The National Center for Family Integrated Churches welcomes Paul Thompson with the following message entitled, How to pray for missions. It is good to be with you, and I too am grateful I'm not in a Haitian jail today. So Lord, we're so grateful for today, and we do ask that you would take this moment that is involved with so much importance of all the components that are being spoken of this hour. Lord, we just pray that your church would find herself with great intentionality to look to you, to obey you, and to follow you. God, I pray you would take these words that you've laid upon my heart to encourage and to exhort and to instruct concerning prayer.

And so, Lord, we ask for help during this moment as we do so and we pray this in Christ's name. Amen. I'm not sure why that wants to move while I'm... I'll just move over here. Well, what I would like to do to begin with, with the topic that has been assigned to speak upon, how to pray for missions, I want first of all to make an acknowledgment among you.

This is an extremely humbling request to make. And I'm certain that I would feel this way regardless of the topic, but especially this one to what a heavy duty to be given the responsibility to speak to people about how to pray. And that I would want to be proper and I would expect you would want me to be proper with Scripture as I do so. So the responsibility of this, I want you to know, comes with a heaviness upon me because The last thing that I would want to do would be to be improper and in giving instruction upon how to pray for missions so I wanted to express my appreciation to the National Center of Family Integrated Churches for the invitation to be here and express my appreciation to you for allowing me the occasion to speak this in front of you as well. I would start with an examination quickly of Hebrews chapter 13, and then we'll move quickly to the assigned text that I have been given to, which has been a very helpful text in Colossians.

But I think that this starting point from Hebrews will help both me and the listener to be able to understand the reason why we're called to pray for missions. And then we'll examine some components about praying for missions and praying for missionaries, praying for Gospel heralders around the world. And then I want to give you some practical suggestions of things that have been helpful for me. And through various experiences that I've had, things that I would invite you to pray for for pastors and pray for missionaries and pray for faithful Gospel heralds around the world. And then to kind of also to inform you about ways that you can engage yourself in great intentionality in praying in a specific in a very specific way either for people group a nation a mission work somewhere either in the States or around the world from my experience with the Saudi Advocacy Network and express to you also some some really helpful things that that we learn when we when we spend our time devoted to pray and to stand as an advocate for those who do not have the Gospel.

So from this text in Hebrews chapter 13, I would start in the seventh verse. The writer says, To remember those who led you and who spoke the word of God to you, and consider the result of their conduct and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So do not be carried away by varied and strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, through which those who were so occupied were not benefited. We have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat.

For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy place by the high priest as an offering for sin are burned outside the camp. Therefore, Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people through his own blood suffered outside the gate. So let us go out to him, outside the camp, bearing his reproach. For here we do not have a lasting city, but we are seeking the city which is to come. It's C.T.

Studd, European English missionary, that hears the mission call from Hudson Taylor to take the Gospel to China and eventually C.T. Studd takes the Gospel into the dark, difficult places in Africa. C.T. Studd that says that some wish to live within the sound of chapel bells, but I prefer to run a rescue mission within the yard of hell." With that kind of Gospel mission call upon an individual, I think it lays a burden of responsibility upon the church that we would find ourselves in earnest prayer for those who would dare to go outside the camp. We should find ourselves blessing the Lord and rejoicing in the Lord for our circumstances and our situations, but oh may I plead with you of the great and desperate need to pray for those who would dare to go outside the camp bearing bearing the reproach of Christ.

It is. It is. And I do not speak of one who lives in a dark, in a dark jungle being hunted by cannibals. I speak of one who lives in the United States of America with much comfort and with much ease. But I speak to you today and over these next several minutes from the position of but a small glimpse of what it's like to run a rescue mission within the yard of hell.

And why it is so important, valuable to both the prayer and the one we're praying for, that we would hold them up for the difficult work that they're doing. So where there will be seasons in our lives where each of us will find ourselves more attuned to pray for missionaries or mission work around the world, it would be my desire to place before you a longing to be engaged with great intentionality in how you pray and what you pray for. So now let me take you to this significant piece of text in the book of Colossians in the fourth chapter. Paul is giving some instructions to the church in Colossae. And he's addressing them concerning many things.

