What do wartime walkie-talkies and domestic intercoms have to do with missions?  I’ll tell you in a minute.  Read on. 

We begin our annual missions conference here at LOPC this weekend.  Back on January 27, 2008 I preached a sermon about “Praying for Workers for the Harvest.”  This past Sunday I preached about “God’s Passion for Missions.”  In both, I reminded us all that prayer is essential to the fulfillment of the Great Commission.

As part of my preparation, I re-read John Piper’s excellent book on missions, “Let the Nations Be Glad” (2003, Baker Books and Desiring God Ministries).  This is the source of the famous line I love to quote.  It comes in his opening paragraph.  “Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church.  Worship is.  Missions exists because worship doesn’t.”

Piper also offered a really good description of how our prayer life ought to function as we beseech God’s blessings on our mission endeavors.  Here’s what he wrote.

Life is war.  That’s not all it is.  But it is always that.  Our weakness in prayer is owing largely to our neglect of this truth.  Prayer is primarily a wartime walkie-talkie for the mission of the church as it advances against the powers of darkness and unbelief.  It is not surprising that prayer malfunctions when we try to make it a domestic intercom to call upstairs for more comforts in the den.  (p. 45)

Piper expands on this a few pages later.

Until you know that life is war, you cannot know what prayer is for.  Prayer is for the accomplishment of a wartime mission.  It is as though the field commander (Jesus) called in the troops, gave them a crucial mission (go and bear fruit), handed each of them a personal transmitter coded to the frequency of the General’s headquarters, and said, “Comrades, the General has a mission for you.  He aims to see it accomplished.  And to that end he has authorized me to give each of you personal access to him through these transmitters.  If you stay true to his mission ands seek his victory first, he will always be as close as your transmitter, to give tactical advice and to send air cover when you need it.”

But what have millions of Christians done?  We have stopped believing that we are in a war.  No urgency, no watching, no vigilance.  No strategic planning.  Just easy peace and prosperity.  And what did we do with the walkie-talkie?  We tried to rig it up as an intercom in our houses and cabins and boats and cars – not to call in firepower for conflict with a mortal enemy but to ask for more comforts in the den.  (p. 49)

I’m using my walkie-talkie today to pray that God would energize each of us at LOPC to take our places on the front lines of the battle during this missions conference.

If you’d like to find out more about John Piper, go to his website: www.desiringgod.org .