PRAYER & BREAKTHROUGHS IN MISSIONS
The Challenge of Our Day
Wars and the threat of wider wars fill our news headlines every day. We are reminded of Mt. 24:1-14 when the Lord spoke of wars, natural disasters, increase of wickedness and persecution of God’s people in the end times. But He also assured us that the gospel will be preached in the whole world before the end would come.
Amidst the global chaos, God is working out His plan of redemption, calling us to alleviate suffering, fight injustice, and proclaim the gospel of reconciliation. In these times, the Great Commandment to love our neighbor and the Great Commission to disciple the nations seem overwhelming. However, every generation before us must have felt the same way too.
Those Who Have Gone Before Us
The late missionary statesman J. Herbert Kane wrote: “No one can study the development of the modern missionary movement and not be impressed with the extent to which prayer and missions have gone hand in hand.” Beginning with the Pentecost and throughout church history, the work of the Holy Spirit through the prayer of God’s people has been key in missions.
The Moravians The Protestant missionary movement began in 1727 when revival came to the Moravians under the leadership of Count Zinzendorf. A round-the-clock prayer watch seven days a week went on uninterrupted for 110 years. Within two decades, the Moravians had started missions in West Indies, Surinam, Algeria, South Africa, Romania, Persia, and Sri Lanka.
The Great Awakening 1727 was also the year when a group of students at Oxford began to meet regularly for prayer and Bible study. Among them were John and Charles Wesley. Before long, prayer groups began meeting all over the British Isles to pray for “the conversion of the heathen world”.
At 3 a.m. on New Year’s Eve 1738, the Wesley brothers and their friends were in prayer when the Holy Spirit fell upon them, igniting the Great Awakening. The revival contributed to the end of slavery in the British Empire and the birth of many missionary societies including the Baptist Missionary Society and the London Missionary Society that sent William Carey to India and Robert Morrison to China.
The Haystack Prayer Meeting August 1806, one Saturday afternoon, five college students gathered on the campus of Williams College in Massachusetts. As they were discussing the spiritual needs of people in Asia, a thunderstorm broke out. They took shelter under a haystack and prayed till the sky cleared. The Haystack Prayer Meeting led to the founding of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Their first missionaries left for India in 1862. Within 50 years, 1,250 missionaries were sent to establish schools and hospitals, translate the Bible, and raise up native leaders.
The Student Volunteer Movement During the academic year of 1885-86, two college students, Robert Wilder and his sister Grace, who were children of missionaries to India, prayed every night for a thousand new missionaries to be sent from the campuses of America.
Summer 1886, when Robert attended the first Bible conference hosted by D. L. Moody for 251 students from 89 schools across America, Grace prayed for 100 students to commit to missions. By the last day of the conference, 100 students had committed to missionary service. A student, John Mott, wrote to his parents: “The Holy Spirit is working here with mighty power. He has brought about the greatest missionary revival the world has ever known.”
Within two years, the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions was organized. In less than 60 years, by 1945, 20,500 workers had been sent despite two World Wars and the Great Depression. As a key leader of the movement, John Mott worked in many countries including China, India, and Japan. In 1946, he received the Nobel Peace Prize for his ministry with international Christian student organizations to promote peace.
The Korean Church On January 14,1907, the Holy Spirit fell on 700 Christians gathered in Pyongyang for the annual Bible classes conducted by missionaries. In the five months before that, many had been meeting daily to pray for a deeper experience of the abundant life in Christ.
There is no doubt that the revival was the direct result of five months of earnest prayer. Revival spread to Seoul and other cities, then across the borders into Manchuria and China. The Korean Church is known for their discipline in prayer, and missionaries from Korea have been a force for the Kingdom in many parts of the world to this day.
Elisabeth Elliot In 1958, the widow of Jim Elliot returned to the Ecuadorian tribe that had killed her husband only two years earlier and succeeded in reaching them with the gospel. She said, “Prayer lays hold of God’s plan and becomes the link between His will and its accomplishment on earth. Amazing things happen, and we are given the privilege of being the channels of the Holy Spirit’s prayer.”
References:
A Joint Venture: Prayer, Revival and Missions Go Together – or Not at All