How to pray for people when you don't know what to pray for

Do you sometimes struggle to pray for people? I often pray for people for whom I don't know what to pray. 

We try to pray for all our prayer supporters. We work our way through our long list of them, probably getting to everyone once every couple of months. But how do you pray for someone who you haven't talked to for a couple of years, or perhaps even a couple of decades? Yes, we have people on our prayer list that we met before our 18 y.o. was born, and who we haven't seen since. We hope they are still praying for us, but we still try to pray for them.

This is what I've been doing in the last year or two, when I'm lacking inspiration, I pray part of one of these prayers in the New Testament: Paul's prayers. This morning I opened my Bible to Ephesians 3 and prayed that today's "group" would "have the power to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ."

These prayers of Paul's are incredible, really. He goes on in a way that is hard for mere un-theologically-educated mortals like me to keep up, especially before breakfast. His enthusiasm about God and for the people he's writing to just overflows all over the page and he barely stops to take a breath. But they make for wonderful prayers, especially if you don't have something specific you can pray for a person.

I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. (Eph 1:16-23 ESV)

And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God. (Philippians 1:9-11 ESV)

There are more, especially check out Colossians 1:9-12; Ephesians 3:16-19.

People write books of prayers, but I'd actually rather go straight to the Bible. Another time I go there is for prayers of praise. It's hard to go past the Psalms for those!

Mobilising people for mission

I wrote some time ago about putting together a mobilisation table for this conference. Here is what it ended up looking like with the help of a creative colleague's input:

We've gathered names of people willing to write stories for our OMF Japan website as well as the addresses of those who are blogging. We sold some books: "31 Days of Prayer for Japan" and got expressions of interest in ordering a prayer calendar that I produce. Plus we had some mobilising ideas in the form of prayer cards and photo albums and ideas written up on the "seed pods". One of my ideas didn't work (a competition to design mobilising bookmarks or postcards), but we'll give it a go again later in the year, just that voting will be by email rather than in person.

I'd say it was a success. I think it is something we should do regularly at conferences: sharing ideas on how we can do this challenging job of mobilising people to serve/pray/support missions.

Ideas for writing, when you have none

Where do I get my inspiration for writing from?*  People periodically ask me that, and probably frequently wonder at my ability to write daily here. I don't often have trouble, I really have too many ideas for just the one person (my husband will agree, he sometimes ends up finishing off what "was a good idea at the time").

Missionaries struggle with this often when they sit down to write prayer letters. And any blogger will have had the same issues.

Here's some of the things I do when I'm faced with having to write a prayer letter or wanting to write a blog post, but nothing is at the front of my mind to put out there.

• I take a look at photos I've taken. This is a biggie and often where I start for prayer letters. These days I'm taking photos just to put on here and to put on our prayer letter. Purposeful photo taking.
• I check my calendar to seen what's happened recently, or what's coming up. That can often spark an idea.
• I browse other people's blogs, what they're writing about.
• Sometimes I check back on what I've written in weeks or months previously on my blog (or prayer letter). This is often a good source of prayer letter material. I did this for our February prayer letter, I checked what I'd written last February and it included a financial update. What a great idea! So I did another one. I have a few "draft" blog posts that are unfinished, but sometimes can be polished up into a decent post for that day.
• Sometimes a series or theme can be helpful, I haven't done much of that here, but on my Kids newsletters I've done themes in recent years. Last year I did Famous Japanese people, this year I'm doing Geography.
• I look at books I'm reading or have read recently.
• Things I've been mulling over can be worth writing up on a blog post as for sure others have had similar thoughts at one time or other.
• Facebook can be a good source of ideas for blogging.
• And of course lists are a great way to string a whole lot of vaguely related ideas together.
• I don't do this often, but it is something that is recommended for writers: to make sure you have a notebook (or iPhone) with you all the time, so you can scribble down ideas when they occur, because often that happens at a time that you aren't able to act on the idea. Problem times for me, though, are showers, bathroom, driving. Great ideas, but no way to write anything down!
• If all else fails, I might go surfing on Youtube!

See, I have heaps of ideas!

*Thanks to Dave Skipper for the idea for this post!

Restraint and respect

An aspect of being a missionary on home assignment that you may not have thought about is the restraint we need to apply to our own opinions.

This applies particularly to the variety of denominations and different style churches we've visited.
We also have friends and supporters from almost every angle on the education front - from state schoolers and private schoolers to radical home schoolers. We cross paths with people who have different ideas (or no ideas at all) on mission and on Japan.

I guess you do too. Perhaps, though, you have a little more choice than we do. Most people can certainly choose what style of church you will be in most weeks. Who you choose to befriend.

On our 'rounds' we've had to sit through some interesting sermons or reluctantly become a sermon ourselves. We've had to speak about mission to people who don't in the least bit understand why mission exists at all and to others who embrace mission with all their hearts. Our work has taken us to children, young adults, young marrieds, single folk, young families and lonely elderly. We've been in thriving churches and struggling churches. Wealthy churches and poor churches. Urban churches and rural churches. We've spoken to churches where our faces adorn the wall and we're prayed for often; we've gone to places who've never heard of missionaries going to Japan.

It requires a good deal of restraint, love and respect. It challenges your prejudices, ideas and beliefs. It stretches you. I believe it is good for us. And for those who express their rigid ideas to us, it might be good for them too...or it might be their undoing.

Help to go around the world in 80 minutes

Next month we're helping lead a Scripture Union camp for grades six to eight. One of our responsibilities is to organise and run an International Night, otherwise called "80 minutes around the world". It's okay to volunteer for these things, now we need to get down to details and with only one day left until our youngest is home for the holidays and three days until the rest of the mob turn up, we'd better get cracking. What I'm looking for is some international feedback here. I know that some of you don't live in Australia. Can you help me? We particularly need: 1. Easy international snack ideas 2. Activity ideas for international stations - like the Japan 'station' might have some origami to do and the Chinese stall might have a chopsticks activity. As you can see, I'm a little Asian-biased. How about some European/South American/North American/African/Indian ideas - anyone?