by John Piper
Prayer is the walkie-talkie of the church on the battlefield of the world in the service of the Word. It is not a domestic intercom to increase the temporal comforts of the saints. It malfunctions in the hands of soldiers who have gone AWOL. It is for those on active duty. And in their hands it proves the supremacy of God in the pursuit of the nations. When missions moves forward by prayer, it magnifies the power of God. When it moves by human management, it magnifies man.
The Return to Prayer in Our Day
The return to prayer at the beginning of the twenty-first century is a remarkable work of God. It is full of hope for the awakening of the church and the finishing of the Great Commission. Looking back on the way God aroused and honored seasons of prayer in the past should enlarge our expectation that wonderful works of power are on the horizon. A hundred years ago, A. T. Pierson made this point exactly the way I would like to make it, namely, by highlighting the connection between prayer and the supremacy of God. He said:
Every new Pentecost has had its preparatory period of supplication. . . . God has compelled his saints to seek Him at the throne of grace, so that every new advance might be so plainly due to His power that even the unbeliever might be constrained to confess: “Surely this is the finger of God!”17
More recently, there were movements in the twentieth century that kindled expectation of significant breakthroughs in missions. Thousands of us have been stirred deeply by the missionary credo of Jim Elliot: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” But not as many of us know the atmosphere of prayer from which the missionary passions in the late 1940s and 1950s came. David Howard, the General Director of the World Evangelical Fellowship, was in that atmosphere and tells part of the story of what God was doing to magnify himself in the prayers of students in those days.
I still have a small, faded World Evangelism Decision Card dated 1946, with my signature. Unfortunately, I did not record the day, but it is quite possible that I signed this card at the close of the first student missionary convention at the University of Toronto.
The card used to be green. I can tell by the small green circle where a thumb tack used to hold this card above my desk throughout the rest of my college days. It served as a daily prayer reminder that I had committed myself to serve God overseas unless he were clearly to direct otherwise. The fact that I had 15 years of exciting service in Latin America is attributable in large measure to prayer—much of it stimulated by that little card.
Upon returning to college after the Toronto convention students began to meet regularly to pray for missions. My closest friend in college was Jim Elliot. Jim was only to live for a few years beyond college, but in that short life he would leave a mark for eternity on my life and the lives of hundreds of others. Exactly 10 years to the week when the Toronto convention ended, Jim and his four companions were speared to death by the Huaorani Indians on the Curaray River in Ecuador. In his death he would speak to multiplied thousands, although we did not know that in our college days. Jim encouraged a small group of us to meet every day at 6:30 a.m. to pray for ourselves and our fellow students on behalf of missions. This became a regular part of my college life.
Jim Elliot also organized a round-the-clock cycle, asking students to sign up for a 15 minute slot each day when he or she would promise to pray for missions and for mission recruitment on our campus. The entire 24 hours were filled in this way. Thus, every 15 minutes throughout the day and night at least one student was on his knees interceding for missions at Wheaton College.
Art Wiens was a war veteran who had served in Italy and planned to return as a missionary. He decided to pray systematically through the college directory, praying for 10 students by name every day. Art followed this faithfully through his college years.
I did not see Art again until we met in 1974 at the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in Switzerland. As we renewed fellowship and reminisced about old times, he said, “Dave, do you remember those prayer meetings we used to have at Wheaton?”
“I certainly do,” I replied.
Then Art said, “You know, Dave, I am still praying for 500 of our college contemporaries who are now on the mission field.” “How do you know that many are overseas?” I asked. “I kept in touch with the alumni office and found out who was going as a missionary, and I still pray for them.”
