A Call for Patience and Persistence in Intercession and Mission

Our IPC colleague, Jason Mandryk, who has a global perspective on both the prayer and mission movements, gives a helpful and needed perspective that also underscores the importance of united, persistent prayer, which like snowflakes accumulating become more and more weighty and can be used by God to change even stubbornly resistant situations and conditions over time. Please let us know what you think.

The year is 1891. It is the First International Convention of the Student Volunteer Movement (SVM). Gathered in Cleveland, Ohio are 6200 fervent students; it is the largest student gathering of its era.

The rallying cry of this convention and indeed of the entire movement is “the evangelization of the world in this generation”, a cry that was repeated across the years to come.

The SVM had been formed specifically for the purpose of mobilising university students into world mission. The evangelistic crusades of D.L. Moody and the campus speaking tours of the renowned ‘Cambridge Seven’ were fresh in the public consciousness of Christians in America and Britain. In the 1890s, missionary leaders such as A.T. Pierson and A.B. Simpson were convinced that the world could be evangelized by the year 1900.

Yet, here we are, 127 years and several generations later, and the world is far from evangelized. Literally millions of missionaries sent across these years, billions of dollars donated, hundreds of Bible translations completed. And yet, 28% of the world can still be considered unevangelized - 2.1 billion people who do not have access to the gospel.  What’s more shocking is that the world’s unevangelized population is actually increasing by over 50,000 every day.

During the heady and ambitious days at the turn of the century in 1900, when many thought the Great Commission was poised to be completed, the words of Gustav Warneck, ‘the father of missiology’, must have seemed a rather wet blanket: “Missionary results are not to be reckoned by years but by centuries.”  His caution was echoed in 1912 by missionary statesman John P. Jones: “Let us not fall into the error of thinking that Christianizing the nations and bringing the world to the feet of our Lord is the task of a day or of a generation.”

An important lesson, to be sure, but what does this have to do with prayer and intercession?

We live in a fast-paced world. My ‘microwave generation’ expects immediate results for minimal effort. Businesses tend to think in quarterly profits and not long-term strategy. We grit our teeth in frustration if our favourite Netflix episode downloads too slowly or if the pizza takes longer than 30 minutes to arrive.

The stunning Sagrada Familia Cathedral in Barcelona, is one of Europe’s iconic buildings. Long queues of people wait to buy tickets to visit its interior every day. Work began in 1886, but it remains incomplete. When pressed on the seemingly interminable project timeline, the architect, Antoni Gaudi, retorted, “My client is not in a hurry.” As with learning a language, mastering an instrument, or building a deep relationship, we know that the greatest accomplishments and most beautiful achievements take time and patience. It is perhaps even more so for the things of God.

Breakthrough in world-changing, nation-shaking, community-transforming ways through prayer and intercession doesn’t happen overnight. This is true for prayer, and it is true for mission. The two are quite intimately and irrevocably connected, after all! Missions works, but it takes time. Intercession brings fruit, but persistence is required.

Hearken back to the year 1900 again. Christians in Africa, Asia, and Latin America (the main mission fields of those days) represented 17% of all Christians. Today, these continents represent 70% of all Christians. The difference is even more pronounced among evangelicals, where these regions account for nearly 80% of the global total.

How did such a monumental shift occur? How did the mission fields of the 1900s become the dynamic centres of global Christianity today? Precisely through the faithful, sustained efforts of missionaries and prayer warriors focusing on the regions for over a century and not giving up. Year after year, day after day, thousands upon thousands of saints, interceding for lost nations and tribes and going to live among them, shining the light into the darkness.

It’s a simple formula. Prayer + mission + time = breakthrough. There are always factors that prevent us from precise spiritual algebra - the fact that the remaining unreached groups are the hardest to reach, the fierce resistance of the Enemy, our own lukewarmness and disobedience, and the mysteries of God’s providence. But the gates of hell will not prevail! “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for the pulling down of strongholds.” (2 Cor 10:4)

As we feel our world accelerating into a future marked by uncertainty, we can reliably observe that God is accelerating His own agenda. There is much work to be done - over 7,000 unreached people groups still in need of missions breakthrough.  But we can be greatly encouraged by the explosive multiplication of prayer and missionary sending movements from the Global South. Indonesia, Brazil, Nigeria, Philippines, Ethiopia, China, Romania; nations that have for years been mission fields and the subjects of countless prayers are increasingly the powerhouses of global mission and intercession. Missions works. It just takes time.

In 1982, Brother Andrew (a.k.a. ‘God’s Smuggler‘) called for seven years of prayer for the Communist Bloc. Seven years later, the Berlin Wall came down, beginning a chain of events that saw the fall of the Iron Curtain and the opening of previously closed countries to the Gospel.

25 years ago, Christians around the world began to annually observe 30 Days of Prayer for the Muslim world, in conjunction with the dates of Ramadan. Is it any wonder that in these recent years, we are seeing the greatest movement of Muslims to Christ in all of history?

Prayer works. It just takes time.

The mission base in England where I lived for years had beautiful gardens, containing many fine specimens of trees and shrubs from around the world. Among them was a particularly glorious Turkey Oak tree which rose to well over 100 feet in height. It towered over even other arboreal giants; it seemed invincible. One winter we had a particularly cold snap, punctuated by a rare night of snow. A thunderous crack had awoken a number of us in the night. The next morning we were shocked to see that the almighty oak had toppled. Its ancient heart had been revealed as weak and rotten, and the accumulation of snow had added just enough weight through that cold night to bring it crashing down. Which single, tiny snowflake had been the one that had sealed the oak’s fate?

Our prayers are snowflakes. In a cosmic sense, each prayer is virtually weightless, almost negligible. But their persistent, patient, nearly imperceptible but relentless accumulation will, in time, bring down even the mightiest of giants.

Jason Mandryk

IPC Leadership and author of Operation World, a global prayer handbook