I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

As disciples, disciple-makers, goers, and team leaders, abiding is central to who we are and what we do. Often as team leaders and movement practitioners, we feel such urgency to train and coach teammates or national partners in areas of ministry. There are so many paradigms, principles, and tools to learn! But I find myself falling into the pitfall that I so often coach others to be wary of – focusing my time, thoughts, and energy on helping my team do the ministry effectively much more than helping them to abide deeply.

For each time we gather as a team or with our national partners, how many hours are spent on ministry reports, training, and discussion versus talking about what we’re learning from Jesus, praying together, or looking to experience him together?

It’s a reminder I need frequently: I’m called to shepherd the flock, not just make them effective cogs in the ministry machine.

Jenn and I tried, perhaps not always very well, to balance our team meetings between ministry coordination, movement training, and prayer / abiding. We would set aside times just to focus on corporate prayer and worship, or set an hour aside to have listening prayer. Those times were rich and valuable as individuals and as a team.

But at times, just straight up praying together can be repetitive. We wanted to think of fresh ways to help our team, and ourselves, interact with God and experience him. Especially when we had team retreats and could get away from our normal rhythms for a few days, we wanted to create space to be with God in new and creative ways.

Red Moon Rising and 24 Hour Prayer

When I was a teenager in the youth group, our youth pastor Josh and his wife Char who had brought us to Thailand for the first time, gave me a book called Red Moon Rising. It was a book about the Moravians, who started a 24/7 prayer movement that lasted over a hundred years. From that, there was significant spiritual revival and passion for global missions; this small community of 300 people sent hundreds of missionaries around the world during that era of 24/7 prayer.

Compelled by the book, I coordinated a 24 hour prayer retreat with our youth group. Somehow, we got a bunch of teenagers to pray individually and corporately for 24 hours straight. We also thought of various activities that people could interact with in prayer apart from just sitting silently alone or praying corporately. We set up a prayer room with different interactive stations and scheduled prayer times for 24 hours. Stepping into that room, you could feel the tangible presence of the Holy Spirit residing there from all the earnest prayers of the people in our youth group.

It was one of the richest spiritual experiences I’d had in my early life, and the influence from our mentors, Josh and Char, on the importance of prayer has stuck with us to this day.

Prayer Stations

Fast forward a decade and we are now leading our team in Thailand. With our experience as teenagers in that 24 hour prayer retreat, we wanted to set up a space for our team to pray and abide in a fresh way at our team retreat.

So Jenn and I cobbled together a few materials, lit a few candles, and created a prayer room with interactive stations. 10 years later, I barely remember what we talked about in the ministry planning parts. But I remember these prayer stations. It was a rich time for us to corporately and individually meet with God and be refreshed.

This past year, we facilitated an Abide Retreat for our national church-planting partners. Our leadership team realized that we have been on the edge of multiplication breakthrough for a while now, and we needed to focus on prayer and abiding and desperately pleading to the Lord for Him to move, not just more training.

One part of our abide retreat was creating space for the church planting leaders to spend time with God individually. We translated the packet we use for our monthly Day of Prayer and Evaluation (DOPE) which simply is a guide for spending time with God for a whole day – worship, Word, prayer, intercession, listening, repentance, evaluation, and planning.

The next part involved setting up a prayer room with interactive stations – the same ones we did with our team at our team retreat 10 years before. We weren’t sure how some of it would convey across another culture, but tried our best to simplify the stations and prayed like crazy for the Holy Spirit to move.

Talking With Her Father

One of the church planters brought a new disciple named Eve to the retreat. It was her first time praying for an extended amount of time. Eve comes from a broken family – her dad left her family when she was very young. 

After the retreat, Jenn asked her how her experience was. Eve said, “I felt like I was safe, and that I could talk with God as my Father.” At that time, she said she had been feeling guilty about not spending enough time with God. But as she spent time with God in the prayer room, she felt loved and accepted. She realized that God our Father is not the same as her earthly father, and she wants to get to know Him more.

Prayer Stations Guide

Below is a guide for how you can facilitate these prayer stations for your team, your national partners, or really any groups of believers. We tried to have the participants engage several different senses – sight, touch, taste, sound – throughout the stations.

It includes some suggestions for how you can prepare the room to invite the presence of the Holy Spirit, as well as each station’s instructions to print out. There is a PDF version of the guide at the bottom of the post that includes some example pictures of the stations.

We hope these prayer stations will allow you as a leader to help shepherd your team further into the presence of our Savior Jesus, and be refreshed by experiencing him more deeply!

Prayer Stations Tool

The goal of these prayer stations is for people to interact with God in different methods of reflection and prayer, using different senses including touch, taste, and sound.

Instructions

• The prayer stations should be done individually, although multiple people can be in the room at the same time. Stagger the start time by 30 minutes so that each station is not too crowded.
• Inform the people going through the stations that the total time should take anywhere from 1-2 hours, but they are allowed to take it at their own pace and should spend time thoughtfully at each station.

Preparation

• Print 2 copies of each station’s instructions below.
• Prepare a medium-sized room with 5 distinct areas. You can set it up on the ground or with tables and chairs.
• Make sure the room can be mostly dark with some dim lighting. (A few strings of twinkle lights can help.)
• Set up a portable speaker with instrumental worship music in the background that can be going on throughout the time that the room is being used.
• Prepare for each station along with the print-out of instructions:
  • Station 1: a small box that people can put their phone in for the duration
  • Station 2: blank sheets of paper and pens
  • Station 3: a bowl of salt and a bowl of water big enough to put your hands into. Also a towel or paper towels to dry your hands after.
  • Station 4: a music player with headphones and the song you’ve prepared about the gospel; communion elements (bread or crackers + juice)
  •  Station 5: small pieces of paper, pens, and (if possible) golden bowls/plates to place the prayers in
• Set up the room with the 5 stations
• Pray for God’s presence to enter the room and that people would meet with Him and hear from Him!

STATION 1: PREPARING YOUR HEARTS

Now Moses used to take a tent and pitch it outside the camp some distance away, calling it the “tent of meeting.” Anyone inquiring of the Lord would go to the tent of meeting outside the camp. As Moses went into the tent, the pillar of cloud would come down and stay at the entrance, while the Lord spoke with Moses. The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend. Then Moses would return to the camp, but his young aide Joshua son of Nun did not leave the tent.

-Exodus 33:7, 9, 11

Like Moses, you are about to enter into a tent of meeting. Expect to meet with God and talk to him like a friend.

Before you move on, take 5-10 minutes to prepare your heart for this time. Ask God to remove any distractions, stressful feelings, or burdens so that you can focus on hearing from God. Ask him to speak specifically to you. 

Take off your shoes, put your phone on silent, and drop your phone into the basket.

“Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”

– Exodus 3:5

STATION 2: BELIEVING GOD’S PROMISES

God has called us to a great mission to make disciples of all nations. But at times it can be very difficult. Disciple makers face many challenges and trials.

But God does not leave us to do this task by ourselves. He is with us. And He has given us many promises to remind us of His presence and help.

Here are 10 promises of God’s presence. Read the verses and reflect on the promises:

Genesis 28:13-17 – Promises for God’s presence and faithfulness

Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

Joshua 1:1-9 – Promises for victory and courage

[3] Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you, just as I promised to Moses. [9]Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”

Isaiah 41:10-13 – Promises for strength and protection

[10] fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. [11] Behold, all who are incensed against you shall be put to shame and confounded; those who strive against you shall be as nothing and shall perish. [12] You shall seek those who contend with you, but you shall not find them; those who war against you shall be as nothing at all. [13] For I, the LORD your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, “Fear not, I am the one who helps you.”

Jeremiah 29:10-14 – Promises for a good future and restoration

[11] For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. [12] Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. [13] You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. [14] I will be found by you, declares the LORD, and I will restore your fortunes.

Psalm 23:4 – Promises for protection and comfort

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

2 Chronicles 7:14 – Promises for forgiveness and healing

If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

Deuteronomy 28:1-6 – Promises for blessing and provision

“And if you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the Lord your God. Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground and the fruit of your cattle, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock. Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out.

John 15:5 – Promises for abiding and fruitfulness

I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

1 Peter 1:3-7 – Promises for hope, salvation, sanctification

[3] Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, [4] to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, [5] who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. [6] In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, [7] so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 

Matthew 11:28-30 – Promises for rest and light burden

[28] Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. [29] Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. [30] For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Acts 18:9–10 – Promises for protection and new believers

[9] “Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, [10] for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people.” (ESV)

John 14:2-3 – Promises for salvation and future hope in heaven

In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.

• Which promises impacted you? Write these down. Consider how God has been faithful to these promises to you this year. Give Him thanks for this!
  
• Which promises seem difficult to believe? Write these down. Ask God to clearly do as He has promised and for the faith to believe that He will do these things.
  
• Pray that He would use you to fulfill these promises in other people’s lives, to make disciples and multiply.

STATION 3: SURRENDERING FEARS – TRUSTING IN THE LORD

Jeremiah 17 compares two very different environments, the parched salt land and the tree planted by water.

Thus says the Lord:
“Cursed is the man who trusts in man
and makes flesh his strength,
whose heart turns away from the Lord.
  He is like a shrub in the desert,
and shall not see any good come.
He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness,
in an uninhabited salt land.
“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,
whose trust is the Lord.
  He is like a tree planted by water,
that sends out its roots by the stream,
and does not fear when heat comes,
for its leaves remain green,
and is not anxious in the year of drought,
for it does not cease to bear fruit.”

These two environments illustrate two kinds of people – those that trust in themselves, and those that trust in the Lord.

Where in your life have you been trusting in yourself? Ask the Lord to reveal any self-reliance, any fears, any anxiety, any sin that your heart is clutching to instead of Him. With every part that your heart is “turned away from the LORD,” confess that to him and place a pinch of salt in your hand.

As you hold the salt, feel the weight, the coarseness, the parched nature of the grains.

Read the second part again:

“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,
whose trust is the Lord.
  He is like a tree planted by water,
that sends out its roots by the stream,
and does not fear when heat comes,
for its leaves remain green,
and is not anxious in the year of drought,
for it does not cease to bear fruit.”

Take the salt, and drop it into the water basin. Wash your hands of the salt, and feel the coolness of the water clean your hands.

