Mobilizing Missionary Prayer (Part 1)
Extraordinary prayer…
Passionate prayer…
Desperate prayer…
Intercessory prayer…
Abandoned prayer…
These are various words people use to talk about a fresh expression of an ancient practice of the church. All are powerful descriptors and carry a depth of meaning when used, and yet, each version seems to leave something out, as if the statement is incomplete. As aptly as each term may describe prayer, they miss the mark of mission, which is needed to inform and guide the prayers being offered to God.
In teaching us how to pray, Jesus said, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Notice the connection Jesus made for us to follow … prayer and mission were supposed to be in sync ... like walking hand in hand down the street. He forged a direct interaction of the two and then taught us to pray the same way.
Jesus tied our time spent getting to know and become more like God to our time spent fulfilling the mission of making disciples, while we serve as His ambassadors in a lost world. One informs and guides the other, and then they reverse roles.
In the book, A Trowel and A Sword, Verlon Fosner and Jon Davis challenge their readers to engage in a high empowerment approach to prayer for the purpose of evangelism. They bring the elements of prayer and mission and tie them together as they present another way for us to pray. With each person who comes to faith in Jesus Christ we advance the Kingdom of God as we plunder the strongman over and over again. How? Through prayer (sword) and evangelism (trowel).
The principle is that our advancement is dependent on the exercise of prayer mixed with the works of mission. When we strive to move exponentially forward we need both elements present, just as Jesus taught us. Here is the important thing … If we want to be prepared for the spiritual warfare surrounding us, we need to understand the connection between prayer and mission. This is all the more true when our disciple making moves into the realm of evangelism.
Unfortunately, too many leaders, and the churches they lead, enter the battle unprepared. They are not ready to be in the fight. Plundering the strongman is spiritual warfare, and we need to understand what it takes to be in the fight. When we allow ourselves to be unprepared, the result becomes one of withdrawal as the cost goes up and climbs much higher than expected.
There is a solution for all leaders and the churches they serve, Fosner and Davis say, “… any church that does the missiological work of becoming effective in evangelism needs to be prepared for spiritual warfare. This group must learn to pick up the sword of prayer. Any group with an evangelism trowel in one hand and a prayer sword in the other is one powerful group.”
What so many of us miss in the equation is the direct connection between prayer and mission. We simply don’t see it. This important symbiotic relationship gets made in the book, A Trowel and A Sword, when it says, “Prayer is the fuel for mission; it opens doors, guides, breaks chains, and frees people to discover how great a salvation God has wrought for us in Christ.” When we do mission without prayer or use inadequate forms of praying, we go into a spiritual battle weak and unprotected.
It is declarative as we speak the same words Jesus spoke when teaching His followers how to pray, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” That is what this series of articles is going to focus on.
We are going to address our inadequacy and suggest alternative principles with which we can fight the fight, and it begins with the way we pray. We hope to encourage and overhaul prayer lives as we mobilize a missionary movement to seek and to save those who are lost. We want to reestablish the connection between prayer and mission in each "missionary" we raise up and send out. Join us in the movement: pick up the sword of prayer and the trowel of mission!
Want to go a little deeper and get ahead a bit?
Check out the book, A Trowel and A Sword, by Verlon Fosner and Jon Davis.