PRAYER—WHAT WE ALL CAN & MUST DO, REALLY!

Prayer is not a sideline activity in missions– it is the battle plan. When we hear about the needs of the field, the natural question is: "What can I do?" Usually, we mean something practical: Where can I go? What can I give? How can I help? We want to move. We want to contribute. We want to make a difference.

And yet the first answer Scripture gives us is not always action,but prayer. That can feel insufficient at first. Prayer seems less urgent, less visible, less productive than action. But in the economy of God, prayer is not what we do instead of joining the work — it is how we enter it. Prayer is the first, next, and last thing that brings us into step with God in mission.

Prayer Is Not Passive — It Is Pivotal

Oswald Chambers wrote in My Utmost for His Highest that "prayer does not fit us for the greater work; prayer is the greater work." That is counter-intuitive — and it is true.

We often think prayer prepares us for the real work, as if intercession were merely the warm-up and mission the main event. But Jesus taught otherwise. In His ministry, He spoke often about the Kingdom of God — the mission. He also taught, modeled, commanded, and corrected His disciples on prayer. Prayer was not incidental to His mission. It was central to it.

This is why prayer should never be seen as passive. It is often harder to pray steadily than to spring into action. Prayer requires attention, surrender, patience, and faith. It asks us to stop leading with our own urgency and to submit ourselves to God's purposes, timing, and power. That is not passivity.  That is participation at the deepest level.

Between the resurrection and Pentecost, Jesus told His disciples to stay in Jerusalem and wait. They waited with united, expectant prayer. The church was born from believers on their knees. Paul and Barnabas, too, were called to take the gospel beyond Judea and Samaria into the rest of the Mediterranean world while in prayer.

Prayer is the posture of receiving from God what mission requires. It aligns us with His heart, readies us for His purposes, and reminds us that the gospel advances not by might, nor by power, but by the Spirit. Prayer is not an escape from mission.  It is preparation for Spirit-led, Spirit-empowered mission. Throughout the history of the church, prayer precedes the outworking of God's purposes.

Hidden but Powerful Work: Hudson Taylor and Prayer

James Hudson Taylor, born May 21, 1832, founded the China Inland Mission (CIM), now known as OMF International. Historical accounts credit CIM with tens of thousands of converts in China and a lasting influence far beyond Taylor's own lifetime.

What is remarkable is not only what Taylor accomplished, but how prayer marked his story from the beginning. As a young teenager, he doubted the faith of his godly parents. But at age 17, he came across a gospel tract in his father's library. His mother and sister had been praying persistently for him. In that moment — 75 miles away — his mother felt a sudden urge to pray for her son's salvation. Reading that simple tract, Hudson Taylor was convicted of his sins, fell to his knees, and accepted Christ as his Savior. In that same moment, he also felt God's calling to China.

Taylor's conversion and calling were not isolated events. They were part of a larger work God had been doing through prayer. His father had been deeply burdened for those in China who had not been reached by the gospel, and prayed that if God gave him a son, that son would be called to serve there. Long before Taylor ever sailed, studied, preached, or mobilized for the harvest, prayer was already at work. The visible ministry came later. The hidden work of prayer began first.

As he prepared to leave England for China, Taylor understood something many of us still need to learn: a missionary's deepest dependence is not on circumstances, strategy, or human support — but on God. He wrote: "When I get out to China, I shall have no claim on anyone for anything; my only claim will be on God. How important, therefore, to learn before leaving England to move man, through God, by prayer alone."

In missions, all our resolve, wisdom, planning, and effort are necessary,  but not sufficient. Hearts are moved by the Holy Spirit. Lives are transformed by the Holy Spirit. Missionaries plant and water the field, but God gives the growth. That is why prayer remains central — and why, over 35 years, every one of the 280+ bi-vocational missionaries GLS has sent to Asia and the Middle East has been sustained not only by strategy and preparation, but by a faithful life of prayer and a faithful community of intercessors behind them. The field advances when God’s people prays.

Prayer Is Not a Fallback — It Is a Lifeline for Mission

If prayer is the legitimate response to a missional call to action, what does it accomplish? Far more than expressing concern.

We pray because we must be continually transformed and renewed to reflect the God whom we represent. We pray to be clothed with the Spirit's power to do what only God can do. We pray for open doors into communities and relationships. We pray for protection in spiritual battle, patience in slow seasons, provision where resources are thin, and for the strengthening of young believers and growing churches in cities that have not been reached by the gospel.

Paul instructs us to "pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests… and always keep on praying for all the Lord's people" (Ephesians 6:18, NIV). In well over 200 references across the Old and New Testaments — in direct promises, in the Psalms, in the life of the early church and in the prayers of God's people — the testimony is consistent: God hears and responds to prayer.

So when the needs of the world confront us and we ask, "What can I do?" — prayer is not a token response. It is a lifeline for missions. Some will be called to go. Some will be called to give, send, organize, welcome, or support. But all of us are called to pray.

So, What Must I Do?

Read our companion story: "A Slow Miracle and an Amazing Harvest." Told from the perspective of a culturally Muslim family that eventually came to faith, it reminds us that some of God's most significant work unfolds slowly, quietly, and prayerfully — long before it is ever visible to others.

Prayer is not a lesser calling. To pray for workers is to participate in the sending. To pray for those who have not been reached is to participate in the harvest. To pray with patience and persistence is to take up the greater work entrusted to every believer.

Patient, persevering prayer will never be the whole of missions — but it is always at the heart of missions. It is what we can all do, wherever we are. More than that, it is what we must do. And if prayer is stirring something deeper in you — a sense that God may be calling you further into the field, let’s talk about what missions may look like for you.