And it's into the fourth chapter that he brings up the necessity and the importance and the significance of prayer. So it's in the second verse of the fourth chapter where he writes these words to the church. And he says to the church, Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving, praying at the same time for us as well, that God may open up to us a door for the Word so that we may speak forth the mystery of Christ for which I have also been imprisoned, that I may make it clear in the way I ought to speak." So these words are really important. In the second verse, The first thing that Paul instructs the church at Colossae to do is to devote themselves to prayer. When I read these words and I consider the weight of them, I also have to consider the many things that I've devoted myself to in my days as a pastor, as a husband, as a father, as a follower of Christ, and find that I have devoted myself to my own shame to many things.

But to hear the call, the Gospel call, the duty call from the Scripture itself, that a follower of Christ, one who belongs to the church of Almighty God, must be devoted to prayer. And it's likely, it would be my assumption, that you did not walk into a class of this nature unless you're already prone to be one driven to prayer. So when I look at this, I want to encourage you. I want to give some instructions, and perhaps the vantage point from where I have been and the experiences that I've had may help you to know how valuable it is for you to continue to pray and that you would be one who is devoted to prayer. I think we'll see even see in this text that there is, as I've already spoken to this value both to the ones that were praying for as well as it is for you to be one who is devoted to prayer.

So we where we first see here the words to be devoted to prayer, I think it's also good to note here that there are a lot of people who pray, but the kind of devotion that Paul is calling the church here to is genuine. Consider the words that Jesus gives about prayer. Matthew 6, for example, when He's speaking this sermon upon the mount, and He talks to the disciples and those others who are listening in on this sermon. And he gives them these instructions that when you pray, do not pray like the hypocrites. So even our Lord is instructing us that hypocrites pray.

And I would submit to you that that's not the kind of prayer that paul's calling the church to in this fourth chapter in the second verse, devote yourselves to prayer. We're going to when we finish listening to how Jesus argues this point out in Matthew 6. How does Jesus argue this out in Luke's Gospel? Whenever he's making the comparison. And he says do not pray like the hypocrite here who does not pray like this Pharisee.

When he prays, he prays out on the street corner. And as he prays, he prays out on the street corner. And as he prays, he prays like this. And his prayer is filled up with himself. And his prayer is filled up with arrogance and pride.

He says don't pray like that. But rather, pray like this tax collector. This sinner. And you see the comparison of the two kinds of prayers that are there. The tax collector, this great sinner, his prayer is this, O Lord, have mercy upon me.

And he calls himself the sinner. He doesn't call himself a sinner because that opens up the door that he's comparing himself with other people. He's calling himself the chief of sinners, the same way Paul would identify Himself. I am the chief sinner of them all. So the kind of prayer that I believe that Paul is calling us out to is to not pray with arrogance.

To not pray with boasting, but to pray with a broken spirit. And so as we pray for missions, we see the value of that to be devoted to prayer and will see in this third in the fourth verse the reason that were called to devote ourselves to prayer. But here it's clearly this that we are to devote ourselves to prayer. And I would argue that this is a genuine calling. So from that, the way that our Lord describes this of the hypocrite, a play actor, as that word as you well know is best defined as, a man can stand on stage and he can play the part of a serious person.

But we would still be able to call him a hypocrite, because he may not be, as a character of himself, he may not be a serious person, but he can play the part of a serious person on stage. One thing he'll never be able to do is play the part of a genuine person, because to portray the part of a genuine person you would be you would not be portraying your own character to portray that part because you're not genuine so I think it's very significant that our Lord says do not pray like the hypocrites they're play acting they're they're positioning themselves They're posturing themselves to impress men by even how low they can talk about themselves. But a genuine man, a genuine prayer, one who is genuinely devoted to prayer is the kind of call that Paul is calling the church out to be. So devote yourselves to prayer. The second thing is very significant and very important that he addresses here in the second verse.

He says, keep alert in that prayer. It's C. S. Lewis that argues we're far too easily distracted. I I I'm amazed at how easily distracted I can become.

