ON PRAYER AND MISSIONS: THY KINGDOM COME
The Challenge Before Us As GLS embarks on our 10th anniversary year, we invite you to join us in the work of prayer with greater urgency than ever before.
The top news headlines these days are wars and the threats of wider wars. We are reminded of Mt. 24:1-14 where the Lord warned us that wars, natural disasters, increase of wickedness and persecution of God’s people are to be expected in the end times.
But the Lord also assured us that the gospel will be preached in the whole world before the end would come. God is working out his plan of redemption in human history despite global chaos. Our calling is to alleviate sufferings, fight injustice, and proclaim the gospel of reconciliation to a fallen world.
Today, the Great Commandment to love our neighbor and the Great Commission to disciple the nations seem overwhelming. But that was probably how every generation before us felt.
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 is the key to missions. And the prayer of God’s people is a critical part of the equation.
The Moravians Modern 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, was launched. Within 20 years, the Moravians had started missions in West Indies, Surinam, Algeria, South Africa, Romania, Persia, and Sri Lanka. Their 24-7 prayer meeting went on without interruption for 110 years.
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. Their chief petition was for the conversion of the heathen world.
New Year’s Eve 1738, the Wesley brothers and their friends gathered to pray. At 3 a.m., the Holy Spirit fell upon them. This ignited the Great Awakening that contributed to the end of slavery in the British Empire and formation of many missionary societies such as the Baptist Missionary Society in 1792 and the London Missionary Society in 1795 that sent William Carey to India and Robert Morrison to China respectively.
The Haystack Prayer Meeting August 1806, one Saturday afternoon, five college students gathered on the campus of Williams College in Massachusetts to discuss the spiritual needs of people in Asia. A thunderstorm broke out. They took shelter under a haystack and prayed until the sky cleared.
This Haystack Prayer Meeting led to the founding of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. It was not until 1862 when their first missionaries went to India. But within 50 years, 1,250 missionaries were sent with schools and hospitals established in mission fields where the Bible was translated, and native leaders were trained.
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, would pray every night for a thousand new missionaries to emerge from the colleges of America. July 1886, when Robert went to the first summer Bible conference hosted by D.L. Moody for 251 students from 89 schools across America, Grace prayed in earnest that 100 students would commit to missions.
Moody agreed to add a missionary program on two Friday evenings. By the last day of the conference, 100 students had committed to missionary service. One of them named 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 that worked 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. The revival spread to Seoul and other cities, and beyond the borders of Korea into Manchuria and China. To this day, the Korean church is known for their discipline in prayer. And missionaries from Korea are a force for the Kingdom in many parts of the world.
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.”