Outsourcing prayer?

“That would be the worst job in the world!” I thought when I first heard of “recruiting full-time intercessors to join overseas church-planting teams.” I pictured the full-time intercessor locked up in a room from 9 to 5 with lists of all the problems in the country, reading these lists out loud to God over and over again. This was my experience of intercessory prayer: collecting lists of problems. Regurgitate them to God. Repeat. Could any job be more lonely and depressing than this one?

“This is the best job in the world!” I have often thought since then, as “lost in wonder, love and praise,” sitting on my Central Asian floor mat beside the wall map of my country, I run up “the new and living way” through the Jesus-torn-curtain to “the throne of grace” (Hebrews 10:20; 4:16) taking hold of Jesus’ feet by faith as if washing them with my tears and drying them with my hair.

I now keep half-day “office hours” of prayer as my favorite part of my job description. I don’t bring lists of problems — although I am so, so grateful for the people who support my work by lifting up my lists of needs. Instead, I picture Jesus, sitting at His Father’s right hand, waiting for the nations — including the nation where I live — to be made His footstool, and I ask Him, “Jesus what are Your dreams for this nation and for me? What are You asking Your Father for today? How can I be Your friend and say ‘amen’ to Your prayers?”

Interceding for my host country together with God has taken our intimacy to the next level.

I have been privileged to meet spiritual giants who have devoted their lives to “praying for the Muslim world from within the Muslim world.” Acts 6:4 convicted these intercessors that “50% of an apostle’s job description was to pray.” At the same time, life in the Muslim world taught them Islam was a prayer movement with its members performing the same prayers five times a day worldwide. They concluded, “It takes a prayer movement to reach a prayer movement!”

“We were all used to ‘outsourcing prayer’ to our supporters at home,” these intercessors told me. Their organizational leaders told them, “Prayer is something grandmothers in wheelchairs in nursing homes back in your sending countries can do — why are you wasting time on that on the field?” In the beginning, they only had the scripture to back them up. But a generation later, they also have statistical evidence: “Today there are many movements of thousands of Muslims to Christ around the world, and even secular researchers have studied them. The only common factor they found between all these movements is that the people involved are praying for many hours every day!”

I knew God was speaking to me when one of these praying leaders looked deeply into my eyes and said, “Elizabeth, our team in the Middle East underwent two revolutions. We initially prioritized work and thought ‘too much prayer’ was a waste of time. Our first revolution was discovering prayer is the most effective way to see people come to Christ! But even then, we thought intercessory prayer mattered most and ‘too much worship’ was a waste of time. Our second revolution was coming to see worship as the most important and effective part of prayer. After twenty years, I bless you to jump straight to the second revolution. Worshiping God is the most valuable thing you can do on your field.”

My Western values of productivity and quantifiable results started protesting inside me. But Jesus reminded me of another wasteful worshiper, pouring a year’s wages — a year’s worth of work, resources, and time — out on His feet in adoration. The atmosphere changed, “filled with the fragrance of the perfume.” Jesus said she became part of the story, anointing His sacrifice, recounted to the ends of the earth. But all that was small compared to Him calling her wasteful worship, “a beautiful thing done for Me” (John 12:1–8; Matthew 26:6–13).

So every day, I trace my finger to the next spot on my map, picturing the world as Jesus’ footstool and the next unreached village as another cross-stitched flower on His ottoman. I picture myself kneeling by His footstool, kissing the pierced feet that rest on it. Like pouring out oil, I offer every sacrifice that it costs me to spend another year here with Him and for Him. I press through feeling tired and distracted. I thank Him for dying for the people in that village. I tell Him that He is worthy of all their praises and that I am praising Him for until they join me. Breathing in heaven through prayer, I ask that God might bring these people to join me soon.

And I love my job.