Even setting myself out to devote myself to do something of some kind of Christian virtue, some kind of biblical mandate, and devote myself to do it. And I realize it doesn't take long for me to easily become distracted. The way C.S. Lewis argues this is my paraphrase of what he's arguing for. He addresses an illustration of a young boy who's playing in a mud puddle, and he's having just a grand time and enjoying everything about it.

And just 20 yards away from him is the ocean and and he's consumed himself with something that is minute and meaningless when when just yards away from him is magnificent majesty we're far too easily distracted So when Paul calls the church out to devote themselves to prayer, it's right that he would follow it knowing the nature of man that we would also need to stay alert in it. So it's easy to come to a position or a time in life where we say, Lord, I'm going to make a commitment and I'm going to devote myself to do this. But the proof of that being a genuine decision is going to come not not only in the action of staying alert, but also in the in the pleading for repentance when we realize how we've been distracted and that we get back to that devoted position that we've been called to. So in prayer for missions, we are to be devoted and we have to stay alert. And then the third thing that he says, which really is directed back to the devotion and to staying alert.

They were to do it with a mindset or with an attitude of thanksgiving. And I'll share toward this some more in a moment, but I've now been a part of an organization known as the Saudi Advocacy Network. And may I say that it has become a great thing for me to discover, to pray with thanksgiving, knowing that when the Gospel is taken to a people group, to the nations of Saudi Arabia, when the Gospel goes there, the outcome of that will be much different than whenever I preach the Gospel in my own town. My church will rejoice. If a child accepts the Lord, the family will rejoice.

But when the Gospel goes to a place like Saudi Arabia, And this is one of hundreds, maybe thousands of places around the world. When the gospel reaches a young boy or a young girl, a man or a woman in Saudi Arabia, they have started great hardships in their lives, in the physical of their life. So where this word from Paul, the instruction is to pray, devote yourself to pray, and to stay alert in your prayer, and to pray with thanksgiving, To even be able to say, dear God thank you for the struggle that is about to come to those who would accept you. And for me to even pray with the spirit of thanksgiving, dear God thank you that I have the privilege to take the gospel to a people who may die when they receive it. That is a very sober position.

He's called us to have spirit of thanksgiving, a mindset, an attitude of thanksgiving when we pray. So devote yourselves to prayer keeping alert in it with an attitude of Thanksgiving And so now here's here's here's here's why we're to do it in the third verse Paul saying praying at the same time and perhaps even here is a little bit a secondary position here not only in the in the why to do it but in some more instruction in who to pray for and that is pray for us as well so that us here is Paul and Timothy it's it's it's the apostles it's the the spreaders of the gospel those who are who have devoted their lives who have been called out of God to leave a certain location to take the Gospel to another location. Or a person who's been called out of the local body to be a public defender of the Gospel and a public preacher and teacher of the things of God. So Paul says pray for us. So while you're devoting yourself to prayer and you're staying alert in it and you're praying with the spirit of thanksgiving, pray also for us, and here's why.

Pray for us as well that God will open up to us a door for the Word, so that we may speak forth the mystery of Christ for which I have also been imprisoned that I may make it clear in the way I ought to speak so the why we are to devote ourselves to prayer the why we are to stay alert in prayer and why we ought to pray with an attitude or mindset of prayer, of thanksgiving, is so that the Lord would open up a door, so that the word would go forth. So it's gospel driven. Great Commission that we've been hearing since the moment we arrived here for this conference is It is at the core of why we pray We find ourselves praying for a lot of things And I've appreciated that I've even heard other speakers talk about it. It's not right. It's not wrong that we would pray for health.

It's not wrong that we would pray that the Lord would grant safety when we travel. It was not wrong that we would pray that the Lord would grant something to us. But what a tragedy it would be that the Church of the Living Lord would not be in her prayer in her devoted prayer in her alert prayer with Thanksgiving. Pray that the Lord would open up a door so that the word might be spoken forth. So when we eventually get into some some practical things that I would like to suggest to you about how to pray, I would certainly want to make sure that we keep this in mind, that as we pray that we're praying that the Lord would open up to us a door for the word.

