Whenever we pray for you, we always begin by giving thanks to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for we have heard how much you trust the Lord, and how much you love his people. And you are looking forward to the joys of heaven, and have been ever since the Gospel first was preached to you. The same Good News that came to you is going out all over the world and changing lives everywhere, just as it changed yours that very first day you heard it and understood about God’s great kindness to sinners.
– Colossians 1:3-6 (TLB)
Take a moment and think back to the first time you learned about God’s love for you. Was it a parent, a Sunday school teacher, a friend, a pastor who shared it with you? It may have been a book, a movie, or the Bible that made you aware of the gospel. The same Good News that came to you is being brought to others around the world by faithful men and women who have been called to go, make disciples, and start movements of faith in Christ.
As I have communicated with our partner missionaries and mission organizations throughout this year of disruption, I have been reminded that God’s surpassing grace is evident. In the field, He has blessed teams with increasing fruitfulness as they share Christ’s love in word and deed with families living with-out the hope of the Good News. Transformation continues to take place; the gospel continues to bear fruit and thousands have started following Jesus. A novel virus cannot stop the spread of the gospel, and lockdowns and mitigation cannot contain God’s Kingdom. There will be many who, when they think back on the first time they heard about God’s love for them, will say it was during the pandemic year of 2020! How is this possible? Arthur Tappan Pierson—an American Presbyterian pastor, writer, and missionary—wrote, “Every step in the progress of missions is directly traceable to prayer.”1
The mission partners of First Church are so very grateful for our annual financial support. These contributions come from tithes and gifts that you provide so abundantly; they are one of the tools that allows the gospel to go forth around the corner and around the world. And yet that tool would not be functional if it were not backed by prayer. Prayer is what empowers a missionary to do what he or she is called to do. And the church is called to pray! A recent communication with one of our mission partners ended with this:
Thank you so much for the word about extra prayers coming my way after the ministry was highlighted in the church bulletin! I cannot tell you how much it means to know people are praying! It made me cry too, in a good way, because this is in fact the first week since the crisis started that I feel as though I’ve re-found my footing and a sense of healthy balance. I am finally able to be proactive and peaceful in facing these ever-changing times rather than just reactive and fearful to the roller-coaster of events. I must believe those extra prayers are a part of that!
As believers, we all participate in the family business. God has made us His sons and daughters and then calls us to join Him in fulfillment of the Great Commission—to go and make disciples. How do we do that? We live our lives in our circles of influence in such a way that we are inviting others to “come and see” what is different about us. And we pray for those who have left their homes, their families, their comforts, their language, to do the same in the dark places of a foreign land.
Prayer can replace fear with peace,
exhaustion with strength.
Prayer is a holy tool that allows missionaries to cut through the darkness, the evil, the suffering. Prayer can replace fear with peace, exhaustion with strength. Whenever we pray for our mission partners, we are making the impossible possible. We are pushing forward the trajectory of the Great Commission. One of my heroes of the faith, Corrie ten Boom, once said:
The wonderful thing about prayer is that you leave a world of not being able to do something, and enter God’s realm where anything is possible. He specializes in the impossible. Nothing is too great for His almighty power. Nothing is too small for His love.2
by Trusha Barner, Director of Missions
1 Arthur Tappan Pierson, The Missionary Review of the World, New York, NY: Funk & Wagnalls Co., 1915.
2 Corrie ten Boom, I Stand at the Door and Knock: Meditations by the Author of The Hiding Place, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2008, p. 63.