Thank Him for the stream of living water that is given to us in Jesus. Pray and ask the Lord for perseverance and endurance in times of heat and drought. Praise Him for the promise to never ceasing to bear fruit!

STATION 4: THE NAME OF JESUS

Put on the headphones and listen to the song, What A Beautiful Name [link to the song in the local language].

As you listen to the lyrics, worship Jesus for what he has done on the Cross to purchase you and deliver you from the power of death!

Take the next few minutes to remind yourself of the gospel and to fix your eyes on Jesus. Remember your story and how he saved you.

What has Jesus done for you? What was the cost of purchasing your sin?

How has your life changed? What kind of power has Jesus given you?

What is your hope now placed in?

Read 1 Corinthians 11:23-26.

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

Tear the bread, and dip it in the cup. As you take communion, revisit the last verse of the hymn. Remember the power of the new life that Christ has purchased for you! This is the God who is with you always, even to the end of the age (Matthew 28:20).

Death could not hold You, the veil tore before You
You silenced the boast, of sin and grave
The heavens are roaring, the praise of Your glory
For You are raised to life again
You have no rival, You have no equal
Now and forever, Our God reigns
Yours is the Kingdom, Yours is the glory
Yours is the Name, above all names
What a powerful Name it is
The Name of Jesus Christ, my King

STATION 5: HOPE IN AN ASSURED VICTORY

All of our work, perseverance, sanctification, and suffering is leading to a final moment in history where we will experience the fullness of freedom and victory – when Jesus returns. No more sin, no more sorrow; we will see him face to face.

Revelation 5 and Revelation 8 tell us that the prayers of the saints play a part in bringing about the return of Jesus, and that it’s connected to all nations being around the throne.

And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song, saying,

“Worthy are you to take the scroll
and to open its seals,
for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God
from every tribe and language and people and nation,
 and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God,
and they shall reign on the earth.”

And another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer, and he was given much incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne, and the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, rose before God from the hand of the angel. Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth, and there were peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake.

Matthew 24 says that when the gospel is preached to the whole world, then the end will come – Jesus will return and make all things new. This is our ultimate hope – that what we do and what we pray for in our country would hasten the return of Jesus!

Matthew 24:14:

[14] And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

Write down big prayers for every tribe, tongue, and nation – whether it be for your region, for your country, or the rest of the world. Fill the bowls with your prayers to see God worshipped and Jesus return! Plead to God that Jesus would come quickly!

Life and leadership on the mission field can be incredibly lonely. For singles on the field who long for a partner, the loneliness is acute. For leaders, the responsibilities and weightiness of leadership can be isolating. It is hard to find others who can empathize with our experiences.

If anyone can speak on loneliness, it is Elisabeth Elliot. In this book, she shares the lessons God taught her through being widowed twice, and lays out a path and example for us to follow. Though this path seems painful and weighty, it hinges on the absolute goodness of God and his good desires for us. In surrender, we receive his gifts for us in seasons of loneliness.

For me, this is required reading for anyone joining our team in their first term, and a great resource for those experiencing seasons of loneliness.

God has promised to supply our needs. What we don’t have now we don’t need now.

Our loneliness cannot always be fixed, but it can always be accepted as the very will of God for now, and that turns into something beautiful. Perhaps it is like the field wherein lies the valuable treasure. We must buy the field. It is no sun drenched meadow embroidered with wildflowers. It is a bleak and empty place, but once we know it contains a jewel the whole picture changes.

In my case, “selling everything” meant giving up the self-pity and the bitter questions. I do not mean we are to go out looking for chances to be as lonely as possible. I am talking about acceptance of the inevitable. And when, through a willed act we receive this thing we did not want, then Loneliness, the name of the field nobody wants, is transformed into a place of hidden treasure.

Can we give up all for the love of God? When the surrender of ourselves seems too much to ask, it is first of all because our thoughts about God Himself are paltry…We ask …how much He will demand from us, how high is the price we must pay before He is placated.

If we had the least notion of His loving-kindness and tender mercy, His fatherly care for His poor children, His generosity, His beautiful plans for us; if we knew how patiently He waits for our turning to Him, how gently He means to lead us to green pastures and still waters…if we had any inkling of all this, could we be reluctant to let go of…whatever we clutch so fiercely in our sweaty little hands?

If with courage and joy we pour ourselves out for Him and for others for His sake, it is not possible to lose, in any final sense, anything worth keeping. We will lose ourselves and our selfishness. We will gain everything worth having.

In this episode, Jenn and Cynthia discuss how perseverance in both times of crisis and in day-to-day obedience is essential to seeing movements. They share personal testimonies of surrender in times of suffering, and discuss practical ways for how to keep going when the work feels like an uphill battle.

In our previous post, we covered a simple definition of spiritual gifts and some key points about gifts. In this post, we’ll explore why using spiritual gifts is critical on the missions field.

As we’ve mentioned in our spiritual warfare posts, our encounters with spiritual warfare during our first short-term trip to Thailand opened our eyes to spiritual realities. It also made us begin to seek out the Holy Spirit and learn about spiritual gifts. As we discerned our calling to go and sought out development and preparation before launching, this category of the Holy Spirit (listening prayer, spiritual gifts, spiritual warfare) was a blind spot for us. As we heard stories from movement practitioners on the field, they shared about healings, demons being cast out, Muslims having dreams of Jesus, and supernatural usage of spiritual gifts. We studied Acts and saw miraculous signs and wonders accompanying the proclamation of the gospel.

It made us ask the question – how come these supernatural acts seem so prevalent on the mission field but feel so rare in our home context? And, if these things are happening and are critical to the work, what can we do to learn about the gifts and access them?

Part of the answer has to do with our own cultural and theological perspectives about the spiritual world, what Paul Hiebert calls The Excluded Middle. Another reason is that we simply are more self-reliant on our ‘natural’ skills and giftings rather than the Spirit’s power when we are in our own comfortable culture. Laboring cross-culturally can humble you quickly and turn you towards looking for power beyond yourself.

The truth is that we need the Spirit’s power for supernatural impact just as much at home as we do on the mission field – it just isn’t as apparent to us. But the field has a unique way to draw out the reality of our need for the Spirit’s power.

The Missions Field is a Pioneering Environment.

Floyd McClung coined the term ‘apostolic passion,’ which he defines as “a deliberate, intentional choice to live for the worship of Jesus in the nations.” It’s drawn from Paul’s ‘ambition’ in Romans 15:

“And thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else’s foundation, but as it is written, “Those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard will understand.”

– Romans 15:20-21

I think many, if not most, cross-cultural workers have this apostolic passion. We not only desire to see Jesus worshipped among the nations, but have what McClung calls the apostolic abandonment and focus to give our lives and time and efforts towards making disciples among the unreached.

Those with apostolic passion will go to start new work among people and places where Jesus is not yet known. These missions fields are what I would call pioneering environments, where the methods, systems, structures, institutions, and the sufficient number of disciple-makers needed to reach a people or place do not yet exist. As such, pursuing disciple-making and church planting in a pioneering environment requires different approaches than in reached areas, including increased innovation, more flexible methodology, a higher rate of experimentation and failing forward, and more agile teams that can adjust quickly to change.

But above everything, pioneering environments require spiritual breakthrough.

The Pioneering Environment Requires Spiritual Breakthrough, Including Spiritual Gifts.

And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs.

– Mark 16:20

As much as I believe that strategic and innovative approaches can be helpful in starting movements, too often we see cross-cultural workers put their hope in their strategies and tools rather than in the Spirit’s power. These unreached communities have been resistant to the gospel for potentially hundreds of years, and there are too many cultural, religious, historical, and most of all spiritual barriers to the gospel in these pioneering environments for human ability to make a dent. Even the perfect persuasive evangelism tool has no power to change the heart of someone who lives in darkness. Seeing people among the unreached repent and believe the gospel requires the Spirit to move in power!

Paul tells us that our struggle is not against flesh and blood but spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places (Eph. 6:12), and that “the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds” (2 Cor. 10:4). Throughout the New Testament, we see signs, wonders, gifts, and power coincide with the proclamation of the gospel in the mission field, whether through Jesus himself (Matthew 9:35), in the disciples (Luke 10:19), or through the early believers in Acts (Acts 14:3).

These spiritual realities of warfare that faced the early church should inform how we approach the pioneering environments that we are in! For every hour of planning, how many do we give to prayer? For every resource we develop, how much do we focus on receiving and using the Spirit’s power and gifts? Do our approaches even allow for “divine power to destroy strongholds,” or are they weapons of the flesh and human wisdom? These are questions that I need to ask myself often!

If we can see the battle is spiritual, just as Elisha’s servant had his eyes opened (2 Kings 6:17), the good news is that the “weapons of our warfare” are already promised and given. I love that in every one of the Great Commission passages, power is promised to accompany the commission to make disciples and preach the gospel. One significant aspect of this power is through the spiritual gifts that each believer is given.

We should expect, depend on, and regularly use the gifts of the Spirit in the work of pioneering movements.

Our Thai partners greatly outpace us in this category. Their primary method of entering new communities is by praying for needs. We train and practice praying for people with a simple prayer, and then see if God moves and opens their hearts to hear more about Jesus. Often, people request prayer for physical ailments and illnesses.

Early on in our partnership with Mint, we went with her to visit one new believer’s house that was 40 minutes down a dirt road. After going through a new believer lesson with the new believer Sarah, she introduced us to her mom. Sarah told us that her mom hadn’t been able to stand or walk for several months, and a doctor told them that she would likely never walk again because of severe osteoporosis. Together with Mint, we gathered to pray for Sarah’s mom. Nothing happened. We said our goodbyes and Mint told Sarah that she would come back next week to go through more discipleship lessons.

A week later, Mint and her team went back to Sarah’s house. And they prayed again for Sarah’s mom.

And Sarah’s mom stood up and walked down the stairs for the first time in months.

The next week, she walked into the nearby creek to be baptized by her daughter.

As more and more disciple-makers were trained to engage the harvest, reports of healings, miracles, and salvations began coming in weekly. 