And most specifically, as Paul is saying for the sake of Paul and Timothy, pray that we would speak this mystery. Pray that we would speak this Gospel. So, for example, we've talked to you about some things about praying for Saudi Arabia. One thing that's extremely difficult and one thing that I've never been in a position where I was ever faced, do I speak the gospel or not? When the gospel comes to a Saudi native, He has an extremely important decision to make.

What will he do with this gospel? Will he hold it to himself in fear that if he speaks this gospel that his family is going to isolate him, kick him out of the family? Will the government arrest me? Will I be persecuted? Because I have made...

In a place like Saudi Arabia to convert from Islam to Christianity, not only is this a religious position, this is a position of nationality. This would be equivalent to treason. This would be an American denouncing and turning against his own nation. Because see, there is no separation. Of church and state in the nation such as Saudi Arabia.

So when we think of the Gospel, and we ought to think about the nations of the world and the need that the Gospel would go to them, we also must realize that as we pray that that would happen, that we're praying that the Lord would also embolden these persons who would accept this gospel of peace, that as they do so, that the Lord would give them the courage and the boldness to speak this gospel. And then I really appreciate that Paul furthers this in the fourth verse when he says, as you're praying, pray that I may make it, that's the gospel, the mystery of Christ, pray that I might make it clear in the way I speak this clear in the way I ought to speak this gospel. Now this moves the urgency and the devotion and the alertness to upon us as we would pray even in our own nation that the gospel would be spoken with boldness, but in our own land the necessity that it be spoken clearly, that the gospel not be confusing in in the way that the gospel is presented with the attachment of so many worldly things would ask simply that the Lord would help pastors the Lord to help missionaries the Lord help church planters the Lord would help fathers the Lord would help mothers speak the Gospel clearly to their children, clearly to their neighbors, clearly to their co-workers.

So the significance of this is that we find ourselves devoted to prayer and that we would be alert in it. We would not be distracted away from it. And that we would pray with an attitude and a mindset to thanksgiving. So we have in this scripture what we are to do. We have to devote ourselves to prayer, staying alert in prayer with the mindset of Thanksgiving.

We even have a why we ought to do this, which is significant. We don't want to go here without looking at the why. I wouldn't want to dare talk about how to do something until we first of all would understand why we would do it. If we don't know why we're to do this, it's easy for us to fall into a pragmatic, mindless methodology. And that's the, as many of you know, that is a crippling position.

So what to know what we are to do? We're to pray. We are to devote ourselves to this prayer. We are to stay alert in this. Why?

Because the gospel is at stake. Because there are some that the Lord has positioned that need us to pray like this. And so now what I want to do is talk to you about some ways you can pray, some how to, but they must stay connected in the why. If we forget why, we run into dangerous territory. So how?

What's a place before you that as you lead your families in prayer, as you lead your churches in prayer, You're praying for missions. We know that there's all kinds of missions. There's home. We have mission work in our in our neighboring countries. We have mission work around the world.

So I think that the things that I will suggest to you about how to pray will are transcendent upon all of those locations that you would pray. So where at times I may say pray for a missionary, it will be my hope that you're hearing me say pray for your pastor like this, pray for your dad like this, pray for your mom like this, pray for your husband like this, pray for your wife like this. So it would be proper as you're devoting yourself to prayer and that you would stay alert in it in this manner that that you would pray that God would give you a disposition of your mind. Pray that the Lord would give you propensity for the Word of God. You remember that why of Colossians chapter 4 and that third and the fourth verse?

It's so that the Lord would open up a door for the word. So you pray for your pastor that he would have a propensity of mind, that his mind would be focused upon the Word of God. You probably can tell pretty quickly who a pastor's influences are in his life. So as you pray for him, pray that he would he would have the mindset that he would have the propensity of his mind to turn his television off and not be influenced by the filth of programs that are on the television. And that the influencing upon his mind would be the very Word of God.

