Missionary A. T. Pierson well said, "If missions languish, it is because the whole life of godliness is feeble." To this powerful and convicting statement we may add, "If the whole life of godliness is feeble, it is because prayer is feeble."
James Fraser was a pioneer missionary to the Lisu people in Western China. He would labor more than five years before seeing his first convert. It would be an accurate assessment to call him a "prayer missionary." He understood the essential nature of prayer if the Gospel was to reach and change the world. He understood that anything lasting and eternally significant would be the result of waves of prayers that believed God to do something great for His glory. Fraser wrote, "Solid, lasting missionary work is done on our knees. ... The Spirit must be continually maintained in strength by unceasing prayer, especially against the powers of darkness. All I have learned of other aspects of the victory-life is useless without this."
The work of reaching and changing the world is, indeed, a work done on our knees. And, it is a work that takes on the nature of fierce and intense warfare. After all, one of Satan's chief weapons is to cut off communication with God, communication that takes place in prayer. John Piper is certainly correct when he writes, "Prayer is meant by God to be a wartime walkie-talkie, not a domestic intercom ... not for the enhancement of our comforts but for the advancement of Christ's Kingdom." Read more
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