the World in Extraordinary Prayer For a Revival Of Religion And The Advancement Of God's Kingdom On Earth, According To Scriptural Promises And Prophecies Of The Last Time. There’s the success formula again: Prayer—Revival—Missions. William Carey, the English cobbler, would follow in 1792 with his Humble Attempt treatise on reaching the heathen around the world. Carey’s tireless efforts in India would light the fires of English missions that propelled the English language into prominence as the number one language in global missions.
 
In 1806, Samuel Mills and four other college students were gathering in a field for prayer near Williams College in Massachusetts when they were overtaken by thunder and torrents of rain. Seeking cover on the leeward side of a haystack, their famous rendezvous with destiny became the “Haystack Prayer Meeting” where they cried out to God to send young American missionaries to the far reaches of Asia. Samuel Mills’ famous prayer contained these words: “We can do this if we will!”  Over the next few years, powered by the prayers of thousands, the first American missions societies were born and in 1810 the first missionaries were sent--among them was Adoniram Judson, pioneer missionary to Burma. Samuel Mills went on to help found the American Bible Society and thousands of American youths continued to pray while becoming answers to their own prayers.

The next wave in American missions would also center around youth and prayer. In July 1886 Evangelist Dwight L. Moody invited 250 collegians to a thirty-day prayer and Bible conference in Mt. Hermon, Massachusetts where one hundred men volunteered to go into missions. Two of the student volunteers, Robert Wilder and John Forman, traveled to 167 colleges and universities the following year calling the campuses of America to prayer and global evangelization. Their recruitment gave birth to the Student Volunteer Movement which eventually mobilized over 20,000 young missionaries for overseas service and scores of thousands at home. 

John Mott, one of the original one hundred volunteers, became chairman of the movement in 1888 and began to preach across the United States “The evangelization of the world in this generation.” The Student Volunteer Movement saw many women join the cause of missions for the first time including Lottie Moon and Glady Aylward in China and Amy Carmichael in India. In its zenith, the Student Volunteer Movement was the largest known missions movement in history, following on the heels of both the American Civil War and the Great (Prayer) Revival of 1857. Through aggressive prayer and outreach, the ratio of unbelievers to professing Christians around the world would shrink to 27:1 by 1900.

The 20th century would see even greater fountains of prayer and evangelistic effort. In 1904 God used a young seminary student named Evan Roberts to bring a powerful revival to Wales known as the Welsh Revival. It was characterized by over 100,000 conversions, fervent intercession and heart-felt worship. After only a few years of public ministry, Evan Roberts retreated to a life of obscurity where he spent the final forty years of his life in prayer.
 
On April 14, 1906, in a “tumble-down shack” at 312 Azusa Street in Los Angeles, God poured out his Spirit upon black evangelist William J. Seymour and his followers who were in the middle of ten days of fasting and prayer. Soon hundreds and thousands of people were seeking God, many praying in tongues, and being empowered by the Holy Spirit to share their new-found faith. This was the beginning of the Azusa Street Revival which would birth major denominations including the Church of God in Christ (1907) and the Assemblies of God in 1914.  These Pentecostal Christians were fervent in prayer and had a heart to go all over the world with the Good News of Christ. By the early 21st century, Pentecostals and Charismatics numbered over 500 million worldwide—and were at the forefront of global missions.  By 1950 the ratio of unbelievers to professing Christians had shrunk to 21:1

The 1950s to 1980s saw an ever-growing tide of global prayer and world missions. Beginning in the 1940s, Billy Graham preached to scores of millions of people and said that there were three secrets to his ministry: Prayer, prayer, and prayer. In 1950 Bill & Vonette Bright started Campus Crusade for Christ which grew to become the world’s largest missionary organization. The engine of their growth was the “Great Commission Prayer Crusade.” Loren Cunningham and Youth With A Mission in 1960 led the next wave in a global missions explosion. The foundational principles of YWAM included hearing God’s voice and intercession for the nations. By 1990 YWAM had preached the Gospel in all 223 geo-political nations on earth.
 
During this same period, God was pouring out his Spirit upon the Korean people who used prayer grottoes, mountains, and all-night prayer meetings to seek the Lord of the harvest. By 2000 South Korea had become the second largest missionary-sending nation in the world.  And perhaps the largest movement of God in any nation in history took place in the latter part of the 20th century in China where the church grew from one million believers in 1900 to 120 million in 2007 (an official state estimate). Fueled by the prayers and passion of an entire generation of house church leaders, China now stands poised in the 21st century to send millions of missionaries across Central Asia to bring the Gospel “back to Jerusalem.”  By 1980 the ratio of unbelievers to professing Christians was down to 11:1.

• In the past three decades we see a clear correlation to between increasing prayer and growing outreach. We live in the time where prayer for the nations has exploded around the world. Many nations now have intercessor groups that fast and pray for revival in their own countries.
• There are 24/7 Prayer Rooms and watches, a National Day of Prayer in the United States and other nations, and prayer focuses that target the Muslim world, the Buddhist world, and other spiritual strongholds.
• A Global Day of prayer each spring at Pentecost that originated in southern Africa and has spread  around the world.  On that one day alone it is estimated that 200 million Christians cry out to God for world evangelism.

Certainly the increased temperature of global prayer is producing the following amazing results: 

• South of the Sahara Desert, nearly half of the Africa continent expresses faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
• In 1900 there were 50,000 Protestants in Latin America. Today there are over 35 million.
• The Church is growing so rapidly in Asia, Africa, and Latin America that by 2020 it is estimated that 70% of the Church will reside in the southern hemisphere.
• 70 churches are started every day; 28,000 people are converted in China every day; 20,000 converts take place in Africa everyday; Worldwide, 70,000 people daily are entering into the joy of eternal life in Christ.

Due to the incredible potency of prayer-fueled missions, the ratio of unbelievers-to-professing Christians has fallen all the way from 360:1 in 100 A.D. to 2:1 today!  Over two billion people profess faith in Jesus Christ; an additional two billion have heard the Gospel message; and a final two billion have yet to hear. If we’re faithful to the Lord of the harvest, and take his words seriously to “go on our knees and pray for harvest hands,” then the 21st century just might see the evangelization of the world in this generation.Let’s complete the task—through giving ourselves to prayer.