Astounded, I asked Art if I could see his prayer list. The next day he brought it to me, a battered old notebook he had started in college days with the names of hundreds of our classmates and fellow students.18
When I first read that account of prevailing prayer and the remarkable fruit that has come of it to the glory of Christ through the lives of radical, Spirit-empowered missionaries, I felt a surge of longing to set my hand to the plow and never take it off. I long to be like George Mueller in the tenacity of prayer and missions. Mueller wrote in his Autobiography:
I am now, in 1864, waiting upon God for certain blessings, for which I have daily besought Him for 19 years and 6 months, without one day’s intermission. Still the full answer is not yet given concerning the conversion of certain individuals. In the meantime, I have received many thousands of answers to prayer. I have also prayed daily, without intermission, for the conversion of other individuals about ten years, for others six or seven years, for others four, three, and two years, for others about eighteen months; and still the answer is not yet granted, concerning these persons [whom I have prayed for nineteen years and six months]. . . . Yet I am daily continuing in prayer and expecting the answer. . . . Be encouraged, dear Christian reader, with fresh earnestness to give yourself to prayer, if you can only be sure that you ask for things which are for the glory of God.19
The call of Jesus is for prevailing prayer: “Always . . . pray and [do] not lose heart” (Luke 18:1). By this his Father will be glorified (John 14:13). The supremacy of God in the mission of the church is proved and prized in prevailing prayer. I believe Christ’s word to his church at the beginning of the twenty-first century is a question: “Will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily” (Luke 18:7–8).
Do you ever cry out to the Lord, “How long, O Lord? How long till you vindicate your cause in the earth? How long till you rend the heavens and come down with power on your church? How long till you bring forth victory among all the peoples of the world?”
Is not his answer plain: “When my people cry to me day and night, I will vindicate them, and my cause will prosper among the nations.” The war will be won by God. He will win it through the gospel of Jesus Christ. This gospel will run and triumph through prevailing prayer—so that in everything God might be glorified through Jesus Christ.
1. There are other texts we could look at besides those cited, for example, Rev. 6:2; 12:17; 17:14.
2. C. S. Lewis, Screwtape Letters (London: Geoffrey Bles: The Centenary Press, 1942), 32.
3. James Reapsome, “What’s Holding Up World Evangelization?” Evangelical Missions Quarterly 24, no. 2 (April 1988): 118.
4. For introductions to Puritanism, see Leland Ryken, Worldly Saints: The Puritans as They Really Were (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1991); J. I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Godly Life (Wheaton: Crossway, 1994); Peter Lewis, The Genius of Puritanism (Morgan, Pa.: Soli Deo Gloria, 1998); and Erroll Hulse, Who Are the Puritans, and What Do They Teach? (Darlington, England: Evangelical Press, 2000).
5. For additional texts concerning the promise of Christ’s victory over the nations and their eventual turning to him, see chapter 5.
6. Cotton Mather, The Great Works of Christ in America, vol. 1 (1702; reprint, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1979), 562.
7. For a brief overview of Brainerd’s life and ministry, refer to John Piper, “‘Oh, That I May Never Loiter on My Heavenly Journey!’ Misery and Mission in the Life of David Brainerd,” in John Piper, The Hidden Smile of God: The Fruit o
f Affliction in the Lives of John Bunyan, William Cowper, and David Brainerd (Wheaton: Crossway, 2001), 123–59. An earlier version of this biographical sketch may be found at www.DesiringGod.org. Also see Jonathan Edwards, The Life of David Brainerd, ed. Norman Pettit, vol. 7 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards (1749; reprint, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).
8. For a brief overview of Paton’s life and ministry, refer to John Piper, “‘You Will Be Eaten By Cannibals!’ Courage in the Cause of World Missions: Lessons from the Life of John G. Paton” at www.DesiringGod.org. Also see John G. Paton: Missionary to the New Hebredes, An Autobiography Edited by His Brother (1889, 1891; reprint, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1965).
