cause. But it is much more important to urge them to give their prayers
to the movement. Foreign missions need, today, more the power of prayer
than the power of money. Prayer can make even poverty in the missionary
cause move on amidst difficulties and hindrances. Much money without
prayer is helpless and powerless in the face of the utter darkness and
sin and wretchedness on the foreign field.
This is peculiarly a missionary age. Protestant Christianity is stirred
as it never was before in the line of aggression in pagan lands. The
missionary movement has taken on proportions that awaken hope, kindle
enthusiasm, and which demand the attention, if not the interest, of
the coldest and the most lifeless. Nearly every Church has caught the
contagion, and the sails of their proposed missionary movements are
spread wide to catch the favouring breezes. Herein is the danger just
now, that the missionary movement will go ahead of the missionary
spirit. This has always been the peril of the Church, losing the
substance in the shade, losing the spirit in the outward shell, and
contenting itself in the mere parade of the movement, putting the force
of effort in the movement and not in the spirit.
The magnificence of this movement may not only blind us to the spirit
of it, but the spirit which should give life and shape to the movement
may be lost in the wealth of the movement as the ship, borne by
favouring winds, may be lost when these winds swell to a storm.
Not a few of us have heard eloquent and earnest speeches stressing
the imperative need of money for missions where we have heard one
stressing the imperative need of prayer. All our plans and devices
drive to the one end of raising money, not to quicken faith and
promote prayer. The common idea among Church leaders is that if we get
the money, prayer will come as a matter of course. The very reverse is
the truth. If we get the Church at the business of praying, and thus
secure the spirit of missions, money will more than likely come as a
matter of course. Spiritual agencies and spiritual forces never come
as a matter of course. Spiritual duties and spiritual factors, left
to the “matter of course” law, will surely fall out and die. Only the
things which are stressed live and rule in the spiritual realm. They
who give, will not necessarily pray. Many in our churches are liberal
givers who are noted for their prayerlessness. One of the evils of the
present-day missionary movement lies just there. Giving is entirely
removed from prayer. Prayer receives scant attention, while giving
stands out prominently. They who truly pray will be moved to give.
Praying creates the giving spirit. The praying ones will give liberally
and self-denyingly. He who enters his closet to God, will also open his
purse to God. But perfunctory, grudging, assessment-giving kills the
very spirit of prayer. Emphasising the material to the neglect of the
spiritual, by an inexorable law retires and discounts the spiritual.
It is truly wonderful how great a part money plays in the modern
religious movements, and how little prayer plays in them. In striking
contrast with that statement, it is marvellous how little part money
played in primitive Christianity as a factor in spreading the Gospel,
and how wonderful part prayer played in it.
The grace of giving is nowhere cultured to a richer growth than in
the closet. If all our missionary boards and secretaryships were
turned into praying bands, until the agony of real prayer and travail
with Christ for a perishing world came on them, real estate, bank
stocks, United States bonds would be in the market for the spreading
of Christ’s Gospel among men. If the spirit of prayer prevailed,
missionary boards whose individual members are worth millions, would
not be staggering under a load of debt and great Churches would not
have a yearly deficit and a yearly grumbling, grudging, and pressure to
pay a beggarly assessment to support a mere handful of missionaries,
with the additional humiliation of debating the question of recalling
some of them. The on-going of Christ’s kingdom is locked up in the
closet of prayer by Christ Himself, and not in the contribution box.
The Prophet Isaiah, looking down the centuries with the vision of a
seer, thus expresses his purpose to continue in prayer and give God no
rest till Christ’s kingdom be established among men:
“For Zion’s sake will I not hold my peace, and for
Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest till the righteousness
thereof goeth forth as brightness, and the salvation
thereof as a lamp that burneth.”
Then, foretelling the final success of the Christian Church, he thus
speaks:
“And the Gentiles shall see thy righteousness, and all
kings thy glory, and thou shalt be called by a new name,
which the mouth of the Lord shall name.”
Then the Lord, Himself, by the mouth of this Evangelical prophet,
declares as follows:
“I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which
shall never hold their peace, day nor night. Ye that make
mention of the Lord, keep not silence. And give him no rest
till he establish and till he make Jerusalem a praise in
the earth.”