It is amazing to me in the circle of influences that I have and the places that I've traveled. I've heard speakers from all over the world and I've heard preachers in my own denomination, greatly gifted orators, will spend 90% of a message talking about the filth of the world warning everyone to not watch this movie that he watched while he gives an illustration that he thinks was worth sharing to make his point from the Scripture. So where has his influence come from? We pray for heralders of the gospel. That when we ask the Lord to open up a door for the Word, that they have spent time in the word before they open up their mouths to speak of this word.

So that's how you can pray. You can pray. And I can tell you that missionaries around the world struggle with the very same things that pastors in America do and that is what do they do what do we do with our free time pray that the Lord God Almighty would give them a particular disposition of mind to this word to his holy word and not to the things of this world. In that Hebrews 13 text that I read earlier, the writer of Hebrews warns about a devotion to money. Pray that missionaries not be motivated by money.

Pray that missionaries will not give up their mission post if their mission agency drops their retirement. Pray that pastors will boldly proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, even if their church has to drop his income. Pray for those kinds of pastors to be the faithful heralders of the gospel. Second thing you can do when you pray for your husbands and your wives and your children and your moms and your dads, your pastors, missionaries, you would pray for purity. Again from that Hebrews 13 text, if you read through that, most of these points largely come from Hebrews 13.

The strong encouragement from the writer of Hebrews that the marriage bed would not be undefiled. So We've heard from many of the speakers already this week that there is this tragedy that we know that the enemy loves to see for those who are positioned to herald the gospel, for them to fall into some kind of temptation and to publicly be mocked and ridiculed because, and rightly so, because of their falling away. And don't you know how the enemy, Satan, loves to use those things to cause believers to not trust pastors, to not trust missionaries, to not trust the street preacher who's going to be preaching the gospel out on the corner. He just loves to be able to do that. And so pray for purity, and that they would not give in to temptation.

So you're going to devote yourself... May I tell you even further here, the necessity here from this component that you would stay alert in this, and that you would not forget to pray that God would help pastors, missionaries, fathers, mothers, children, dads and moms to give in to the temptations of this world, that the Lord would give them the strength to be pure in their ways. A third thing that you can do in how to pray for missions is pray for biblical and doctrinal faithfulness. I live in a part of the United States in Idaho where the Mormon cult is prominent. It is extremely confusing to people in my city and in my region for them to see a difference between the biblical Jesus and the Jesus that Joseph Smith preached.

The only way I'm going to be able to do that in my region is that if I remain biblically and doctrinally faithful to the Word of God. You're going to have missionaries that are serving in extremely difficult places. They go to places where idolatry has been the rule since the beginning of that of that people group and they're going to they're going to be tempted to not be critical of that idolic, cultic, godless religion. Pray faithfully and alertly with great devotion that doctrinal purity and faithfulness would rule the day you can pray that these that these missionaries at these pastors when they take the gospel to new places, you could pray for their marriages. I have I have interaction with with missionaries all over the world.

Some of them tragically come home from the mission field because their wives left them. Because while they were on the mission field, they completely neglected their families. What a tragedy. You can pray that God would sustain marriages and He would cause men of God to be drawn to the house and to lead their families and to lead their children in a faithful manner. So you could pray that in a Christ-exalting manner that these heralders of the Gospel who have gone with great risk to their own lives would give as much attention to their own marriages and to their own households as they do to those who do not have the Gospel.

You can pray for boldness. Luke in the book of Acts shows us an amazing... We get an amazing glimpse at how important it is that you pray that pastors, that missionaries would speak the Gospel with boldness. Learn this with great difficulty. As in my introduction, perhaps you remember or not, it's nearly three years ago, that as a pastor of church in Twin Falls, myself and nine other people, my son included, a member from my church, a brother-in-law, and a cousin, and five other people from a sister church, were involved in some ministry work, an orphan work, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, immediately after the earthquake.

