Protection from What?
© 2014 By Jim Reapsome
My missionary friend’s email gave me some fairly typical prayer requests: Pray for seekers. Pray for safety and protection. He provided details for his valid needs around his life and work.
Pray is critical for him and his family. It’s just as critical for them as the communication between airline pilots and air traffic controllers. At the same time, it seems that some of these missionary prayer emails fall short of the prayer guide we have from Jesus in John 17.
Of course, protection is a valid core issue. But we have to ask ourselves, “Protection from what?” My focus here is not on the generally well-protected American Christian family, it’s on our friends serving Christ internationally.
They need protection from robbers and thieves and from reckless drivers and various diseases. As well as from terrorists and kidnappers. But I suspect that if we really pressed our missionary friends about their needs, they might come up with some things we rarely think about. They face some dangers that they are often reluctant to write home about.
For starters, they need protection from Satan’s attacks on their faith and calling, because sometimes they are tempted to quit and come home. They need God’s protection from Satan’s attacks on their marriages and families. They need protection from doing so much work that they neglect their spouses and children.
Missionaries need God’s protection of their most priceless asset: their time. We can pray something like this: “Lord, protect them from getting so busy doing things for you that they forget to take time to sit, be quiet and just listen to you. They often forget to find unhurried time for Bible meditation and prayer. Protect them from losing their spirit of worship, love and devotion for you.”
Missionaries greatly need God’s protection from divisiveness, criticism and crankiness with each other. For example, “Lord, protect their unity in Christ. Protect their love for each other. Protect their commitment to each other. Protect their willingness to serve one another, and to esteem their sisters and brothers better than themselves.”
Missionaries certainly need protection from conflicts with local believers of all stripes and national church leaders. They need protection from squabbling over budgets and properties; from misinterpreting each other’s motives; from even hinting that the way we do things in America is always the best way; and from subtly indicating that because they often control the purse strings, the people they work with had better see things the way they do.
In his prayer in John 17, Jesus asked God to protect his disciples (vss. 11, 12, 15), but he did not plead for the same kind of protection we usually think about. Jesus had warned them that they would be dragged out of synagogues and killed, so he did not pray for their safety and protection from persecution, or, as we might say, from terrorists. Jesus simply asked his Father to protect his disciples “so that they may be one as we are one” (17:21). In other words, they needed protection from infighting, jealousy and clamoring for position. Unity in Christ, with each other and with local believers ranked higher on our Lord’s prayer list than personal safety.
Jesus also prayed that God would protect his disciples from the evil one. He said he has protected them, and all of them were safe except Judas the traitor. Safe from what? Defection. The disciples’ greatest need was the protection of their souls, not their bodies. Saving faith outranks physical safety. Our primary concern for our missionary partners should be their perseverance in faith.
If the evil one cannot destroy their faith, he will disrupt their work by sowing dissension in their ranks. If he can get our missionaries to believe gossip and suspect each other’s motives, Satan does not have to resort to terrorism. If he can maneuver them into head-on collisions with the local Christians, he does not need car crashes to wipe them out.
Our missionaries ask us to pray for their safety and protection. Of course. But we also have to pray like Jesus did, and keep first things first.
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