In the margin of our Bible, it reads, “Ye that are the Lord’s
remembrancers.” The idea is, that these praying ones are those who are
the Lord’s remembrancers, those who remind Him of what He has promised,
and who give Him no rest till God’s Church is established in the earth.
And one of the leading petitions in the Lord’s Prayer deals with this
same question of the establishing of God’s kingdom and the progress of
the Gospel in the short, pointed petition, “Thy kingdom come,” with the
added words, “Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven.”
The missionary movement in the Apostolic Church was born in an
atmosphere of fasting and prayer. The very movement looking to offering
the blessings of the Christian Church to the Gentiles was on the
housetop on the occasion when Peter went up there to pray, and God
showed him His Divine purpose to extend the privileges of the Gospel to
the Gentiles, and to break down the middle wall of partition between
Jew and Gentile.
But more specifically Paul and Barnabas were definitely called and set
apart to the missionary field at Antioch when the Church there had
fasted and prayed. It was then the Holy Spirit answered from heaven:
“Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called
them.”
Please note this was not the call to the ministry of Paul and Barnabas,
but more particularly their definite call to the foreign field.
Paul had been called to the ministry years before this, even at his
conversion. This was a subsequent call to a work born of special and
continued prayer in the Church at Antioch. God calls men not only to
the ministry but to be missionaries. Missionary work is God’s work.
And it is the God-called men who are to do it. These are the kind of
missionaries which have wrought well and successfully in the foreign
field in the past, and the same kind will do the work in the future, or
it will not be done.
It is praying missionaries who are needed for the work, and it is a
praying church who sends them out, which are prophecies of the success
which is promised. The sort of religion to be exported by missionaries
is of the praying sort. The religion to which the heathen world is to
be converted is a religion of prayer, and a religion of prayer to
the true God. The heathen world already prays to its idols and false
gods. But they are to be taught by praying missionaries, sent out by a
praying Church, to cast away their idols and to begin to call upon the
name of the Lord Jesus Christ. No prayerless church can transport to
heathen lands a praying religion. No prayerless missionary can bring
heathen idolaters who know not our God to their knees in true prayer
until he becomes pre-eminently a man of prayer. As it takes praying
men at home to do God’s work, none the less does it take praying
missionaries to bring those who sit in darkness to the light.
The most noted and most successful missionaries have been pre-eminently
men of prayer. David Livingstone, William Taylor, Adoniram Judson,
Henry Martyn, and Hudson Taylor, with many more, form a band of
illustrious praying men whose impress and influence still abide
where they laboured. No prayerless man is wanted for this job. Above
everything rise, the primary qualification for every missionary is
prayer. Let him be, above everything else, a man of prayer. And when
the crowning day comes, and the records are made up and read at the
great judgment day, then it will appear how well praying men wrought in
the hard fields of heathendom, and how much was due to them in laying
the foundations of Christianity in those fields.
The one only condition which is to give world-wide power to this Gospel
is prayer, and the spread of this Gospel will depend on prayer. The
energy which was to give it marvelous momentum and conquering power
over all its malignant and powerful foes is the energy of prayer.
The fortunes of the kingdom of Jesus Christ are not made by the
feebleness of its foes. They are strong and bitter and have ever been
strong, and ever will be. But mighty prayer――this is the one great
spiritual force which will enable the Lord Jesus Christ to enter into
full possession of His kingdom, and secure for Him the heathen as His
inheritance, and the uttermost part of the earth for His possession.
It is prayer which will enable Him to break His foes with a rod of
iron, that will make these foes tremble in their pride and power, who
are but frail potter’s vessels, to be broken in pieces by one stroke of
His hand. A person who can pray is the mightiest instrument Christ has
in this world. A praying Church is stronger than all the gates of hell.
God’s decree for the glory of His Son’s kingdom is dependent on prayer
for its fulfilment: “Ask of me, and I will give thee the heathen
for thy inheritance, and the uttermost part of the earth for thy
possession.” God the Father gives nothing to His Son only through
prayer. And the reason why the Church has not received more in the
missionary work in which it is engaged is the lack of prayer. “Ye have
not, because ye ask not.”
Every dispensation foreshadowing the coming of Christ when the
world has been evangelised, at the end of time, rests upon these
constitutional provisions, God’s decree, His promises and prayer.