When we send people out, and we have sent people out of our church nearly all over the world, Vietnam, South America, Canada, London, Ukraine, Russia, Saudi Arabia, And then we have a moment where the Lord takes us to a small third world country, a neighbor of the United States of America, and really the only time in all of the travels that I've been involved around the world that I've ever had political trouble. And I learned from Scripture that I pray radically different for missions now because see it's it's the boldness that is needed safety is really it's not wrong to pray for safety but what I fear that many times when we pray to the Lord, Lord grant safety to those who would travel and we never give attention to the boldness of the gospel, we're literally saying to those that we're praying for, we pray that if you're ever in a difficult situation, we pray that you would have safety above boldness with the gospel. I think if the Lord answers the prayers of how most of most churches in America at least would pray, would the gospel have ever gone anywhere? Would anyone ever have answered that missionary call from that church to go anywhere if we are not praying for boldness?

When you pray for the mission work around the world, I think it would be significant that we pray for pouring out of the Holy Spirit. We many times get in a mindset that we are going to save the day. And again, more needs to radically change the way we pray when we understand that the reason we take this gospel around the world is so that the Lord would open up a door for the gospel. Not that he would open up a door so that when we come home everyone will will sing praises of how how good it was that we went somewhere that was difficult and hard. We're praying the Lord will open up a door for the Word And that as the door for the occasion, for the opening of the Word is opened up, the Gospel would go forth.

In that Colossians 4, in that third verse, Paul says when he's talking about this, that the Lord would open up the Word, the door for the speaking of the Word, so that we may speak forth the mystery of Christ." And then a somewhat of a parenthetical statement he says, "...for which I have also been imprisoned." I've wrestled over that parenthetical type of statement there. It's clear that Paul's imprisoned for the preaching of the gospel, but I don't think that's why he's asking them to pray. I think he's asking them to pray because he's in a hard situation. He's within a yard of hell and he's saying, will you pray that while I'm in this difficult place that I would not be distracted and that I would take advantage of this hardship and that in this hardship the Lord will open up a door so that I might speak forth the gospel. We have recorded New Testament texts of how glorious this was that God used these difficult situations in Paul's life and we see it the warnings throughout Scripture about hardships to come to those who follow the Lord, pray that we would not be easily distracted.

Pray that pastors would not be distracted. Pray that missionaries would not be distracted. Boys and girls, pray that your dads would not be distracted. And that when they go to work that they're going to speak forth the gospel. This is such a precious thing that Paul does for us as the Holy Spirit is speaking to him to the church to pray like this.

And then a final consideration of how, and then I want to spend some time speaking about some ways you can intentionally engage yourselves in involving yourself with prayer and advocacy. You could pray that there would be a new fresh awakening in America when we consider the enormous blessings that the Lord has given to this blessed land. We've seen awakenings in our land. It's been a long season. When you read pieces of text like Amos 8, 11, and you hear the Lord warning the nation of Israel, that the Lord himself declaring, I will send a famine.

The Lord saying, this is not a famine of bread and water. This is a famine for the hearing of the Word. So as we pray, and we rightly should devote ourselves to praying for global evangelism, for the global proclamation of the Gospel, Let us not also forget to plead to the Lord that he would awaken our own homeland. That he would rise up in our own day a craving, a hungering, a thirsting for righteousness. So in praying for a global awakening, we pray as well that the Lord would relieve us from the famine of the hearing of the Gospel, the hearing of the word of God.

When you read Amos 8 11 12, it's very clear that Amos is saying it's the word that is significant. And we hear Paul saying here in Colossians 4 3 and 4. It's the sake of the Word that needs to go forth. So would you would you pray in ways like this and in manners like this and be intentional about it in your households, be intentional about it in your churches. You see it's not enough that we pray, but it's that we pray biblically.

So let me give you some suggestions, ideas, thoughts, And I'm so careful to go here because whether you need to know this about me or not, I do not know, but I come from a background that is very unlike most of you. I've been in ministry work for nearly 22 years. And with the exception of two years of that, it's mostly, well, it's all been in age-segregated mindsets. The Lord brought myself and my church to a position of repentance about two years ago. And so this reality of where I'm at in speaking to you about a programmatic mindset, you know, that's attached to me like a like a lead weight and I said I got it Lord help me resist that while I speak to these people about pray about how to pray Because that's the last thing I want to do is put a burden on you that the Lord doesn't want on you.

