Displaying items by tag: J O Fraser

By John D. Robb

For today's hyperactive missions leaders, apart from opening and closing meetings, saying grace at the table or as a special consolation in time of emergency or stress, prayer is most often treated as a harmless pastime rather than a strategic resource. In our attitude we often relegate it to the likes of doting old ladies who have nothing better to do with the autumn time of life. Certainly, for most mission leaders, prayer does not seem to be where the action is, otherwise wouldn't we be giving it far more attention in our busy lives?

A Revealing Case Study

One of the greatest illustrations of prayer as a strategic resource in frontier missions is found in the experience of J.O. Fraser, the pioneer missionary to the Lisu tribe of southwest China. As a young missionary with the China Inland Mission in the early 1900s, he preached Christ for several years among the far-flung mountain villages of this people with almost no outward results, Fraser's few converts fell back into the clutches of demonism, and he himself, attacked by severe depression and suicidal despair, almost gave up his mission. Breakthrough occurred when two things happened:

1. The Spirit of God enabled him to pray "the prayer of faith" for several hundred Lisu families to come to Christ.
2. He succeeded in forming a prayer support group of eight to ten Christians in his home country to back up the work in ongoing prayer.

His wife later wrote about the difference this prayer effort made in Fraser's work: "He described to me how in his early years he had been all but defeated by the forces of darkness arrayed against him.... He came to the place where he asked God to take away his life rather than allow him to labor on without results. He would then tell me of the prayer forces that took up the burden at home and the tremendous lifting of the cloud over his soul, of the gift of faith that was given him and how God seemed suddenly to step in, drive back the forces of darkness and take the field"

Fraser himself said:

"Work on our knees. I am feeling more and more that it is after all just the prayer of God's people that call down blessing upon the work, whether they are directly engaged in it or not. Paul may plant and Apollos water, but it is God who gives the increase, and this increase can be brought down from heaven by believing prayer whether offered in China or in England......If this is so, then Christians at home can do as much for foreign missions as those actually on the field. I believe it will only be known on the last day how much has been accomplished in missionary work by the prayers of earnest believers at home...

Solid lasting missionary work is done on our knees. What I covet more than anything else is earnest believing prayer, and I write to ask you to continue in prayer for me and the work here."

"I used to think that prayer should have the first place and teaching the second. I now feel that it would be truer to give prayer the first, second and third places and teaching the fourth....We are not dealing with an enemy that fires at the head only- that keeps the mind only in ignorance-but with an enemy who uses poison gas attacks which wrap the people around with deadly effect and yet are impalpable, elusive...Nor would it be of any more avail to teach or preach to Lisu here while they are held back by these invisible forces...But the breath of God can blow away all those miasmic vapors from the atmosphere of a village in answer to your prayers. We are not fighting against flesh and blood. You deal with the fundamental issues of this Lisu work when you pray against the principalities, the powers, the world rulers of this darkness, the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenlies (Eph. 6:12)."

In the years that followed hundreds of families accepted Christ and ultimately a people movement involving tens of thousands of Lisus ensued. Today in southwest China and northern Burma they are a missionary tribe taking the Gospel to other tribes about them.

What would have happened if Fraser had not formed that prayer support group which he so faithfully kept informed with up-dates from the field? Would the breakthrough have occurred? In the decades since, how many potential breakthroughs among the unreached have not occurred because:

1) Prayer was not perceived and used as a strategic weapon.
2) Prayer supporters were not kept linked ongoingly to a particular unreached group or provided with a supply of up-to-date information? In relation to our society's theme for this year, could it be that prayer as perceived and practiced by "Great Commission Christians" is a crucial missing link in the accomplishment of world evangelization?

After dealing with the nature and importance of prayer briefly, I would like to enumerate some reasons from Scripture, history and current experience, why prayer may be the crucial link, the strategic weapon in frontier missions. Having demonstrated the importance of strengthening this link, we will then put our minds together in discussion to discover new ways we might operationalize the linkage of focused intercession and the unevangelized world.

Prayer at its very heart is a linking activity. First, prayer links us with God to receive His power and direction as we pray for the world and carry out our own ministries. Secondly, as we pray for the unevangelized world, it links us with particular unreached groups and the Christian workers laboring among them. It links our efforts and their efforts to God in His almightiness, without whose help all such efforts ultimately are in vain. O. Hallesby writes:

"The work of prayer is prerequisite to all other work in the Kingdom of God for the simple reason that it is by prayer that we couple (italics mine) the powers of Heaven to our helplessness, the powers which can turn water into wine and remove mountains in our own life and the lives of others, the powers which can awaken those who sleep in sin and raise up the dead, the powers which can capture strongholds and make the impossible possible.

Yet having said this, prayer can often be the missing link in our efforts on behalf of the unevangelized world. As important as good organization, planning, and strategy are in world evangelization, in our busyness for God we may have neglected to link up with His power and direction to carry out that particular part of His mission given to us. And that is a crucial omission!

John D. Robb is Chairman of the International Prayer Council and International Prayer Connect