​Hello, and welcome back to our series on Spiritual Warfare and Missions (SWAM). If you missed the first couple of posts you really should click here to read them first. And be reminded that this series is based on the book by Jerry Rankin and Ed Stetzer called Spiritual Warfare and Missions.
 
Last week we talked about Satan’s strategy to persecute believers and the church. The Bible makes it clear that persecution and suffering will accompany the proclamation of the gospel in a world hostile to a Christian witness and also that the suffering will be used by God to advance His kingdom.
 
This week we will see that Satan also uses the idea that missions is somehow optional to rob God of the glory that He is due.
 
Satan continues to work through godless world leaders and totalitarian governments to keep countries closed to missionaries and restrict a Christian witness, but in this era of modern communication and global commerce, he is unsuccessful in barricading countries against the life-transforming message of Jesus Christ.
 
His strategy to obscure remote people groups from our awareness is failing as sociologists and researchers have identified the ethnic language groups of the world. Their location and worldviews are known and are systematically being penetrated with gospel witness.
 
Even persecution and suffering is feeding the growth of the church and expanding access to the Christian message. Satan does not understand the power of love that motivates the sacrificial commitment and the power of the convictions of believers willing to suffer for their faith.
 
One of the authors says that he will say to one of his daughters something like Sweetheart, will you help me with the dishes? At face value, it seems as if there is an option built into my request. In reality, he is making a gracious dictate to his little girl. The asking is actually directing.
 
God works similarly with us. He invites us to participate in His mission. But we never find the Scriptures to list is as optional. Because He desires to operate relationally with us, God allows us to make a decision. Rest assured that Satan will seize upon this dynamic at every turn to convince us that missional activity is an option that can and should be denied.
 
God’s Word calls Satan the god of this age (2 Cor. 4:4). He leverages a tremendous asset when he works outside the church in the world to hinder the gospel. In the world, he is on his home court. However he is much too cunning to depend solely on closed countries, undiscovered people groups, persecution of believers, and cultures hostile to the gospel. He uses other strategies inside the Christian community to deter the advancement of God’s kingdom and to hinder believers and churches from ever deploying to vast pockets of lostness around the world.
 
In trying to convince Christians that missions is optional, he diverts churches to focus on their own programs and to see their mission as reaching people for their own church. If he can persuade Christians that reaching the nations has little or no relevancy or urgency to their own life, he has raised a barrier that makes other barriers obsolete. Who, then, will be willing to leave their own comfort and security to take the gospel and declare God’s salvation to the peoples of the world?
 
This isn’t simply semantics. The church needs to hear a different descriptor than “missions volunteer.” The volunteer is given high regard in our culture. Why? Because volunteers do something that is not required of them. They work although they are not obligated. Volunteers contribute selflessly to a cause greater than themselves. What heroes!
 
If the devil can convince us that engaging friends, communities, and nations with the gospel is something we really do not have to do, he wins. If he makes the smallest step of Christian service seem heroic, he creates barriers to moving outside our comfort zones. We will serve the Lord and the church on an intuitive, feel-good level only.
 
Paul would never have considered himself a volunteer. His burden for men, women, and children drove him far beyond volunteering for Christ. Missions was not a voluntary act for Paul. It was compulsory. He describes it this way: “I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish. So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome” (Romans 1:14-15).
 
The language of volunteerism would be unfamiliar with the deeply burdened missionary apostle. Paul felt obligated to do something about the lostness around him. He owed them an opportunity to hear the good news of Jesus. Also, you see that the obligation and debt that he felt produced urgency and courage. In the same passage he said, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16).
 
In every organization, there are a myriad of forces at work, but two stand out. They can be illustrated by a yo-yo. If you swing a yo-yo around in a circle, two forces are at work (in a non-technical sense). The first is the centrifugal force that pulls the yo-yo away from your hand and pushes it outward. This force represents the missionary nature of our work. The second force is centripetal, the force that draws things inward, the force exerted by the string. This force is necessary to care for the core, and the temptation is to make that the focus. One force spreads, the other centralizes.
 
For churches today, the choice is to keep pushing toward missionary work as it radiates in a larger circle or to meet the needs of the tether by pulling it inward. The moment a church decides that missions is an optional activity, the tether becomes the focus and the radius of the work begins a rapid decline.

​People on mission have made an important discovery. People on mission do not go to church. People on mission are the church. Being on mission for Jesus is a way of life that frees us from the busyness of doing “Christian” activities. It is a choice to be mission-shaped and Jesus-centred disciples living for the gospel in their communities and the world. Mission-shaped means God is bending me to have His heart for the world. Jesus-centred means Hs is the focal point of my life. “For in him we live and move and have our being” is how Paul describes it in a sermon preached in Athens (Acts 17:28). Like the original twelve disciples, we do life with Jesus daily.
 
Mission-shaped and Jesus-centred people change the world. What does that look like? John gives us a clue. “For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith” (1 John 5:4). The question is: Will we conquer the world? Or will the world conquer us?
 