9. Whether one is a postmillennialist, as were most of the Puritans (though not all, e.g., William Twisse, Thomas Goodwin, William Bridge, and Jeremiah Burroughs, who were all premillennial Westminster divines in the seventeenth century), or whether one is a pre- or amillennialist, my point remains the same. Hope for the unstoppable success of Christ’s mission (whether you see it as a golden age of gospel sway on earth or as an ingathering of the elect from every people group on earth) is a crucial element in motivation and power for missions. Iain Murray’s book, The Puritan Hope (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1971), is an inspiring and compelling account of this truth. Its thesis is: “We believe it can be conclusively shown that the inspiration which gave rise to the first missionary societies of the modern era was nothing other than the doctrine and outlook which, revitalized by the eighteenth-century revival, had come down from the Puritans” (135).
10. I have given an extensive biblical defense of this truth in “The Pleasure of God in Election,” in The Pleasures of God (Sisters, Ore.: Multnomah, 2000), 121–55.
11. This is a paraphrase of a sentence that is emblazoned on my memory because of the effect it had on my life at the time.
12. It was precisely this truth that encouraged the apostle Paul when he was downcast in Corinth. “And the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision, ‘Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people” (Acts 18:9–10). In other words, there are sheep here, and Jesus will call them through you, and they will come. Take heart.
13. Charles Spurgeon, Twelve Sermons on Prayer (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1971), 105.
14. This is what I argue for in chapter 4.
15. I have tried to argue extensively for the sovereignty of God in this irresistible sense in “The Pleasure of God in All He Does,” in The Pleasures of God, 47–75.
16. “The growth of the Church in China since 1977 has no parallels in history. . . . Mao Zedong unwittingly became the greatest evangelist in history. . . . [He] sought to destroy all religious ‘superstition’ but in the process cleared spiritual roadblocks for the advancement of Christianity. Deng [Xiaoping] reversed the horrors inflicted by Mao and in freeing up the economy, gave more freedom to the Christians. . . . [Today] the Church of the Lord Jesus is larger than the Communist Party of China.” Patrick Johnstone and Jason Mandryk, Operation World: When We Pray God Works (Carlisle, U.K.: Paternoster, 2001), 161. The second sentence is from the 1993 edition of Operation World, 164.
17. A. T. Pierson, The New Acts of the Apostles (New York: Baker and Taylor, 1894), 352ff.
18. David Howard, “The Road to Urbana and Beyond,” Evangelical Missions Quarterly 21, no. 1 (January 1985): 115–16.
19. George Mueller, Autobiography, comp. G. Fred Bergin (London: J. Nisbet, 1906), 296.
3
The Supremacy of God
in Missions through Suffering
We measure the worth of a hidden treasure by what we will gladly sell to buy it. If we will sell all, then we measure the worth as supreme. If we will not, what we have is treasured more. “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field” (Matt. 13:44). The extent of his sacrifice and the depth of his joy display the worth he puts on the treasure of God. Loss and suffering, joyfully accepted for the kingdom of God, show the supremacy of God’s worth more clearly in the world than all worship and prayer.
This is why the stories of missionaries who gladly gave their all have made God more real and precious to many of us. The life of Henry Martyn has had this remarkable effect for almost two hundred years.
Henry Martyn Submits to God
Martyn was born in England on February 18, 1781. His father was well-to-do and sent his son to a fine grammar school, as they called them in those days, and then to Cambridge in 1797, when he was sixteen. Four years later Martyn took highest honors in mathematics, and the year after that first prize in Latin prose composition.
He had turned his back on God as a youth, and during these days of academic achievement, he became disillusioned with his dream. “I obtained my highest wishes, but was surprised to find that I had grasped a shadow.” The treasure of the world rusted in his hands. The death of his father, the prayers of his sister, the counsel of a godly minister, and the diary of David Brainerd brought him to his knees in submission to God. In 1802, he resolved to forsake a life of academic prestige and ease and become a missionary. That was the first measure of the kingdom’s worth in his life.
Martyn served as the assistant to Charles Simeon, the great evangelical preacher at Trinity Church in Cambridge, until he departed for India on July 17, 1805. His ministry was to be a chaplain with the East India Company. He arrived in Calcutta on May 16, 1806, and the first day ashore found William Carey.
