GPBC Blog

By Sara "Global Partner" -- 

I really drew a blank when I was thinking about what to write regarding Global Partners Emphasis month. There is plenty to write about concerning our experience living overseas, but you all already know so much about that because you supported us and prayed for us all eight years we lived in Tajikistan. Sharing with you about how to love the world through loving our global partners is like preaching to the choir. You are pro’s at it. We repeatedly told our sending organization, Frontiers, that our church community could teach classes to churches about how to care for global partners. You did that so well for us and continue to do that for our current global partners.

 High five! Great job!

 When I was pondering what to encourage us to consider this year, there was one thing I continued to come back to. It’s the same thing I came back to over, and over, and over, and over again while living overseas. And not just me: our team, our organization and most of the other organizations working in the unreached world. Many of you too!

 I’ll tell you what it is in in a second, but first know that we tried our very best, and I know our global partners try their very best, to leak Jesus wherever we were, whatever we were doing. We researched. We strategized. We planned. We took every opportunity to share the Word of God, pray for people, love people by having them in our home, feeding them, listening to them, offering projects and services that were valuable to them, becoming contextual to them to meet them where they were at, showing up at weddings, funerals, any important gathering. We did everything we could think of to find the ones who were being prepared to know Jesus. But so few of them actually came to receive the grace of God in Christ. At one point, it seemed like everyone we were pouring our lives out for were becoming more committed Muslims! We tried to be encouraged that they were becoming hungrier for God and were turning to the only path they’d ever known. That it was at least a sign that something was happening in them. But that’s not why we moved our family across the world. We wanted to see people set free from a life of believing that God was constantly testing them, watching from afar to see if they’d do the right thing, to a life of knowing God and being known by him.

 Blank looks and hollow religious phrases met so many of our efforts to reach out. That gets pretty discouraging. It became very clear to us that “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. (2 Cor. 4:4) and that “only through Christ is it (the veil) taken away” (2 Cor. 3:14). Jesus said, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44). We kept coming back to the need to pray. Isn’t that the way it goes? We couldn’t open people’s eyes, only the Holy Spirit could. We repeatedly heard about movements of people coming to Christ in the unreached world and always at the root of the movement was extraordinary prayer. “Extraordinary prayer” sounded awesome and intimidating: It sounded like all-night prayer times and praying for hours on end. I looked at my three little kids and busy home and life and the reality that I could hardly get 15 uninterrupted minutes of anything and thought, “How?” Tim Keller says that extraordinary prayer is just extra prayer over what you ordinarily pray. If you don’t regularly pray, try praying for two minutes. If you pray for 20 minutes a day, try praying for 30. Just ask God to give you some ideas of how to pray “extra” over what you ordinarily pray. The way he put it made it seem like something we could try.

 As we consider how much more we might support our global partners during this emphasis month, let’s also ask God to show us how we might pray “extra” for our global partners and their areas of influence.

 It doesn’t matter how “small” your extra is. When, as a global partner, you send out a prayer request to “your people” (that’s you guys) and you get back 30 responses – even if they are just a quick “praying!” message – it really bolsters your faith and reminds you that you’ve got an army fighting battles with and for you. Maybe you want to be placed on a global partner’s prayer list. Maybe you want to put the list of our global partners in a more visible place to remind you to pray. Maybe you want to pray for a different global partner every day or have a certain day of the week or month that is your “pray for the global partners” day.

 It is such a privilege and pleasure to be part of the army of pray-ers with you all. May we be amazed at what God does in and through us as we partner with him in prayer a little extra this year.

 For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. (Romans 11:36)