• One new believer was beaten by her husband so severely that her right eye swelled and she was blinded in that eye. She came to the local house church and had the believers pray for her. The next day, she woke up, and the swollenness was gone and she could see! 
• In another province, a new believer discovered he had the gift of healing and met a sick woman while selling bus tickets. After praying for her, she invited him to her nearby village where he healed an entire group of elderly ladies and started a new group! 
• Another new believer was in the hospital and prayed for a person in the bed next to them that had stopped breathing and was declared dead – and they came back to life! 
• At one training, we heard one leader yelling “Go out! Go out!” into the phone which is the same word in Thai as the go in “go and make disciples” from Matthew 28, so we thought he was training. But one new believer was working on a rubber farm and a coworker put on an amulet and became possessed by an evil spirit. She didn’t know how to cast it out so she called this leader to cast it out over the phone!

Over the past 7 years of partnering with this network of church planters, we’ve heard dozens, if not hundreds, of answered prayer stories like these, and probably have missed hundreds more. We start almost every meeting or training with the question – is there anything you would like to praise God for? And stories begin flowing out. One of my favorites is where one new believer prayed for rain on their farm, and the storm poured out rain just on their land and stopped exactly at the border between their farm and their neighbor’s!

These types of supernatural breakthroughs are common and normative in movements, like those in the book of Acts. When normal, faithful disciples (and almost all of the above stories are from new believers) are released to operate in power, God shows up! Are we expectant of these things? Are we asking the Spirit for them?

Though All Gifts Are Useful, Certain Gifts Are Particularly Helpful in the Pioneering Environment.

Certain spiritual gifts are particularly useful in pioneering ministry work, and others are more useful for building up the body in the context of a local church or mission team.

To give some examples:

• Healing and Miracles – We see this as a standard aspect of bringing the Kingdom of God to the world. Accompanied with the proclamation of the gospel are signs and wonders like healing and miracles. The several stories from the previous section are examples of what it can look like!
  
• Evangelism – Obviously, evangelism gifts are valuable to pioneering environments! All believers should share the gospel regularly regardless of gifting, and, those gifted in evangelism should use it frequently! People with an evangelistic gift just seem to very easily connect with people, and can have more effectiveness in sharing the gospel and winning people to Christ.
  
  Before we launched as a team to Thailand, we tried to live out disciple-making rhythms in preparation for overseas work. Out of our team of 12, one teammate who was evangelism gifted had led more people to Christ than the rest of our team combined! We will talk more about Ephesians 4 later, but evangelism-gifted leaders shouldn’t only exercise their gift in sharing the gospel, but need to use their gift to equip others to share.

• Teaching / Training – At first glance, it’d seem that teaching would be a gift more appropriate for within the local church. But for teams trying to start movements with a ‘Be Barnabas’ approach, catalyzing near culture believers to share the gospel means there’s a lot of training! It means that those with a teaching gift who are able to handle the Word simply and equip near or in-culture believers to share the gospel, make disciples, and multiply churches is extremely valuable! Also, teaching gifts can be crucial in developing simple, reproducible, biblical curriculum that can be used in new multiplying works.

• Helps – Another gift that seems like it would be more suited to within the local church is helps. But a Be Barnabas approach means that the National Apostolic Visionary (NAV) leader is the “Paul” that God has chosen to pioneer new ministry among their people, and our role as outsider is to serve and support that leader. If we want to Be Barnabas, it requires a humbling of ourselves to serve that leader, and those with the gift of helps will be particularly suited to caring for, supporting, and providing whatever is needed for that NAV leader to thrive and multiply.
  
  One of our teammates gifted in helps walked alongside a local believer who was going through burnout. That believer wasn’t implementing movement practice or actively making disciples, so Jenn and I questioned if that was really the best use of that teammate’s time. But after helping this Thai friend take a sabbatical, this local believer came back and said – I want to devote my time to multiplying disciples! – and has recently started a number of new groups! As people not gifted in helps, we saw that time investment as questionable, but to our teammate, she was drawn to serve through her gifting. That’s why it’s critical that all the gifts have an opportunity to participate in the Great Commission! Side note – this is why we love the Be Barnabas approach! The apostolic and evangelist will clearly have value in supporting the NAV’s ministry, but so do the teachers, shepherds, and helpers in a very different and much needed way!

We Should Have the Ability to Identify and Develop Spiritual Gifts In Our National Partners.

Lastly, it’s critical that we have studied, practiced, and developed our own gifts and gifts in others so that we can identify and develop spiritual giftings in our national partners. When we’re looking for a “Paul”-type national partner who can catalyze movements, part of that is looking for a specific type of gifting. It’s in the name – a National Apostolic Visionary leader. We break down some of that in our article about what a NAV is. We’ll also have a future post further exploring the word “apostolic” including the apostolic gifting.

Although we have a certain eye out for apostolic leaders, we should also partner with local believers that have other giftings. Anyone who is ready to be obedient to the Great Commission to share the gospel and make disciples is worth investing in! At the end of the day, the goal is to multiply healthy churches, and that requires all of the gifts, though different gifts might be emphasized at different phases of ministry. For example, apostolic and evangelistic gifts might be most helpful in pioneering in a new area to win people to faith. But as churches grow, gifts like pastor/shepherding and teaching will need to be emphasized. As issues needing correction come up in the church, giftings like exhortation and prophecy will need to be elevated.

Do we know what the Word says about each of these giftings? Are we able to identify them in emerging leaders? Do we know how to develop these giftings and encourage local partners to use them to advance the work of multiplying churches?

In our next post, we’ll explore how different spiritual gifts can help edify the body, either in the local church context or on missions teams. Below are some questions for reflection about spiritual gifts and the missions field.

Reflection Questions

• Are you expectant for the power of the Holy Spirit to work in you and in your ministry? Why or why not?
• Have you seen the Holy Spirit’s power working actively in your ministry? In what situations, experiences, or people have you seen this most clearly?
• Are you, your teammates, and your national partners regularly using spiritual gifts in ministry? Why or why not? Where do you, your teammates, or national partners need greater development in this topic?
• How could God specifically use your spiritual gifts to move your ministry forward?

This is one of the lessons that God has impressed on our hearts over the last decade of ministry on the field. Scripture tells us that apart from abiding in Christ we can do nothing, but our pride, our selves still default to being self-dependent in trying to achieve success in ministry. For some reason, we think that our intelligence, hard work, strategies, and skills can make a dent in winning entire people groups that have been resistant to the gospel for 2000 years. It’s ludicrous!

The nature of the work of disciple-making and church planting among the unreached is spiritual! Meaning, it is not a physical or mental problem – for people to turn from darkness into light, for the Enemy to be pushed back, for believers to obey the Great Commission – it requires the Holy Spirit to move! We cannot do a supernatural, spiritual work without supernatural, spiritual power. The good news is that we have been promised and given this power!

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.

Acts 1:8

How much clearer can it be? Now the question is – will we by faith receive this power? Do we know how to receive this power?

In this series of posts, we’re going to address what we’ve learned about spiritual gifts and missions – on missions teams, in missions work, and an overview of the term ‘apostolic.’ It’s a critical topic that we feel many cross-cultural workers are under-experienced in, especially when  they come from theologically conservative backgrounds. But it’s one of the questions that comes up the most when cross-cultural workers come to the field because of the prevalence of the spiritual world in different cultures and the necessity for guidance and empowerment from the Holy Spirit in an impossibly difficult work.

Our posts on spiritual warfare address why cross-cultural workers can be generally unaware of spiritual realities. Spiritual realities for goers can cover a wide range of topics, including but not limited to spiritual gifts, spiritual warfare, and listening prayer.

What Are Spiritual Gifts?

Type in ‘spiritual gifts’ in google and you’ll be inundated with spiritual gifts inventories and articles breaking down each gift. It’s almost too much information! The blog posts we’re writing aren’t trying to be an exhaustive study around spiritual gifts but more so how spiritual gifts are applied in the missions field and on missions teams. However, we’ll give a quick definition and some key points so that we can be clear about what we mean for the sake of application.

“A spiritual gift is any ability that is empowered by the Holy Spirit and used in any ministry of the church.” – Wayne Grudem

Our best suggestion in understanding spiritual gifts is to study what the Word says about gifts as there are several key passages about them! I think we can get overly fixated on ‘what is my gift,’ which is important, but miss the general purpose and essence of why gifts are given. Here are some of the key passages concerning gifts, and at the bottom of the post we’ll give a few resources that have been helpful to us in understanding gifts.

• 1 Corinthians 12, 13, and 14.
• Romans 12:3-8
• 1 Peter 4:7-11
• Ephesians 4:11-16
• 1 Timothy 4:14-16
• 2 Timothy 1:6-7
• Exodus 31:1-11
• Acts 2:1-21
• Acts 6:1-7
• Hebrews 2:4
• Matthew 25:14-30

From our study of these passages and in practical usage, here’s what we would conclude about spiritual gifts:

1. Every believer is given at least one gift from the Holy Spirit, but you can have more than one.

Paul says explicitly in 1 Corinthians 12:7 that each person is given a manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. This means that our question is not, “do we have a gift?” But, “what gift have I been given and how should I use it?”

A gift has been given explicitly by the Holy Spirit to you! We can and should desire other gifts (1 Cor. 13:31) but it’s also critical for us to be content with the gift we’ve been given because it means the Spirit has good works prepared for us to do with that gift! It means that He has a vital role for you in the body of Christ to play. Don’t ignore the gifts you have been given!

In terms of having more than one, even in Paul’s breakdown of tongues and prophesying in 1 Corinthians 14, he basically admits to having at least both of those gifts. Robert Clinton concludes that leaders in particular are given a cluster of giftings, where a core leadership gift is supported by other supplementary gifts (e.g. a faith gifting to accompany a missionary gifting, or an exhortation gifting to support a prophetic gift). One of our mentors, Char, also notes that gifts can potentially change according to the season of life or ministry assignment that you are in, and the Holy Spirit equips you for those new works appropriately.

2. We know we are operating in our giftings when we sense supernatural empowerment and see supernatural fruitfulness.

We learned this key point from Matt Carter’s sermon on 1 Corinthians 12. He shares his own story about how he identified that his spiritual gift was prophecy exercised through preaching. For him, most ministry activities were draining, but his first time preaching he felt empowered and energized. Not only that, people were impacted by his preaching and there were supernatural results.

