Peace Through Prayer

A few years ago I heard a powerful story of several missionaries who took an annual trip to a remote village in another country.

Every year they would go visit this village bringing supplies, encouragement, and spending several months building up the believers in the area. The local church was being run by recent converts with little experience or knowledge about the Christian Church or Bible. They relied heavily on these annual visits to help create infrastructure and receive spiritual guidance.

One year, the mountains the village was located in received record-breaking snowfall. The region had never seen anything like it, and as a result the missionaries would not be able to visit. The conditions were too treacherous for anyone to access the village for the entire winter. Their crew would have to postpone until the following year. Of course, the missionaries were deeply grieved and concerned. What would happen to the village? Would the believers be sustained? Was their faith strong enough to continue evangelizing? They had made such progress, but many more needed to hear the Gospel. Would God still be able to move?

The missionaries spent the entirety of the time they would have normally been with the villagers in deep prayer.

They prayed daily, asking for God to move, making a point to be specific and consistent in their prayer for the community. Much to their surprise, the following year they returned to the village and they had made more progress in that one year than all the years past combined. More infrastructure had been built, impoverished and suffering groups had been helped, and the church was thriving. In fact, more converts had received Christ in the year the missionaries weren’t there than ever before!

This isn't an attempt to imply, of course, that the missionaries weren’t helpful. Surely, a lot of this fruit was a product of their years of dedication. However, the lesson was undeniably clear to the team as they returned home to America.

They wondered if their absence would limit God. But God showed them that prayer is more powerful than anything. Their dedication to praying consistently impacted the village more significantly than their work ever could.

Friends, God doesn’t need us to achieve His Kingdom. When the plans fall through, or the person won’t listen, or we return to that stubborn sin once again - God hasn’t somehow been thwarted by our brokenness. No, God is infinite and independent of His creation, but out of His love for us, He invites us to be a part of Kingdom work. He didn’t need those missionaries, but He certainly used them. And their physical work wasn’t more important than the spiritual partnership through prayer.

God invites us to hold the importance of both physically DOING to further His Kingdom, but also spiritually SURRENDERING and asking Him for our needs through prayer.

Maybe God is inviting us when things go wrong to trust His sovereignty. Maybe the “no” is actually an opportunity to choose consistent and specific prayer for that thing you have always been wanting. Maybe God is actually inviting you to trust Him enough to pray… instead of trying to just control it all through your actions and efforts.

The missionaries could have missed the point. They could have thought it was all in their hands. But prayer reminded them who the real Savior was.

Prayer reminded them that God was doing the work all along. That’s the coolest part of prayer, when the plans get canceled, when the mission trip gets called off, when the friendship fails - we can still be a part of the Kingdom work that we don’t have physical access to. We can always pray. And prayer often does way more than our own hands ever could.

Paul reminds us of that in Philippians 4:6-7:

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

- Philippians 4:6-7

Rather than worrying about what is going wrong, bring it to God with intentional, consistent prayer. Thank Him, ask Him, and then let His peace overwhelm you. Because when we pray we can trust that He is in control.

When we pray, we remind our hearts that we’re not actually the Savior. And when we pray, we can be confident that God will answer, and no matter the outcome, we will receive His peace!

Cristina Schmitter

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