Martyn was an evangelical Anglican; Carey was a Baptist. And there was some tension over the use of liturgy. But Carey wrote that year, “A young clergyman, Mr. Martyn, is lately arrived, who is possessed of a truly missionary spirit. . . . We take sweet counsel together, and go to the house of God as friends.”
Alongside his chaplain’s duties, Martyn’s main work was translation. Within two years, by March 1808, he had translated part of the Book of Common Prayer, a commentary on the parables, and the entire New Testament into “Hindostanee.” He was then assigned to supervise the Persian version of the New Testament. It was not as well received as the other, and his health gave way in the process. So he decided to return to England for recovery and to go by land through Persia in the hope of revising his translation on the way.
He became so sick, however, that he could barely press on. He died among strangers in the city of Tocat in Asiatic Turkey on October 16, 1812. He was thirty-one years old.
Martyn’s Hidden Pain
What you can’t see in this overview of Martyn’s life are the inner flights and plunges of spirit that make his achievement so real and so helpful to real people. I am persuaded that the reason David Brainerd’s Life and Diary and Henry Martyn’s Journal and Letters have such abiding and deep power for the cause of missions is that they portray the life of the missionary as a life of constant warfare in the soul, not a life of uninterrupted calm. The suffering and struggle make us feel the supremacy of God in their lives all the more.
Listen to how he felt on the boat on the way to India:
I found it hard to realize divine things. I was more tried with desires after the world, than for two years past. . . . The sea-sickness, and the smell of the ship, made me feel very miserable, and the prospect of leaving all the comforts and communion of saints in England, to go forth to an unknown land, to endure such illness and misery with ungodly men for so many months, weighed heavy on my spirits. My heart was almost ready to break.
On top of this there is a love story to tell. Martyn was in love with Lydia Grenfell. He didn’t feel right taking her along without going before her and proving his own reliance on God alone. But two months after he arrived in India on July 30, 1806, he wrote and proposed and asked her to come.
He waited fifteen months (!) for the reply. His journal entry on October 24, 1807, reads:
An unhappy day; received at
last a letter from Lydia, in which she refuses to come, because her mother will not consent to it. Grief and disappointment threw my soul into confusion at first; but gradually, as my disorder subsided, my eyes were opened, and reason resumed its office. I could not but agree with her, that it would not be for the glory of God, nor could we expect his blessing, if she acted in disobedience to her mother.
He took up his pen and wrote her that same day:
Though my heart is bursting with grief and disappointment, I write not to blame you. The rectitude of all your conduct secures you from censure. . . .
Alas my rebellious heart—what a tempest agitates me! I knew not that I had made so little progress in a spirit of resignation to the Divine will.
For five years he held out hope that things might change. A steady stream of letters covered the thousands of miles between India and England. His last known letter, written two months before his death (August 28, 1812), was addressed as usual to “My dearest Lydia.” It closed:
Soon we shall have occasion for pen and ink no more; but I trust I shall shortly see thee face to face. Love to all the saints.
Believe me to be yours ever,
most faithfully and affectionately,
H. Martyn
Martyn never saw her again on this earth. But dying was not what he feared most, nor seeing Lydia what he desired most. His passion was to make known the supremacy of Christ in all of life. Near the very end he wrote, “Whether life or death be mine, may Christ be magnified in me! If he has work for me to do, I cannot die.” Christ’s work for Martyn was done. And he had done it well. His losses and pain made the supremacy of God in his life powerful for all time.1
“He Bids Him Come and Die”
Some suffering is the calling of every believer but especially of those God calls to bear the gospel to the unreached. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s famous lines are biblical: “The cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise God-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”2 This is simply a paraphrase of Mark 8:34: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” To take up a cross and follow Jesus means to join Jesus on the Calvary road with a resolve to suffer and die with him. The cross is not a burden to bear; it is an instrument of pain and execution. It would be like saying, “Pick up your electric chair and follow me to the execution room.” Or “Pick up this sword and carry it to the place of beheading.” Or “Take up this rope and carry it to the gallows.”