We’ve seen these two aspects of supernatural empowerment and supernatural fruitfulness affirmed over and over again in our own discovery of our gifts and helping others to find their gifts. Some people describe the empowerment aspect almost like an ‘out-of-body’ experience, where the Spirit is the one speaking, moving, acting through them and they are simply being used by him.

For me, I started to discover that I had a teaching / training gift in college. Soon after I started following Jesus, I began to volunteer at our old church’s youth group. I had just learned about Inductive Bible Study and how the Word had so much to offer when we are willing to dig deep and learn. I would facilitate a Saturday night IBS with a bunch of high schoolers that would go for 2+ hours. If you’ve ever been in youth ministry, you’ll know that getting the attention of high schoolers is like herding cats. Their attention span, even before iPhones, usually lasted about 20 seconds.

But the Spirit impacted our time in such a way that we had all these easily distracted teenagers deeply studying the Word, with earnestness, curiosity, and passion. It would get to the point where their parents would be there to pick them up and they would shoo them away or ask for more time so they could get to the end of the Bible study for that day. For me, I would receive so much energy and excitement, and as a person who normally wasn’t great at public speaking, I would feel the Spirit give me not only the words but the passion and wisdom to say the right things in the right moment.

I started to say yes to more opportunities to teach and train, and ended up leading our campus ministry’s weekly large group gathering of 300 students during my senior year, which required giving some kind of teaching at least 2 out of every 4 weeks. I repeatedly saw a pattern of the Holy Spirit empowering me with the right words, energy, and authority during opportunities to speak, and by God’s grace, saw the supernatural fruit of people being impacted by the things the Spirit was speaking through me. That has continued even to our time on the field, even being empowered to teach and train in another language! My Thai language ability is 10 times worse when I’m in normal conversation compared to when I train, which is normally the opposite for most people. That is undoubtedly the Holy Spirit!

3. Spiritual gifts are not to be used for personal pride, but to serve others in a spirit of unity.

Repeatedly throughout these passages about gifts, there is an emphasis on humility, serving, and unity in one body. It’s like the writers know there is a potential for the Enemy and our pride to twist this wonderful gift from the Holy Spirit into opportunities for comparison and dissension. Any usage of a spiritual gift that results in pride, comparison, and dissension is a misuse of that gift, and achieves the very opposite of what the Spirit intended in giving it to you.

Any usage of a spiritual gift that results in pride, comparison, and dissension is a misuse of that gift, and achieves the very opposite of what the Spirit intended in giving it to you.

The point of this post is that the gifts given by the Spirit are wonderful and should be used with joy. But there’s a dangerous line when we start to be identified by our gifts instead of identifying with Christ. On his teaching about gifts, Paul emphasizes unity in the body of Christ and then inserts a teaching on love right in the middle with 1 Corinthians 13. We often use this at weddings because it sounds good, but it’s a teaching given in the context of unity in the body among diversity in the gifts. In some ways, it’s the litmus test of if we are using the gift correctly: patiently, kindly, not envying or boasting, not arrogant or rude, not insisting on its own way, not irritable or resentful.

When we say, I have a certain gift and therefore shouldn’t waste my time on menial serving tasks, we’ve missed the point.

When we say, our doctrine and beliefs about how we should use the gifts is different from that group so we can no longer fellowship or work together, we’ve missed the point.

Whenever we are elevating our gifts and our preference over the oneness we have in Jesus, over unity in the body, over love that serves others – we’ve missed the point.

If we are approaching the gifts appropriately, it should create immense humility in us. Firstly, because the gift is not your own – it’s literally given by the Holy Spirit! When you’re using your gifts, God is the one to be glorified, not us! And secondly, knowing that we have a gift but not all the gifts means that we need other members in the body. If the church is working correctly, all the different members of the body should be operating in their gifts together to make the body grow!

…from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

Ephesians 4:16

4. The purpose of the gifts is for the edification of the church and expansion of the Kingdom.

Lastly, the second litmus test of our usage of the gifts is whether or not it’s being used for others. The gifts were not given to edify ourselves, but to “strive to excel in building up the church” (1 Cor. 14:12), for “the common good” (1 Cor. 12:7), for “building up the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:12), and “to be witnesses… to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

We are given so much by Jesus for our own growth and edification. We are given the free gift of salvation through Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross, we are given the Spirit to be comforter and helper, we are given the Word to guide our steps into daily obedience, we are given the community of believers to receive encouragement and love. But the gifts are not given for our own growth or desires. The gifts are given to be others-focused.

It can be exciting and make us feel special that we’ve been chosen specially to be given a gift! And we should joyfully receive it and be thankful to use it! But Paul gives a warning in 1 Corinthians 14 against using the gift to “build up” ourselves. He specifically calls out tongues, that it needs to be paired with interpretation so that it is beneficial for others around them. Not coincidentally, tongues remains one of the more controversial gifts in the current day.

Use your gift to serve others in the church or to bring others into the Kingdom!

Application

Now we have some clarity around spiritual gifts – you have at least one, it is accompanied with supernatural empowerment and fruitfulness, it is not for pride but for serving in unity, and gifts are meant to edify the church or expand the Kingdom. What next?

Gifts need to be identified, practiced, and developed.

Identify your Gifting

The first step in identifying is knowing what the gifts are. Study the passages in the list above! Certain resources can give you an idea of what a certain gift looks like – we recommend Robert Clinton’s resource “Understanding our Giftedness Set.” Inventories and surveys like this can help but only as a way to understand what you’ve experienced in ministry that you’ve already done.

Secondly, serve in a lot of different types of ministries! Whether at your local church, on a disciple-making team, or on a field missions team, volunteer and initiate to serve in multiple ways. As you try different things, be on the lookout for where you feel supernatural empowerment and see supernatural fruitfulness. Do ministry in team and community so that others can give you feedback about where they see your gift!

Lastly, identify by praying, asking, and listening to the Holy Spirit! If the Spirit is the one who has given you the gift, he can most surely tell you what gift you have and how to use it. Ask others to pray for you to receive gifts and help you discern! We see in the New Testament that the laying on of hands leads to imparting the Spirit and gifts (2 Tim. 1:6), and we’ve also had people pray over us to awaken certain gifts!

Practice your Gifting

Now that you know what your gift is – practice by using it! Paul encourages Timothy repeatedly to “fan into flame the gift of God” (2 Tim. 1:6), and to “not neglect the gift that you have” but to practice, immerse himself in it, and see progress in it (1 Tim. 4:14-15).

One disclaimer is that receiving a gift is not an excuse to disobey other parts of the Bible. Too often we hear “I don’t have an evangelism gifting’ as a reason to not share the gospel. This should go without saying but practicing your gifting can never supersede obedience to the Word and to the Spirit. That’s just our pride making an excuse.

Develop your Gifting

Develop your gifts through practice, but also by learning more specifically about them. Study the Word concerning specific gifts, and look for examples of people in Scripture with those giftings. Find and read books about these giftings. Find mentors that have those giftings and ask about their story and experience.

Often we see people begin with somewhat of an immature usage of their gifting, and over time as they gain experience and knowledge, they’re able to use their gifts more proficiently. For example a young prophet could see someone living in unbelief and desire to call them back towards the Lord but may be overly blunt and lack the wisdom for how to do it tactfully and graciously. A young apostolic might be sensing God call them towards a big vision and starting something new, but trample over everyone else on the way towards that new thing in a posture of judgment and criticism. More than developing the practical skill of your gift, the focus should be on the development of our Christ-like character and humility in using our gifts.

As a general guideline, we’ve heard that developing your gift can be a lifelong endeavor. In your 20s and 30s as you try lots of different ministries, you begin to identify your gifting. In your 30s and 40s you’ve learned what your gift is and begin to practice and use it more. And in your later life you become more proficient with your gift, and ideally, can align your ministry and leadership role primarily with your gifting and experience.

Conclusion

Now that we have a better idea of what spiritual gifts are, and how to identify, practice, and develop them, our next posts will address how these play out on the mission field and on missions teams. Below are some questions for personal reflection and some resources we’ve found to be helpful on the topic of spiritual gifts.

There’s plenty of reasons to learn and use your gifts. Beyond the fact that the Holy Spirit has specially given you one, and that Scripture repeatedly tells us not to be ignorant about our gifts or to neglect them, we’ve found that using our gifts results in our joy! There’s something amazing about being used uniquely by the Spirit, to experience that supernatural empowerment and to see supernatural fruitfulness. It is God being pleased to use us! It’s like trying out a bunch of different sports or extracurriculars as a kid and struggling and failing in them over and over again. And then, all of a sudden, you pick up the violin or dive into the pool or throw a football for the first time and it feels natural. Like you were born to do that thing. Don’t miss out on what He has uniquely created and designed you to do!

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Ephesians 2:10

Questions For Reflection

1. Do you have personal or theological barriers that keep you from studying or embracing spiritual gifts? 
2. Have you identified your gifting? If not yet, what steps can you take towards identifying your gift?
3. If you have identified your gifting, how can you grow and develop in the usage of your gifting? How can you create more opportunities to practice and work out of your gifting in your ministry? 
4. Have you observed any aspects of pride, comparison, or dissension emerge in the usage of your gifting? Why do you think that is? Are there certain situations, people, or contexts that trigger and bring out pride? If yes, then repent and surrender these things to God.  
5. How can you create a culture and space for your teammates to grow and develop in their giftings?

Additional Resources

• Unlocking Our Giftedness is Robert Clinton’s booklet on spiritual gifts detailing how leaders can develop in their giftedness and help develop others. Understanding Your Giftedness Set is a spiritual gifts assessment that goes with the booklet.

• Systematic Theology (chapter 52-53) by Wayne Grudem – an overview of spiritual gifts and addresses continuationism v. cessationism
• Get in the Fight! – Sermon on 1 Corinthians 12 by Matt Carter

My grandparents ran a wholesale grocery in Venezuela that my dad worked at during his college years. So it’s part of his heritage to go and visit a grocery store in whatever new country or city he visits.