So when you hear these things, it's my prayer that I'm speaking clearly and that you're hearing, do not put yourself into bondage and under the bondage of some kind of a programmatic mindset. So in a quick manner, and just like many in our own nation, in 2001 was completely captivated and captured by the terrorist attacks on our land. I'm far removed from that. I mean, I live in Idaho. You may need to get a map out to even remind yourself where that is.

We grow potatoes. We are known to the world as potato growers. We're so far removed from that incident, but spiritually the Lord, like many, completely captured my attention. So it wasn't but a few weeks past that date, 2011, where we began to see that the majority of those terrorists are from Saudi Arabia. And so while I'm in a position to seek the face of God, how in all the world do I do I pastor a people who would take the gospel to the ends of the earth?

And how do I pastor a people? How do I instruct the people to follow the commands of the word of God himself? So from that mindset, the Lord reminds me where to pray for our enemies, to pray for those persecuted, Pray for those who hate us. So I began to seek the face of the Lord and how do I engage myself in praying for a people I don't even know, I don't know nothing about, that's not even good grammar, I just told you how much I don't know it. I know nothing about Saudi Arabia.

I've never met a Saudi man in my life. I know I have nothing about me that compels me to pray for them. So I just began to ask the Lord to help me. First me to get to that position. And then eventually the Lord puts me in places where I discover people who have lived in Saudi Arabia and they have great longing desires to see the gospel taken to the heartland of Islam.

Listen, I go here with much frustration of my own flesh, so I begin to consider, oh dear God, certainly there's somebody in America, certainly there's another pastor in America who knows what to do, who knows how to lead a people to pray that the Gospel would be taken to Saudi Arabia. And then having to wrestle in my mind to think, oh dear God, I know I'm not the first one who's ever done this. So both of these things weighing upon my mind, what do I do and how do I go about this? The Lord regularly puts me into contact with people who are seeking that the gospel would be taken to the nation to the people of Saudi Arabia. And these people are primarily from Maryland.

Again, I probably have only been east of the Mississippi one time prior to this time. I know I know nothing about the east of our nation. I know no one from there. The Lord begins to place people into our paths. We began to cross paths in 2004.

We finally come together as an organization that we begin to call ourselves the Saudi Advocacy Network. As a result of this, our primary purpose is to simply pray that the gospel will be taken to the nation of Saudi Arabia and that someday, this is our primary part of our prayers, that someday that the Lord God Almighty would have a public people worshipping Almighty God in Saudi Arabia that's not yet happened I don't know when how if when it's going to happen the Paul says to devote yourselves to prayer. He didn't say devote yourself to accomplish what you think you want to do. He says devote yourself to prayer. And then he says to stay alert in it, which as I've already spoken to, becomes the more difficult thing.

I'm now eight years before, even before we form ourselves as the Saudi Advocacy Network, part of a group of people praying that the gospel would be taken here into this land and that the people, the opportunity would at least be given to the people to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, many distractions come along the way and one of those being an enormous international distraction with with with intentions, with passports, with visa applications waiting to be returned back to us of a trip to go into Saudi Arabia in in 2010 and and to get word that they've been declined and we're not going to be able to go. We get a call from a sister church asking if there's men in our church that can help go along with some some ladies from their church to do some construction work on an orphanage on a building that's going to be used as an orphanage in the Dominican Republic and I already had the time off I had a passport Silas was able to go with me. Steve McMullen, a man from my church, was able to go with me. And I shared with you earlier my brother-in-law and my cousin.

We go and we go completely, even this very moment as I speak to you right now convinced it was a God ordained moment. We go and the happenings and the expectations of what would be there were not at all what happened for the for for the first time to tell this whole story is just completely impossible to do in such a short moment. But for after after we are formally arrested in Port of Prince at Child Protective Services in a place that we have spent many hours seeking for instruction from the government on what documentations we need to have with us, only to be turned away and said, We don't have it. You might as well leave. We can't help you.

