By Michael Smiel, US Office

During my time on the mission field, my teams always tried to meet for prayer once a week. Three topics for prayer come to mind as I reflect on those times. These three topics were continual and critical needs that impacted our ministry most as we sought to establish churches among the unreached. My hope is that you will use the following topics and scriptures to pray for the accomplishment of the mission that the Church has been tasked with.

1. Pray for missionaries to be rooted in Christ and protected from evil.

A missionary’s task is spiritual. Therefore, their spiritual life must be healthy and prayer for them to be rooted in Christ is crucial. Much of our prayer time as a team was mixed with checking in on each other on a spiritual and emotional level. “How are you doing?” was a common question. We wanted to know about each other’s connection to Jesus. We meant it and we prayed about it. Pray for missionaries you know to continually be rooted in Christ and to be refreshed by that connection.

Prayer Suggestions:
- Use Ephesians 3:14-21 as a starting point for this kind of prayer.
- Our website has profiles for our missionaries. If you do not know who to pray for, use these profiles to pray for our missionaries. Find our missionaries here.

A missionary’s task is spiritual and they are not working unopposed. Evil exists. Satan and his forces look to destroy our efforts but we have the Lord who is faithful. Therefore, we can call upon the Lord for protection. Individuals on my first missions team were having trouble sleeping every night when they first arrived in the new city, largely unreached. We eventually realized that every person on the team was having trouble sleeping. It was months after arriving so it could not be blamed on jet lag. Realizing that this may be a spiritual issue, we began praying for protection and rest every week when we were together. We soon had rest! This is one example of many we experienced. Pray for protection for missionaries.

Prayer Suggestions:
- Use 2 Thessalonians 3:1-3 as a starting point for this kind of prayer.

2. Pray for more workers to go to the field.

On every team I have been on, we have always had more work than we could do ourselves. There was always another unreached people group nearby that we desired to reach but we were limited by our capacity. We always found ourselves praying for more people, both local and international believers, to join us in the work of reaching the unreached. Jesus said, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (Matthew 9:37-38, ESV). Pray for more missionaries to go in order to reach the unreached with the gospel. Pray that local believers would share the gospel with their neighbors in their cities, towns, and villages.

Prayer Suggestions:
- Use Matthew 9:37-38 as a starting point for this kind of prayer.

3. Pray for people groups to follow Jesus and churches to be established.

Praying for a specific people group has been a critical focus of every missions team I have been on. We prayed for individuals, friends, families, community leaders, government officials, and entire people groups to come to a loving faith in Jesus. We prayed for churches to form within those people groups where believers could experience spiritual life and encouragement together. Pray for people groups to follow Jesus and churches to be established among them.

Prayer suggestions:
- Use 1 Timothy 2:1-4 as a starting point for this kind of prayer.
- The regions where our missionaries are working are Asia | Europe | Eurasia | North America. Use this to discover people groups, or countries to pray for.

Your prayers launch missionaries out to unreached peoples and give them success through the power of the Holy Spirit. Subscribe to Intercede & SEND, our monthly global prayer calendar.