With us living in Thailand, he’s almost as excited about the bounty of fruit as he is to visit us! He wakes up early with his jetlag in full force, and is back before we’re up with bags and bags of fruit. Durian is particularly popular in Southeast Asia and a delicacy for my dad. But it’s terribly stinky and is banned in most hotels.

One time we stepped off the elevator into the hotel floor where my parents were staying and immediately smelled the durian down the hall. Of course, my dad was the culprit, willing to even break the rules and invoke societal / hotel staff shame onto us for the sake of his precious fruit!

When he looks for fruit, he’s focused on two things. Quality and quantity. That the fruit tastes fresh, sweet, and delicious, and that there’s a lot of it!

The word fruit or fruitful shows up in Scripture 200+ times. But it’s a word in ministry that can sometimes bring up tension, especially when we value one type of fruitfulness over another. It happens when we as leaders are trusting in our own effort to produce fruit instead of bearing fruit through God’s methods.

The Warning of Not Bearing Fruit

There is a troubling passage in Matthew 21 where Jesus encounters a fig tree that does not bear fruit.

In the morning, as he was returning to the city, he became hungry. And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once.

Matthew 21:18-19

The tree has leaves on it! It looks like it is supposed to be healthy and bearing fruit. But it has no fruit, and Jesus curses it and it withers.

Right before this happens, Jesus drives out all the merchants from the temple, because they’ve made God’s house of prayer into a den of robbers. And he also condemns the chief priests and Pharisees for looking like spiritual people but not bearing any spiritual fruit.

John 15 has a similar warning, that a branch that does not bear fruit will be cut off and thrown into the fire and burned.

Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away… If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.

John 15:2, 6

This idea of fruitfulness, or the lack of it, used to keep me up at night. What does it mean to bear fruit? If I don’t bear fruit, will I be cut off and burned? Or cursed like the fig tree?

What is Fruitfulness?

So what is fruitfulness?

Like my dad, when we think of fruit and how to evaluate it, we think of two things: quality and quantity. For quality, we look at the fruit’s health, flavor, and condition. For quantity, we look at its ability to reproduce more of itself.

Scripture also defines Kingdom Fruitfulness in these two ways – quality and quantity. For the disciple of Jesus, the quality of their fruit is the fruit of the Spirit, or their Christ-like character. And the quantity of their fruit is the multiplication of disciples. Let’s look at these two aspects.

The Fruit of the Spirit

So the first one is the fruit of the Spirit. Let’s read Galatians 5:22:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

Galatians 5:22-23

Paul gives us a pretty clear definition of what fruit of the Spirit is in Galatians. All of these are attributes of godly character. The New Testament mentions fruit in this manner many other times. In Ephesians 5:9, that the “fruit of light is found in all that is good and true and right” or in Hebrews, where discipline “yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness” (Hebrews 12:11).

When you have a relationship with Jesus, he changes you. He changes your character, your desires, the way you think and act. When we are saved by Jesus and put our faith in him, he gives us new hearts to obey and desire him. And he continually sanctifies us, prunes us so that we can look more like him in character.

When I started dating Jenn, I was only 19 years old. I had never had a girlfriend before! I was selfish with my time, mean, rough with my words, and I became angry easily (why did she start dating me?). Over the last 15 years together and 10 years of being married, being with Jenn has changed my character! Through a lot of time spent together and many tears, mistakes, and conflicts, I learned how to be nice in my words and affirm her, I learned how to give up my personal time to spend quality time with her, I learned how to calm down and be gentle instead of angry. I learned that when we choose restaurants, we are choosing the restaurant that she wants! Basically I just learned the very important point: Happy wife, happy life! I have changed a lot since being with Jenn. But being with Jesus has changed me incomparably more.

Being with Jesus changes who we are!

He can turn an angry person into a kind person because he is kindness.
He can turn an anxious person into a peaceful person because he is peace.
He can turn a selfish person into a loving person because he is love.

And the more we abide in Jesus, learn from him in his Word, and start living our lives according to the way he has taught us, we will change more and more. He changes our character, and the result is that we bear the fruits of the Spirit.

If you are unsure whether you are fruitful or if Christ is sanctifying you, look at what Paul lists out as the fruits of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. If your desires, thoughts, and actions are orienting more in line with these things, the Spirit is working in your life! Thank God and ask him for more. 

The Fruit of Multiplying Disciples

The second type of fruitfulness that the Bible talks about is the fruit of multiplication. It starts with the very first command that God gives to man when He created the world in Genesis 1: “Be fruitful and multiply.” Later in Genesis 12, God gives this promise to Abraham that multiplication will happen through his descendants, to bear his image and His glory across the whole world.

But Jesus gave us a new command in Matthew 28, a Great Commission –

Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey all that I have commanded you.

Matthew 28:19

So now, we are not only meant to multiply through having physical descendants, but through multiplying spiritual descendants, or by making disciples of Jesus.

This spiritual multiplication is seen throughout the Old and New Testament. In Mark 4 Jesus tells a parable about the Kingdom of God.

The sower sows the word. But those that were sown on the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.”

Mark 4:14, 20

He explains that in this parable, the sower sows the Word or the gospel, and different people respond to the Word differently. Some do not receive the Word, some receive but are not fruitful, but the 4^th soil, the good soil, receives the Word and bears fruit. And they don’t only bear fruit, but they multiply, 30-60-100 times!

How does the multiplication of disciples happen? Paul shows us in 2 Timothy 2:2:

And what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.

2 Timothy 2:2

Paul tells Timothy that whatever we receive, whatever we learn, we need to pass on and share with others. If you are a believer today, you have received the good news of Jesus. The Bible says that we need to share that gospel with others! And we need to teach those other people to share with others!

When we obey this command to make disciples and teach others to obey, and they teach others, and they teach others, we can multiply disciples. 30, 60, and 100 times! Through multiplication, we can see many thousands or millions of people come to know Jesus!

I first learned about multiplying movements when I was in college. Jenn and I were part of a campus ministry leadership team overseeing 300 students. None of us really knew how to share the gospel or how to disciple others. Maybe 5-10 people a year would come to faith, mainly by inviting friends to large events.

We went to a conference and heard Ying Kai’s story. He was a church planter in China in the early 2000s, in an area with 20 million people. At the rate that he was seeing people come to faith, about 200 people every 3 years, he would still not be able to reach even .1% of the population. He was challenged by the question, “How many people will hear the gospel today?”

From Matthew 28 and 2 Timothy 2, he created a simple method called training for trainers, or T4T. He would train people in how to share the gospel, and challenge them to share it 5 times each week. Every new believer was trained and challenged to share 5 times each week as well.

His first training group was with one group of uneducated farmers, just 30 people. He taught them how to share their testimony of how Jesus changed their life, and share a short gospel message. And they set a goal to share 5 times a week and train others. Within 3 months, this group of 30 farmers had led 200 people to faith and formed 27 small groups. And they were training all the new believers to also share and teach others. And then they started multiplying! By the end of the first year, 10,000 people had believed in Jesus and 906 small groups had started. At the end of 10 years, this one group of 30 farmers had multiplied into 1.7 million new believers, and 150,000 churches started! This is a true story of multiplication today!

The organization that Ying Kai was a part of didn’t believe the numbers he was reporting. So they sent in a research team to confirm the statistics. They found out that he was under-reporting by almost 60%! God was multiplying so fast that they couldn’t even track all that was happening.

Many of us among the unreached are in places where this type of multiplying, exponential growth seems impossible. Just seeing one friend come to know Jesus would be amazing. And that is where it starts – by reaching out to even one friend. But from there, do we believe that God’s method is multiplication? That the things happening in the book of Acts, and in movements throughout the world, can happen through and around us?

Do we believe that Jesus wants us to bear the fruit of multiplication?

Which Type of Fruitfulness?

In Japan, there is a culture of giving super-expensive fruit as gifts. In 2023, two mangoes sold for 600,000 Japanese yen or close to $5000! We were curious at what all the hype was about, so we tried one much cheaper, but still very expensive, $10 mango. For context, a kilogram of mangoes is between $1-3 in Thailand.

Was it delicious? Very. But 10x the price delicious? Not even close. (Thai mangoes are also awesome.) It left us somewhat dissatisfied after basically only getting a couple bites each. On the other hand, I’m sure many of us have gotten a large but cheap batch of fruit that is bland, or mushy, or just not tasty. Lots of low quality fruit isn’t exactly enjoyable either.

In ministry or missions leadership, it can sometimes feel like we are stuck between the choice of focusing on quality or quantity of fruit. Some might be gifted shepherds and teachers who help people grow deeper in Christ, but can’t remember the last time they met a non-believing friend much less shared the gospel. Others may be seeing crazy huge multiplication numbers of new believers, but the discipleship level is shallow. All the training and coaching is focused on evangelism, and not much energy is spent towards pursuing holiness.

For me, pursuing multiplying movements means that I can often get stuck in the latter pitfall. So much of our focus is around how to get the gospel to 70 million unreached in Thailand that we can forget to ask if we are producing healthy and good quality fruit that is pleasing to God.

We’ve told our partner Mint’s story before, and it has been our joy to see her multiply in her region of Thailand. But a couple years ago during a coaching meeting, when we asked her about how her disciples are doing, she told us, “Many of them are sharing the gospel and discipling others, but they are struggling in their marriages. There’s a lot of conflict and they have never had examples of godly marriages.”

So her idea was to gather her disciples together, not for an evangelism or multiplication focused training, but a marriage / family camp! We invited Talia and her husband, who have a great marriage, to come and train on different aspects of a godly marriage, including centering their relationship around Jesus and learning to serve each other through their love languages like gifts and words of affirmation.

Through the family camp and some other coaching, one of Mint’s main disciples Bee felt convicted that she needed to share some personal sin with her husband, Not. They had been struggling in their marriage, even considering separation since it was so difficult. After she confessed, Bee and Not experienced newfound trust and restoration in their marriage. Later that week, one of the people Bee had shared with called her back and invited her to start a Discovery Bible Study in her shop! Bee attributes it to God’s kindness in giving her new disciples after she had the courage to obey the Spirit’s conviction in confessing sin. The fruit of heart change in Bee’s life led to the fruit of new disciples in her ministry!