However far away that day of victory by distance or time, or remoteness
of shadowy type, prayer is the essential condition on which the
dispensation becomes strong, typical and representative. From Abraham,
the first of the nation of the Israelites, the friend of God, down to
this dispensation of the Holy Spirit, this has been true.
“The nations call! from sea to sea
Extends the thrilling cry,
‘Come over, Christians, if there be,
And help us, ere we die.’
“Our hearts, O Lord, the summons feel;
Let hand with heart combine,
And answer to the world’s appeal,
By giving ‘that is thine.’”
Our Lord’s plan for securing workers in the foreign missionary field
is the same plan He set on foot for obtaining preachers. It is by the
process of praying. It is the prayer plan as distinguished from all
man-made plans. These mission workers are to be “sent men.” God must
send them. They are God-called, divinely moved to this great work. They
are inwardly moved to enter the harvest fields of the world and gather
sheaves for the heavenly garners. Men do not choose to be missionaries
any more than they choose to be preachers. God sends out labourers in
His harvest fields in answer to the prayers of His Church. Here is the
Divine plan as set forth by our Lord:
“But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with
compassion on them, because they fainted, and were as sheep
having no shepherd. Then saith he unto his disciples, The
harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few. Pray
ye, therefore, the Lord of the harvest that he will send
forth labourers into his harvest.”
It is the business of the home church to do the praying. It is the
Lord’s business to call and send forth the labourers. The Lord does
not do the praying. The Church does not do the calling. And just as
our Lord’s compassions were aroused by the sight of multitudes, weary,
hungry, and scattered, exposed to evils, as sheep having no shepherd,
so whenever the Church has eyes to see the vast multitudes of earth’s
inhabitants, descendants of Adam, weary in soul, living in darkness,
and wretched and sinful, will it be moved to compassion, and begin to
pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth labourers into His harvest.
Missionaries, like ministers, are born of praying people. A praying
church begets labourers in the harvest-field of the world. The
scarcity of missionaries argues a non-praying church. It is all right
to send trained men to the foreign field, but first of all they must
be God-sent. The sending is the fruit of prayer. As praying men are
the occasion of sending them, so in turn the workers must be praying
men. And the prime mission of these praying missionaries is to convert
prayerless heathen men into praying men. Prayer is the proof of their
calling, their Divine credentials, and their work.
He who is not a praying man at home needs the one fitness to become a
mission worker abroad. He who has not the spirit which moves him toward
sinners at home, will hardly have a spirit of compassion for sinners
abroad. Missionaries are not made of men who are failures at home. He
who will be a man of prayer abroad must, before anything else, be a man
of prayer in his home church. If he be not engaged in turning sinners
away from their prayerless ways at home, he will hardly succeed in
turning away the heathen from their prayerless ways. In other words, it
takes the same spiritual qualifications for being a home worker as it
does for being a foreign worker.
God in His own way, in answer to the prayers of His Church, calls men
into His harvest-fields. Sad will be the day when Missionary Boards and
Churches overlook that fundamental fact, and send out their own chosen
men independent of God.
Is the harvest great? Are the labourers few? Then “pray ye the Lord of
the harvest to send forth labourers into his harvest.” Oh, that a great
wave of prayer would sweep over the Church asking God to send out a
great army of labourers into the needy harvest fields of the earth! No
danger of the Lord of the harvest sending out too many labourers and
crowding the fields. He who calls will most certainly provide the means
for supporting those whom He calls and sends forth.
The one great need in the modern missionary movement is intercessors.
They were scarce in the days of Isaiah. This was his complaint:
“And he saw that there was no man, and wondered that
there was no intercessor.”
So today there is great need of intercessors, first, for the needy
harvest-fields of earth, born of a Christly compassion for the
thousands without the Gospel; and then intercessors for labourers to be
sent forth by God into the needy fields of earth.
Transcriber’s Note:
Words may have multiple spelling variations or inconsistent hyphenation
in the text. Obsolete and alternative spellings were left unchanged.
Misspelled words were corrected.
Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like
this_. Final stops missing at the end of sentences and abbreviations
were added. The following was changed: added unprinted “is” to ‘It is
so easy to lean …’