Team Leaders: Are you praying for your team?

Before you even step foot in the community you are serving, you will prepare for your experience through fundraising, ministry preparation, and much prayer. Prayer must be the foundation of the entire trip. The eternal and spiritual success of each trip depends on the team’s faithfulness to pray. Here are five ways to pray for your missions team.

1. Pray often

Carve time out of your busy schedule to pray daily for the trip. Prayer will enlarge and purify the heart in ways that cannot be accomplished in any other way.

After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. – Matthew 14:23

2. Pray together

Get together with your team to pray regularly. There is power in corporate prayer.

After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly. – Acts 4:31

3. Pray with confidence

God has an amazing plan for your mission team and every individual on it. He has handpicked you to advance His kingdom and He will equip you for His service.

Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. – Hebrews 4:16

4. Pray with authority

As your missions team steps out to advance the Kingdom of God, you are entering into spiritual warfare, so do not be surprised when you feel the effects of spiritual attack. Satan will do everything he can to prevent hearts and lives from being changed. However, this is no reason to be discouraged or fearful. As believers we have power in Christ to resist the enemy and overcome the powers of darkness.

You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. – 1 John 4:4

5. Pray specifically

It is important to ask God for exactly what you desire. Whether or not He gives you the answers you are looking for is not your concern. Only be faithful to make your specific requests known.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. – Philippians 4:6