Reflection

We know that Jesus gives a warning against not bearing fruit. And we know that abiding is how we get more of Jesus, which results in heart transformation and disciple multiplication. If you are bearing fruit in some way or another, praise the Lord for the work of the Holy Spirit in and through you!

But sometimes we have to self-assess whether we are producing fruitfulness in one category and not the other. Do we believe that abiding in Christ can help us to bear the fruit of character and multiplication, in our own lives and in those we lead?

Below are some questions for reflection, for your own life, in your ministry, or with your team.

1. Are you / your ministry / your team bearing the fruit of Christ-like character or of new disciples? If yes, then thank God for how He is working in your life!
2. Do you / your ministry / your team have a tendency to fall into the pitfall of quality over quantity of fruit, or of quantity over quality? Why? 
3. What would it look like if you could see both types of fruit consistently produced in your life? 
4. If you identify with one of these pitfalls, how can you reorient your heart and make tangible changes to address these issues? 
5. As a leader, how can you lead your team and / or ministry towards greater multiplication AND more Christ-like character? (e.g. if you have a ministry focused on care or teaching, how can you multiply those efforts? Or, if you lead a multiplication ministry, how can you emphasize greater health and deepen character?)

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The Weightiness of Listening Prayer

Like we said in the last post, learning to increase our awareness of God with us and becoming more confident in hearing the Holy Spirit is a process. But as we grow in these things, we can be so confident in Him speaking to us that we can make weighty decisions based on what He is saying.

Last week I was talking to a worker on the field, who shared that as they were praying, they heard God tell them, “I want you to actually go apply for a visa to a country that has already rejected you.” And they knew that if they got rejected again they wouldn’t be able to get back in for the next 10 years. And they said, “OK God.” 

It’s a big risk! It’s gonna be a problem if they get rejected. But they get the visa! And the immigration officers tell them that they need to write down a local person’s name that is their host in the country. But if they write a local believer’s name on the visa, they might compromise the whole movement.

So they pray, and the whole team prays and listens and they all come up with the same name. And they call that woman, this local believer, and they say, “hey we were told to apply for a visa and they asked us to write down a name. Can we use your name?”

And she says, “Let me go ask the Lord.” She goes and listens and she says, “Yes, you can use my name. God told me to say yes.”

That’s weighty. Because that woman could end up in jail. Because you know what? Paul ends up in jail too. But God spoke – to that team, to that woman, and it’s OK because it’s on Him. And it doesn’t mean that because He responded that it’s going to be safe the whole way through. But if God is speaking to you, it means He is speaking to be with you and He will be with you the whole way through.

Ways to Practice Listening

So we already talked about the different ways that God can speak. When we are praying and receive thoughts, words, Scripture, emotions, images, memories, songs, etc., pay attention because it could be God speaking! Here’s some different practices you can try to increase in your listening prayer.

1. Finding a Place to Meet with God

One thing I’ve noticed, especially with Westerners, is that if we do silent prayer then it’s really easy for us to get distracted. Like your phone could buzz, you’re thinking about other stuff, there’s so much coming in. The world is coming in, your thoughts are coming in, and we’re not even very self aware in general. It’s almost like we don’t even know which ones are our own thoughts and which aren’t.

Here are some ideas about how to focus a little bit. This is what I did with my friend from the Middle East – I said, “what I want you to do first is to ask God for Him to show you a place to meet with Him.” This is a mental place – it could be a physical place God has shown you before, or maybe He hasn’t shown you it before.

It’s going to be a mental place that represents that you are entering into that space in your mind and you’re meeting with Jesus. So take a few minutes to ask God to show you a place to meet with you.

Ask Him for a place to meet with you and just listen. As you go into that spot, we know that God wants to meet with you. And He loves us and wants us to be focused to meet with Him, so that we can be present and encounter Him in our own mind.

I want you to remember that place. Anytime you’re in prayer, go back to that place He’s shown you. Even if I’m meeting with someone and I’m praying for them, I’ll go to that place and meet with Jesus and ask him, “what do you want me to say to them or pray for them?”

One fun thing for me is that when I meet with Jesus, I have a greeting that I do. Not everyone has these things but sometimes it’s helpful to hear someone else’s. After I connect with Jesus and we greet each other, we do an Egyptian-style hug. I learned it when I was on a trip to Egypt. It’s really neat! It’s changed from what I used to do before, which was more like a bro hug. But now it’s a little more intimate.

Sometimes he actually just grabs my shoulders and just looks at me for a bit, which means a lot to me. Then I usually bow and I’m going to receive either of two things. He gives me a ball which is the Holy Spirit, or a sword. Which is the Spirit of God and the Word of God. And I turn towards whoever I’m praying for, and I don’t try to think about what’s going to happen. Just start praying. And that’s my interaction with God.

Other people don’t have all those things, that’s just how God decided to communicate with me to let me know He’s giving something for that other person.

If you were just now listening and asked God for a place, it’s OK if that’s not what God gave you. It could even be that He wants it to just be everywhere for you and you don’t need that. Having that place is a good idea and helpful for some people, but doesn’t mean that is necessarily something for you. He has a relationship with you – so walk in confidence and oneness and boldness that Jesus loves you.

2. Soaking and Waiting

A lot of times when we are praying, we are asking God for something or interceding for someone. So we’re bringing our requests to the Lord, and that’s good – He tells us to do that.

But if you’re new to listening prayer, it can be rare for you to just come to God with no agenda and just wait and see what He wants to say. Soaking is just a term for sitting and taking in God’s presence and waiting for Him to speak. We are soaking in God’s presence like a sponge soaks in water.

First, get rid of any other distractions – put your phone on silent, go to a quiet space for prayer. If God gave you a place for you to meet in your mind, go and meet him in that place.

For some people, it can be helpful to put on some acoustic or mellow worship music, or even these compilations of ambient worship music specifically made for soaking prayer. This instrumental version is one of my favorites.

Get into a comfortable position, and just wait. Try to clear your mind of distractions. Sometimes holding your hands open as a posture of surrender and receiving can be helpful. To begin, you can just try 10 minutes, or go as long as you like. If the Lord brings to mind a verse, a person, a word, an emotion, an image, a vision, or anything that you might think is from Him, try to remember it or just quickly jot it down into a notebook.

After you get that initial thing from the Lord, feel free to ask follow up questions. “God, what do you want me to know about this? Is there someone I should share this with? Is there Scripture that goes along with this?”

Soaking can be a good way for us to get used to entering into God’s presence. The more we do it and the more we’re used to noticing when God speaks, the quicker and more confident we’ll become as we grow.

For soaking, it’s best to go in with no agenda and just wait for God’s presence. But as you learn what it feels like when He is drawing near and speaking, you can ask questions and get answers from Him quicker as well. Questions can be as simple as, “God what do you want me to do in this situation?”

But also ask Him questions like, “God, how do you see me? God, what hurts your heart right now? What are you really proud of right now?”

In relationship, don’t just ask for things that you need! We want to know God more!

3. Folding Paper Activity

I think one of the best things that comes out of growing in listening prayer is hearing what the Lord wants to communicate for someone else when you’re praying for them.

One of the things we do is to have a group of 3-4 and take turns all praying for one person. When we do group prayer and pray for a person, it’s usually to encourage them. And it’s things that God wants to say to them about their situation now, who they are. And when you have 3 or 4 people doing that, it’s fun because you can be affirmed in your ability to listen when there is a similar theme with someone else because we all have the same Holy Spirit!

But if you’re not confident yet in listening to the Spirit and praying that over someone, one of the activities you can do to grow in listening for a person is the Folding Paper Activity. You start by writing a name on the top of a piece of paper and we fold it back so nobody can see it. Because sometimes when you know someone, you start projecting what you want to pray into them. But you fold it over so you can’t see the name, and you pass it out randomly. You don’t know the name on the paper you have but you start listening to God for about 5 minutes and write down whatever you get. Then fold it over so that your words are covered and everyone passes it to the person on their right and listen again.

After you’ve gone enough times that everyone in the group has prayed over one person’s paper (e.g. 6 times if you have a group of 6), unfold the top to see the name and hand the paper back to that person. After everyone has had a chance to read through the words, you can let people share with the group something that stood out to them, that encouraged them, or a theme that they noticed.

And yes, you will have listened for yourself on your own paper without knowing it. Sometimes that’s the most interesting one, because the Lord speaks something to you and you don’t know who it’s for, but it ends up being a word for you! We had one person say – “I feel like I heard this encouragement when I was praying and wrote it down, not knowing it was my piece of paper. I have a hard time believing these words for myself but when hearing it from God for someone else I believed it! So I should believe it for myself as well!”

It would get to a place in our group that when I was handed the piece of paper and couldn’t see the name, I would start listening and God would show me the same thing about that person and I would know who it is. He showed Ellie flying, or he showed Stephanie in a garden, or he would always say about Julian, ‘this is my friend.’

It’s really affirming to get that because I’m hearing God! It’s not that I’m the one giving them some Word but God is. Because I want to be like Philip when he gets close to the Ethiopian eunuch, recognizing God’s voice and having the boldness to say it. So you’re building that when you practice in a group and it’s a safe place to build that.

In general for an activity like this or as you’re learning how to listen for other people, it’s better to keep things more towards encouragement than towards exhorting or rebuking. If you have a strong sense that a word of exhortation is from the Lord, you might make a note of it and bring it up to a person privately, or to your leader and ask them to give their discernment about if and how to share it.

How Do I Know If It’s God Speaking?

On a trip to the Middle East, we were trying to meet new people on campus and talked about listening to God with a Muslim girl. She asked, “How do I know it’s from God?” That’s a great question – many times that can be our biggest fear when it comes to listening prayer. How do we know it’s from God? This is where discernment comes in. 

• Test the spirits: 1 John 4:1 tells us to “not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God.” John goes on to give us a clear parameter in verses 2 and 3. “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.” In discerning listening prayer, John highlights that things that affirm the Lordship of Jesus are from the Spirit. Anything that disagrees with that is not from God.