So let’s become more mission-shaped and Jesus-centred and take the gospel to our neighbours and the world.

Hello, and welcome back to our series on Spiritual Warfare and Missions (SWAM). If you missed the first couple of posts you really should click here to read them first. And be reminded that this series is based on the book by Jerry Rankin and Ed Stetzer called Spiritual Warfare and Missions.
 
Last week we talked about Satan’s strategy to keep people groups hidden. When we focus on geopolitical nations (Canada, Cameroon, Colombia, Cambodia) we miss the fact that there are many distinct ethnolinguistic people groups that probably won’t be reached by an evangelistic crusade. Keeping these people groups hidden is a strategy used by Satan to prevent God from receiving the glory He is due.
 
This week we will see that Satan also uses persecution of believers and the church to diminish the glory God receives.
 
The chapter begins with the telling of a movement among South Asian Muslims. Reports indicated that some five hundred thousand Muslim background believers had been baptized. A research project was begun to try to verify the numbers. They found that entire villages and extended clans had become Christ-followers. They met with house church leaders and found these multiplying groups were functioning as authentic New Testament churches in gathering for worship, practising the ordinances, and witnessing and ministering in their communities. They traced the reproduction of these simple gatherings of believers and the process of discipling new converts. As the research was compiled, the data reflected about four hundred thousand Muslims who had actually expressed their commitment to follow Christ through baptism. But the numbers were continuing to grow as their witness was spreading through three people groups.
 
A distinguishing mark of this movement, though, was the persecution against these believers and their steadfast refusal to recant. Many of the leaders of this movement have been martyred, yet the movement continues to grow. When someone’s religious worldview is empty ritual and following the cultural traditions of society, the hope of salvation provided by the God of love is irresistible. A life transformed by Jesus is a powerful testimony that cannot be restrained. But when people see that the Christian faith is not just a religious choice worth living for, but a conviction worth dying for, suffering and death become a powerful witness of the truth.
 
It is apparent that Satan doesn’t understand the power of suffering as a testimony that powerfully authenticates a Christian witness. It goes back to his being deluded by the cross. Conspiring to influence Judas to betray Christ and working through the envious hearts of Jewish religious leaders to have Him crucified, Satan thought he had won. Instead, the suffering and death of Jesus empowered the kingdom and assured Satan’s ultimate defeat. The Bible makes it clear that persecution will accompany proclamation of the gospel in a world hostile to a Christian witness and will be used by God to advance His kingdom.

​“Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life,” (Mark 10:29-30). Jesus prepared His disciples and followers for this certain response to their witness because their witness stood in stark contrast to the sinful ways of the world. “If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. But all these things they will do to you on account of my name because they do not know him who sent me,” (John 15:19-21).
 
Just as the suffering of Jesus resulted in God being glorified through redemption being provided for a lost world, God is glorified through the faithfulness of those who suffer persecution for their faith. But also His divine providence uses it as a powerful testimony to advance His kingdom. Paul saw the reality of this paradox in his ministry in Ephesus. Receptivity to the gospel and an open harvest will inevitably be accompanied by adversaries and opposition (1 Corinthians 16:9).
 
Jesus told us that we should not be surprised by opposition and the fact that they would be rejected, reviled, hated, and persecuted for standing up in identification with Him. Peter reminds us that we cannot hope to stand firm in our faith as a follower of Christ without it involving suffering. “Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking. . .so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God,” (1 Peter 4:1-2). Peter had just put this in perspective earlier. “For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps,” (1 Peter 2:21).
 
Believers who are persecuted have a choice - to live for their own safety, comfort, and protection in denying the faith, which would be sin, or to deny themselves for the sake of Christ with the consequence of suffering.
 
We need to debunk the prominent myth that the safest place to be is in the centre of God’s will. Certainly, obedience to God’s will is the only place for a Christian, but that does not assure us of physical comfort, safety, and security. God has not guaranteed the believer exemption from suffering and opposition. He does promise to bless us, empower us, and protect us, but His primary concern is not our safety and avoidance of suffering and inconvenience but His glory in and through our lives. The Bible clearly teaches us that God is glorified through our faithfulness and obedience even in times of suffering for our faith.
 
Christian history is full of examples of Christian martyrs, those who died violently and prematurely because of their faithful witness. Many of these are notably recorded by John Foxe in his book Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Some include in their identification of martyrs the massive numbers of Christians who have been killed in communal or ethnic violence. They died because they were Christians, but far fewer have been killed because of persistence in an open witness for the faith that could have been avoided. The Bible identifies them as having been worthy of participating in the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings.
 
Susan Bergman, in her book Martyrs, makes the distinction: “Martyrdom occurs when a person is required to deny Christ and live, or confess Him and die. Under such duress, the martyr freely chooses death over life - a death that seals a life’s belief - in order to act as a witness to the truth of Christ’s claims and to his or her own faith.”
 
So Satan approaches it in two ways. Not only does he perpetrate persecution on believers but he convinces Christians that their highest priority is to avoid suffering and danger. Our safety and security is more important than the world knowing Jesus, so we avoid going to dangerous places where we might get arrested or even killed, and God is again deprived of His praise and glory among people who do not have the opportunity to know Him.
 
