The most important way to support missionaries is to pray for them—specifically, consistently, and by name. Below are five specific ways to pray for the missionaries laboring in God’s harvest, drawn from how the Apostle Paul asked the Church to pray for him: for open doors, for boldness, for the people they’re reaching, for the persecuted, and for the organizations that send them.
Let me tell you something that might surprise you.
When Billy Graham was approached by powerful people—presidents, CEOs, people who could write a check and move mountains—and they asked him how they could help his ministry, he always gave the same answer.
Pray for me.
One of the most effective evangelists in human history, and what he wanted most from you was your prayers. If that doesn’t make you stop and reconsider how seriously you’ve been taking prayer, I don’t know what will.
I grew up in a conservative church in Mexico City where we had week-long prayer watches for missionaries around the world. We had magazines, printed once a year, with prayer requests from the field. By the time they arrived, who knew if the situation had even changed. Maybe the missionary already had the bicycle he needed. We were praying six months late and hoping for the best.
Today we have apps and emails. We have real-time updates from inside closed countries. We can see the faces of the people we’re praying for. We have every tool imaginable.
So, the question is not whether we can pray; the question is whether we actually will, and whether we know how to pray for missionaries. Understanding how to pray for missionaries in a meaningful, biblical way can make a real difference in their work and in our own walk with God.
Be Honest About How You Pray
Most of us use prayer as a polite way to end a conversation. We say, “I’ll pray about it” the way someone says, “let me think about it,” meaning probably nothing will happen. Somewhere along the way, we drained prayer of its weight and replaced it with a habit of good intentions.
Dwight Moody, one of the great evangelists of the 1800s, said this: “The lazy man does not, will not, cannot pray, for prayer demands energy.”
Paul describes prayer as striving. In Greek, the word he uses is the same root that gives us our word “agony.” He literally tells the church to agonize with him in prayer (Romans 15:30). Commit yourself to learning how to pray, and specifically, how to pray for missionaries.
I ask myself sometimes, have I ever actually agonized in prayer? Truly brought something before God with that kind of intensity? It is a humbling question to sit with.
Here is what I do know: God hears our prayers and He treasures them. Revelation says He keeps the prayers of His people in bowls of gold (Revelation 5:8). When we pray, we are participating in something He has already set in motion. We are joining the movement of His will. And when we skip it, we miss what He wanted to do in us through the asking.
5 Specific Ways to Pray for Missionaries
If you’ve ever wondered how to pray for missionaries, Paul gives us a beautiful template in Colossians 4:2-4. He is writing from a Roman prison, and he asks the church to pray for him. What he asks for is really interesting. He wants open doors to preach and boldness to say it right. He is in chains, and he is thinking about the Gospel getting out. That tells you something about how to pray for missionaries and what they actually need. The most important strategy is always to ask God how to pray.
1. Pray for open doors. Visas. Border crossings. Government permissions. Connections that no human strategy can manufacture on its own. I have watched doors open that looked completely sealed—and prayer is the explanation. Ask God specifically to open the way for the missionaries you know to get to the people they’re trying to reach.
2. Pray for boldness. The temptation in high-risk places is real. When rejection or danger is on the line, it becomes very easy to soften the message, to present a smaller and safer version of Jesus. Paul prayed he would preach as he ought to—the full thing, nothing held back (Ephesians 6:19-20). Pray the same for the missionaries you know. The world needs the real Jesus, the biblical one, and the people carrying that message need courage to deliver it that way.
3. Pray for the people they’re reaching. Get the Joshua Project app or subscribe to their daily email. You will receive a different unreached people group every single day—names, locations, specific details. You can pray for them by name and ask God to send workers to those specific places (Matthew 9:37-38, ESV). This is not vague; this is targeted intercession for real people who have never once heard the name of Jesus.
4. Pray for persecuted Christians. Voice of the Martyrs publishes regular prayer updates: a wife who lost her husband, a man in prison, widows who need housing. Follow them, read the updates, and bring those situations before God by name. The situations can feel overwhelming from your living room, but you are praying to God who is not overwhelmed by anything.
5. Pray for the organizations doing this work. The ministries serving missionaries and persecuted Christians often run on tight budgets with tiny teams. They do quiet, largely unseen work. They need prayer too—for endurance, for funding, for the strength to keep going in seasons when results are hard to see. Include them in your prayers.
What Your Prayers Feel Like from the Field
As someone who travels and preaches in different countries, often alone and often far from home, I want you to understand what it feels like on the other side of your prayers.
When a text comes through from someone back home saying “I’m praying for you right now,” something happens. You arrive at a setting, and the hearts of the people are open in a way you did not create. The ground has already been softened, and you feel it. Prayer does that.
You don’t have to write a long message. Five words is enough. Send it. It can really encourage the missionary.
Paul asked for prayer from the very beginning of his ministry all the way through his final imprisonment. At every stage, the same ask rising from the page: brothers and sisters, pray for us.
He knew something we keep having to relearn. The work belongs to God. The power belongs to God. And He has chosen to move through the prayers of His people.
So pray. Because it works.
Praying for missionaries has a way of stirring something in you—a sense that maybe God is drawing you closer to the field yourself. If that’s you, Mudrunner by Forge Speaker Charlie Marq is a raw, honest look at what it costs to stop sitting on the sidelines and start moving toward the mission God has for you.