• Consistent with Scripture: I’ll reemphasize that these posts are not trying to change anyone’s theology. But I think any theological background would agree that whatever we receive through listening prayer should be consistent with Scripture. If you hear anything that explicitly contradicts Scripture, that should be disregarded. Additionally, even if something you hear is consistent with Scripture, no word that we get from listening should be elevated on the same level as or above Scripture. Many times, if you hear something in listening prayer, we’d encourage people to find 2 or 3 verses that support that word or at least speak on that topic, and interpret the word they hear together with Scripture.

• Fruit of the Spirit: Another passage that comes to mind when discerning if the Spirit is speaking is Galatians 5. Paul outlines desires of the flesh that are against the Spirit, and fruits of the Spirit that are borne out of walking with the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law” (Galatians 5:22). Does this word I’m hearing from the Spirit produce peace or dissension? Is it a gentle word or a harsh word? Is my motivation to share this out of love or out of being judgemental?

• Against Shame, Guilt, and Fear: In the opposite direction, if a word in listening prayer produces shame, guilt, or fear, we can be confident it’s not from the Lord. 2 Timothy 1:7 tells us that “God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self control.” Shame, guilt, and fear keep us in a cycle of being afraid of God or against God. God speaks through the Spirit to draw us nearer to him. That is not to say that the Holy Spirit won’t convict of sin (John 16:8), and there may be things that you hear in prayer that lead to genuine conviction of sin and a desire for repentance. But that is different from guilt, shame, and fear.

• Encouraging towards Others: As a general rule, if you’re newer to listening prayer, we’d again say a good guideline is to keep towards things that are encouraging and uplifting. 1 Corinthians 14:3 says, “the one who prophesies speaks to people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation.” If there’s words that you think might be for someone towards exhortation, write it down, pray about it and check it, run it by other community or leaders, and plan to share it carefully. With encouragement, it’s much easier and safer to go ahead and share it for someone else’s edification!

• Affirmed in Community: Paul in Ephesians 4:4 tells us that we have one Spirit – meaning that when we hear things in listening prayer, hopefully the Spirit is saying those same things to others as well! This is not to say that every time you do listening prayer in a group, everyone will agree. But if there is disagreement, or other people hear what you share and there isn’t peace, it’s worth figuring out what exactly is happening underneath. That’s why we encourage people to practice listening prayer in a safe space with trusted community. When we start to do listening prayer exclusively on our own, and tell other people that “God told me this” and won’t take feedback or disagreement from community, we run the risk of falling into pride.
• Glorifying God and Advancing His Kingdom: Lastly, words from God will bring glory to God and help to advance His Kingdom. So much of the book of Acts contains examples of the disciples hearing from the Lord in prayer and being filled with boldness to share the gospel even in the midst of persecution. The Lord will bring to mind people and places that you are meant to show love to and share the gospel with!

Conclusion

We (Steven and Jenn) want to thank Steve Dekkers so much for contributing his wisdom and insight in these posts on listening prayer! We hope these guidelines and activities will be helpful to you as you continue learning how to hear from the Spirit.

Lastly, we wanted to leave you all with one more exhortation and encouragement.

In 1 Thessalonians 5, Paul leaves some final thoughts with the church in Thessalonica, including to pray without ceasing. In verse 20, he gives a short but direct command: “Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good.”

Some might think, “I don’t need listening prayer since I have the Bible.” But so many of the examples in the Bible show a rich, two-way communication between God and His people. And Paul explicitly tells us to not quench the Spirit by throwing away anything that might come from prophecy or listening. It comes with the caution to test those prophecies and hold fast to what is good. But we are commanded to not quench what the Spirit is trying to tell us. Listening prayer is one of those ways that the Lord might be trying to speak with you, in order to increase the intimacy of your relationship with Him! Will you respond to Him?

And our encouragement is this – when you begin to familiarize yourself with His voice, your abiding and fruitfulness will surely increase! Steve has mentioned a few examples of why it’s so important to learn to hear God’s voice as workers on the field out of necessity. But listening prayer can also become one of your most powerful tools to see the gospel multiply among the unreached.

Some of our friends have helped to catalyze one of the biggest movements in the world with hundreds of thousands of churches planted, and their case study is called the Listening movement. One of their main tools when hitting roadblocks or setting goals is simply, with their partners, to stop, ask the Lord, and listen.

“Prayer is the work. Listening is an important part of prayer. There have been so many changes along the way and so many questions: What’s next? Should we work with this person? What should we train? Is this a dead end? We’ve had so many questions and we’ve learned to sit and wait for God’s answer. Usually he gives the expat team and our national partners the same answers, and we don’t even know it until our next biweekly meeting.”

– Listening Movement Leader

It’s a humbling reminder to us that the work belongs completely to the Lord. He knows our steps, and He is the one who has prepared good works for us to step into. How limited are we if we aren’t listening to what He wants for us, in every moment of every day? And if we would stop and humble ourselves to hear from Him, how much more fruitful and abiding could we become?

Prayer is first of all listening to God. It’s openness. God is always speaking; he’s always doing something. Prayer is to enter into that activity…Convert your thoughts into prayer. As we are involved in unceasing thinking, so we are called to unceasing prayer. The difference is not that prayer is thinking about other things, but that prayer is thinking in dialogue…a conversation with God.

– Henri Nouwen

Guest Contributor: Steve Dekkers

For cross-cultural workers, the sentence “I don’t know what to do!” can come up every hour! Away from familiar resources, cultural understandings, and support structures, serving in ministry overseas is a challenge and an opportunity to depend on God. Learning to hear God’s voice is a critical component for thriving and in pioneering ministry. However, many of us feel under-experienced or confused with the topic of listening prayer.

Our guest contributor Steve Dekkers is a missions mobilizer and trainer based in Texas, who is someone we (Steven and Jenn) have greatly benefitted from in learning about prayer and the Holy Spirit. These posts are adapted from a training that Steve has given on listening prayer that is our favorite!

These posts on listening prayer will provide some biblical foundations around the topic of listening prayer, give some different activities to engage in listening, and help you know how to discern God’s voice in your listening.

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Disclaimers

First, I want to start with a disclaimer that there are many different theologies, church backgrounds, and personal experiences. Listening prayer might be a topic that is familiar for some or can range from confusing to unsettling for others. This post is simply an introduction, so my encouragement is to keep pressing in and learning and following up as the Lord leads. Curiosity about this topic has helped drive many people to learn more about listening prayer, and that’s been my journey as well.

This training isn’t meant to try to change your theology. I’ll try to share as much as I can about where I see this in Scripture, but I also acknowledge that a lot of peoples’ perspectives about listening prayer are heavily influenced by their own personal experience, mine included.

If you read this and don’t agree with what is shared, that is OK! My suggestion is to read this with an open mind and allow the Lord to search your heart and see if there’s anything here that will be beneficial to your relationship with Him. Seek out others that practice listening prayer and ask them questions.

Secondly, for those that want to learn more about listening prayer and how God speaks, this is a process. I want to make it very, very safe, especially if you try some of these activities and don’t have a strong sense that you’re hearing anything or get something specific! 

It’s completely safe and OK to feel like you didn’t hear something. It takes a lot of faith and boldness to try and listen. But it also takes boldness to say, I didn’t get something even though it kind of feels like you’re supposed to. There’s no shame there because you’ve tried and that’s OK.

Also, it might not be your role for a certain time. Your role might be to receive from someone else that has heard something and shares it with you. That doesn’t mean you don’t have God or you’re not saved. It actually means that God is probably communicating to you in lots of other ways. In listening prayer, it’s OK not to get something.

In our training group where we practice listening prayer, we had a guy named Joe who embraced that. He wasn’t resistant to listening prayer, but He would listen and a lot of times just think of Scripture. And that is also from the Lord!

It’s important to continue seeking and engaging, preferably in a safe place with your community. As you pursue God in this process, I’m confident you will grow in hearing His voice!

The God of the Bible is a God who Speaks

The God of the Bible is a God who speaks.

Before we talk about how to engage in listening prayer, this is something we need to be confident in from Scripture. In Genesis 1, God introduces Himself to all the world as the God who speaks creation into existence. And He continues speaking in all of the pages of the Bible to the very end.

God is a communicating God. There’s some examples like Esther and Ruth where they are just trying to be obedient in the situations they are in and see God at work through that. But there are even more examples like Jonah, Moses, Samuel, David, Philip, Paul, Peter, and many more where they communicate with God pretty directly, through prayer and through the word of the Lord coming through other people. We’ll give a few examples here that include different ways that God communicated to His people.

Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch

In Acts 8, we see God communicating with Philip to evangelize to the Ethiopian eunuch. In verse 26, “an angel of the Lord said to Philip, ‘Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.’” Philip doesn’t even know the purpose of this instruction, he just hears from an angel messenger to go and he obeys.

When he gets to that area on the road to Gaza where the Ethiopian eunuch is traveling, “the Spirit said to Philip, ‘Go over and join this chariot.’ So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’”

Philip’s there by the side of the road, and sees the Ethiopian eunuch who he knows is royalty. Philip hears the Spirit tell him to go near the chariot, and he runs towards it! From anyone’s point of view, Philip looks like a robber. There’s no reason for him to run towards a chariot!

But Philip obeys and RUNS immediately upon hearing the Spirit’s voice. He doesn’t say, “What’s that voice? Was that God? I don’t know if I’ve heard God speak before.” Philips hears and runs to the chariot. He shares the gospel with the eunuch and baptizes him immediately by the side of the road. Church tradition says that this Ethiopian eunuch may have been one of the first to bring the gospel into Africa.

When we are in an unreached place and out on the road and the Spirit tells us to go towards a person that He has prepared to hear the gospel, will we RUN forward in obedience? Will we be able to recognize His voice?

Samuel

We see another example of God communicating clearly with Samuel. At this time, they already have the Torah from Moses. But the early Jews knew that they were supposed to continue to receive the word of the Lord – not to just get the Torah and be done. After Moses, God spoke through prophets to the people of Israel. But 1 Samuel 3:1 says “the word of the Lord was rare in those days, there was no frequent vision,” which must have been really concerning.

Eli is the priest and Samuel is serving as a boy. In this story, the Lord calls out to Samuel but Samuel gets confused and thinks it is Eli calling him. Eli perceives that it’s God calling out to Samuel and encourages him to answer, “Speak, Lord, for your servant hears.”