Remember, God’s primary purpose is to be glorified in our lives and exalted among the nations. Risking danger and suffering is sometimes necessary for that to happen. Certainly, it will not happen without a willingness to suffer for the sake of God’s glory among the nations.
 
We forfeit God’s blessing as well as an opportunity to glorify Him when we try to avoid opposition or offending anyone by our witness in a way that would bring repercussions. In the Beatitudes, Jesus reminded us, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” (Matthew 5:10).
 
That persecution and martyrdom are predicted and necessary evils that are allowed in God’s plan to establish His church and inaugurate His kingdom on earth is certain. God is using the persecution perpetrated by Satan and his minions to serve His sovereign purpose to expand, purify, strengthen, and multiply His kingdom.
 
“For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy places by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp. So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. Therefore, let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured,” Hebrews 13:11-13.
 
So let’s go!

Welcome back to this series on prayer. If you have missed any previous posts you can click here to catch up. But in this post, we are focusing on intercessory prayer.

The Meaning of Intercession
The Hebrew “paga” means “to fell,” or “attack,” but also “meet” or “make supplication.” The Greek was translated as “petition” and “intercession.” Our English word “intercession” is derived from the Latin for “to come between,” which means both “obstruct” and “to interpose on behalf of” someone. Christ stands between us and the Father. That’s why we pray “in Jesus’ name” because it’s by His sacrifice that we are made righteous and can approach the throne of God.
​
A modern understanding of “intercession” can include “mediation” or “standing up to” someone. This understanding makes God sound like the playground bully. Christ would be the hero, defiant towards an unloving Father, not part of the Trinity fulfilling the Father’s plans for his people. But God is love, and Christ did not defy him. Christ is one with God (John 10:30).

Furthermore, mediation suggests compromise or middle ground. However, God is right, and we are sinful. He is Sovereign, we are his creation. We owe him everything and we deserve condemnation, but by his grace we are free. Believers are able, by this gift alone, to bring the needs of other people before God through Christ.

Intercession in Scripture 
​Paul exhorted the church to pray that he would boldly declare the gospel (Ephesians 6:19). He told the church to pray for one another with “supplications […] and thanksgivings,” (1 Timothy 2:1), and he prayed for them too. “We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfast hope in our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 1:2). We all need intercession, even believers. Paul was moved and encouraged by prayer on his behalf.

Paul demonstrated that the most pressing needs and desires among God’s people start with God’s glory. Paul gives “thanks to God,” and finds hope “in our Lord Jesus Christ.” He asks for prayer to do God’s will, not for an easy life.
Paul was following the standard set by Christ, who petitioned God for the sake of others even as he hung on the cross. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). He spoke up for everyone: Believers who followed and then abandoned him; Pharisees, Roman soldiers, and spectators.

Intercessory Model
The model of intercessory prayer is Christ’s ministry as a whole. He physically threw himself across the chasm that would have separated man and God forever, at the cross but also during his ministry. He stood between the Pharisees’ stones and the woman caught in adultery. Christ came between man and creation by calming the storm.

He restored unclean people to their communities and forgave sinners so they could be reconciled with God. Jesus invited the lost into communion with the Father, such as the tax collector and the Samaritan woman. Intercession is active and risky, and by Christ’s life, we know how intercessory prayer should look.

Christ “bore the sin of man and makes intercessions for the transgressors” (Isaiah 53:12). Christ was frequently rejected. We can pray, but not everyone wants to be prayed for. And when we pray for the abused, we might be abused along with them.

A need for intercession implies that someone is weak, but not Christ. We are strong in him; not impervious to harm physically and emotionally, but able to direct the gaze of sufferers to Christ by keeping our eyes fixed on him ourselves.

Even if those we stand up for reject our help, there is the chance their oppressors will see God at work in our lives and be changed. Matthew 8:5-13 describes the heart of a Centurion who, on another day, might have been among those to beat Christ and nail him to the cross. In Matthew’s account, he was drawn by Jesus’ willingness to help the weak by meeting their physical needs before offering what they really needed — forgiveness of sins.

Is Intercessory Prayer Necessary?
​Intercessory prayer is not only a privilege but a command. “Continue steadfastly in prayer” (Colossians 4:2) is an “imperative.” “Persistence in prayer is not an option for the Christian” but “an order from the Lord Himself.”

Jesus “means for us to understand and take seriously the fact that our prayer is a major factor in advancing God’s kingdom in this world”. We aren’t necessary to God’s work but living life in the Spirit can and will inspire others to seek God.

Leave us a comment and let us know about your experience of prayer and its problem. Is there something we can pray about with you? Send an email to [email protected].

Want to pray with us? We host two online prayer gatherings each week. Tuesday morning at 10:00 am Eastern time and on Thursday evening at 9:00 pm Eastern time. We are happy to have you join us and we will send you the Zoom link if you ask for it. Send an email to [email protected] or give us a call at 800-784-7077.