Eventually, the place that we're we're we find ourselves back at. We eventually are arrested, and our first prosecuting judge that we stand in his office with is a voodoo priest. And words such as this quickly come back to mind, to devote yourself to prayer. And it's easy to pray in moments of desperation and to Stay alert in your prayer. That's easy to do when you're facing a voodoo priest, by the way.

But why we are to do that is so much more significantly important. We pray like this, devote ourselves to prayer, and stay alert in prayer so that the Lord would open up a door for the word to be spoken. There were so many occasions for us to speak the gospel while while we're While we're being registered to go into the jail, I turn and I look at my dear friend Steve McMullin. He's a computer tech at Amalgamated Sugar in Twin Falls, Idaho. He works basically in a warehouse, but he loves the Word of God.

Well, I'm taking my belt off and my shoelaces out of my shoes. I turn to Steve, praying for him. Oh dear God, help him. This is not what we signed up for. Help him.

I look to Steve, and he's already at the jail cell door. And he has his small Gideon Bible out in English. And there's about six or seven Haitian inmates that are gathered around the door. Their hands are through the bars and Steve is pointing to the words of the gospel in the book of Romans. He's speaking English to them.

I don't know what they're hearing. And, but he knows that the purpose for all that we do is so that the gospel might go to the ends of the earth. It's not at all what we signed up for, but it's what we were to do was to, dear God, open up a door. We had no idea it was going to be a prison door. For 19 days then, we have the occasions to speak forth the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And that's the plea that Paul makes to us. He's not saying pray that your life will be properly ordered. He's not saying that you pray that your life would go smooth and easy. He's saying pray that the Lord God Almighty would open up a door so that the gospel might be spoken forth. Well, I didn't at all speak to you about how to get yourself involved in the Saudi Advocacy Network, the website you might consider, and there are many like this.

LoveSaudis.org. If you would like to talk to me more about this after we're done, I'd love to share with you about how you can get yourself involved praying specifically for a people group. The Saudi Advocacy Network, we devote ourselves to pray. We send out emails and most of these are on closed emails, secure emails. So obviously there's a lot of things that I can't even publicly share to you because of what's being recorded, but ways that you can involve yourselves and will involve your families teaching your children about the great gospel work around the world.

The Saudi Advocacy Network devotes ourselves to pray, to pray that the gospel will be taken to the ends of the earth. Maybe in conclusion, maybe to share with you how significantly important it is that we do this. In 2000 and 2004, whenever I first became a formally involved with the Saudi advocacy network, we knew that there were about 3000 Saudi students in the United States. So we began to pray that God would raise up churches in the United States that would adopt Saudis while they're here in the States learning their schooling. We just learned this year at our my church hosted the Saudi Advocacy Network meetings in September.

We just learned that from government statistics here in the United States and the news we have from the Saudi government, that there are currently, right now, this very moment, 67, 000 Saudi students in the United States. We're praying that the Lord would open up a door so that the gospel would be taken to the nation of Saudi Arabia and here's what God has done. Some of this is frightening isn't it? It actually frightens me to think there are 67, 000 Saudis in our land. Listen, I promise you some of them are very aggressive in spreading their gospel.

But oh, that God would raise up churches, that God would raise up families. I promise you, if you have a major university in your city, there are Saudi students within within blocks from you within miles from you. Maybe the Lord would raise up with you that you would pray that you would devote yourselves to pray and stay alert in that prayer that the gospel would be taken forth to the nation of Saudi Arabia. I'm grateful to have spent the time with you this morning and it's my prayer that the Lord would have strengthened you from his word. Lord, I thank you and we bless you.

May the word go forth. Oh Lord, strip us of all pretenses, of all thinkings that would be inappropriate of why we would pray and how to pray. And oh dear God, may we find ourselves just faithful pleading to you on behalf of the nations of the world. Christ's name I pray. The National Center for Family Integrated Churches is dedicated to proclaiming the sufficiency of scripture for church and family life and to the establishment of biblically ordered churches.

For more information, resources, and products, please visit our website at www.ncfic.org. Of God. You