God gives Samuel a prophecy about Israel. God begins communicating with Samuel directly and “Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground… and the word of Samuel came to all Israel.”

Even when it feels like we haven’t heard God’s voice for a long time, or maybe if we feel like we have never heard God’s voice, He can still start communicating with us at any moment! Can we posture our hearts like Samuel to say – “Speak, Lord, for your servant hears.”

David

Next you have David. Saul is a king that prophesied a few times but he has Samuel as his main connection to hearing the Lord. But David actually starts to operate as a prophet, a priest, and a king!

9 times in 1^st and 2^nd Samuel it says that David inquires of the LORD. When David inquires, he is specific, and he is obedient. He asks specifically of God, what do you want me to do? Should we go here? Will we have victory? He waits for God’s response and obeys.

The best example of this is in 1 Samuel 30, where David and his men go to battle but return to their city to see that the Amalekites have raided their city and kidnapped all the women and children. David and his men “wept until they had no more strength to weep” and “the people spoke of stoning him, because all the people were bitter in soul, each for his sons and daughters. But David strengthened himself in the Lord” (1 Samuel 30:4, 6).

This is probably one of the hardest points in David’s leadership. But he does something unbelievable here, with his people ready to stone him. 

He inquires of the Lord. 

Should I pursue, will I overtake them? And God says yes and that he will rescue them.

What else is David supposed to do here except pursue?! The people would’ve certainly stoned him. But David doesn’t do what is obvious, doesn’t do what his followers expect, doesn’t do what he thinks is right – he obeys the Lord after he inquires of the Lord. David is a man after God’s own heart, and he knows God’s heart by communicating with Him.

Cornelius and Peter

In the book of Acts, we see some types of communication from God that are more apostolic in nature. And what I mean by that is the Holy Spirit is guiding the Apostles and disciples to bring the gospel to places it has never gone, because the church is just beginning and spreading.

But later in the Epistles you see words that are more about sanctification in nature. These words are bringing us to look more like Christ, focusing on our union with Christ and oneness with Him.

In Acts 10, we also see a few different ways that God communicates. Cornelius gets a message from an angel to find Peter and tells him exactly where to find him. So he sends three men to find Peter.

At the same time, Peter goes into a trance while he’s really hungry and praying. So that’s maybe how you know you’re doing fasting and prayer well – you’re so hungry that you go into a trance and have a vision!

Peter gets a vision three times about supposedly unclean animals that God says that he can kill and eat. But God says it’s OK. And as Peter is thinking about this vision, the three men are at the gate, and the Holy Spirit tells Peter, “Behold, three men are looking for you. Rise and go down and accompany them without hesitation, for I have sent them.”

So there’s three types of communication just in this short passage – the angel giving a message to Cornelius, Peter receiving the vision from God, and the Holy Spirit literally saying to Peter what he’s supposed to do, to go with the three men. And the rest of the book of Acts is completely transformed by this moment because it opens the door for Gentiles to come into the Kingdom.

Ways that God Speaks

Now we’ve seen several different people in different times hear from God in different ways – visions, angels, prayer, hearing the Spirit’s voice directly, and through prophets and leaders.

In John 10, Jesus says that the sheep hear the Shepherd’s voice and “the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.”

The sheep know the Shepherd’s voice.

So that’s just my word of encouragement to you as you begin to hear God speak. You know your Shepherd’s voice. God is already communicating with you!

The sheep follow him, for they know his voice.

John 10:4

This was my “ah-ha” moment as someone taught me about listening prayer. When you’re praying and certain thoughts, words, Scripture passages, images, songs, visions, impressions, and even emotions enter your mind and heart, that is the Holy Spirit speaking! It really is!

Sometimes when the Spirit is speaking, it might be accompanied by certain emotions like peace or love or joy, or even physical expressions like warmth, waves of tingling moving down your body, goosebumps, or feelings of electricity.

As you hear those things, write them down even if it feels like it’s from left field. Obviously the random distracting thoughts like “what am I going to eat for lunch” or “what’s the score of the game” are probably just your own mind. In part 2 we will talk about a way to quiet your mind to remove distractions and find a place to meet Jesus and hear from him. We’ll also address the more difficult part in discerning whether some things you hear are from your own mind or are from God. 

But I want to help you grow to be confident in knowing that it was God who spoke. The more you know and recognize God’s voice, the more you’re going to stand on that rock until He gives you a new word, and continues to communicate with you more and more.

God Speaks to Be With Us

In many of these biblical examples, there’s a lot of instruction from God about what people should do. And that can be a strong motivation for cross-cultural workers as well when they are seeking God’s voice through Scripture and prayer – what am I supposed to do?

It can be really great when God tells you to go do something, and you go do it and it feels like it was exactly right. But a lot of what God tells you in listening prayer will be about your identity because he wants you to be loved and to be in him. He tells you about identity so you can be one with him.

If we read and study Scripture to increase our knowledge but miss out on loving Jesus more, we have missed the point. Jesus says to the Jews in John 5 that “you search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.”

In a similar way, if our only motivation to increase in listening prayer is to receive guidance in what to do or receive just what we need but not to enter into deeper relationship with Jesus, we may also be missing the point.

Throughout his time with the disciples, there is plenty of instruction from Jesus to the disciples about what they are supposed to do. But in Jesus’ final words to the disciples, he says that he no longer calls them servants but friends. In his final prayer for the disciples in John 17, he prays for our unity, our joy, our sanctification, our perseverance, and ultimately that we would know Jesus in the Father. “I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

It was a journey for the disciples to grow in their relationship with Jesus, and it’s a journey for each of us to grow in further maturity in our relationship with Jesus and that’s OK. Our prayer lives start with being like toddlers – “Look at me!” And we’re the ones talking and talking and talking at Jesus. Then it goes to being like a teenager believer, who is like, “I need this, I need that.” Eventually we get to the point of more maturity where we are experiencing oneness with Jesus. Where we’re in tune with him, we’re interacting and communicating with him. We don’t only ask for things or even ask what we’re supposed to do, but we ask him about his heart, about his desires, about what he wants us to know about ourselves.

For sure, it pleases God when we hear and obey his voice. But let our motivations to hear his voice mirror his heart, “that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

Questions for Reflection

1. What hesitations or doubts do you have about listening prayer? Offer those to God and ask Him to speak to you.
2. What are other stories in the Bible where God communicates? Do you believe He could communicate with you in those ways? Why or why not?
3. Have you ever felt like the Holy Spirit was speaking? What method did it come by (image, emotion, words)? What happened after hearing from God?
4. What is your motivation for increasing in listening prayer? Ask God to help you align your heart to His in seeking His voice.

Read Listening Prayer (Part 2).

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The last few posts have been more instructive about the process of what to do to begin partnering with a National Apostolic Visionary to pursue movements. We wanted to focus on the first few practical steps in partnering with NAVs, as we feel there is a lack of training around how to start. However, as you get into a ministry partnership, there are numerous movement resources to help you think through, plan, and implement movement practices in your field. You can see the Resources page for some of these movement resources.

We will probably have more posts about Being Barnabas in the future, but for now, we wanted to shift gears from practical instruction to illustrate the relational dynamic that we have with our partners and what we’ve heard from other CPM practitioners about their partnership with NAVs. Sometimes we can get caught up in “catalyzing things” and miss the people that we are supposed to be loving and serving. What could be a beautiful image of partnership in the gospel with a NAV quickly becomes something evil and prideful when we are manipulating people towards a ministry goal instead of loving them and authentically serving them towards a mutual vision from God.

One of the best descriptions we’ve heard of the relational dynamic between a movement practitioner outsider and a national partner insider was given by a national partner in South Asia. He broke down Paul’s relationship with the Thessalonians, and in particular focused on 1 Thessalonians 2:7-12.

But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.

For you remember, brothers, our labor and toil: we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. You are witnesses, and God also, how holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct toward you believers. For you know how, like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.

1 Thessalonians 2:7-12

He highlighted the metaphors Paul uses to reflect the depth of their love and care towards the Thessalonians, “like a nursing mother…” and “like a father with his children.” Ultimately, the relationship is summarized in the words, “we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves.” This is the level of depth and unity that a true partnership in the gospel can birth.

Instead of just telling you what aspects we think are important for you to have in a ministry partnership with a NAV, we wrote a few short stories from our experiences with our partners to illustrate what it could look like. We aspire to have the type of partnership that Paul had with the Thessalonians, likely reflected from his relationship with Barnabas. Despite differences in age, culture, experience, or language, we believe that we have oneness with Christ, which therefore means we have a oneness and unity with other brothers and sisters in Christ (John 17:21). We hope that Barnabas’ example, Jesus’ exhortation, and some illustrations from our relationship with our friends would encourage you to humbly serve, sacrifice, and invest your lives to see national brothers and sisters multiply the gospel to those who have never heard.

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Being Family Together
_Steven

After one very long ministry trip to a neighboring province, Mint, Jenn, and I arrived back late at her house where her Mom had cooked dinner. Everyone else had eaten a few hours ago, but the three of us ravenously devoured mom’s epic fried chicken and gaeng som, an insanely spicy and sour southern Thai curry. From the beginning, we had made a habit of going to Mint’s house and eating her mom’s food after every training.

When I asked for seconds of rice, Mint’s mom broke into a big smile and chuckled. I looked at Mint who was also smiling. I asked, “Why’s your mom smiling?” Mint said, “she’s smiling because you finally stopped being polite and asked for more food!” Whenever we see Mint’s mom, she greets us with “​​ลูก! เป็นยังไงบ้าง?” – which means, “my children! How are you?”

Later on, Mint’s brother-in-law told me, “we’ve had other people from churches or groups try to come and help us or run a training. But whenever the training was over, they would keep to themselves or go off and do their own thing. We knew that you cared about us and not just what we did because you guys always came over for dinner.” He always greets me with a big smile and a big hug, and asks me when I’m going to lose the 10 pounds I told him I would lose.

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Celebrating Fruitfulness Together
_Jenn

In 2019, Mint’s ministry began to bear fruit, and quickly. Our memories of that year are mostly a blur as we tried to keep up with all that God was doing. Most weeks, we traveled with Mint as she visited new believers and churches, energized by weekly reports of salvations, baptisms, and healings. Though we were so excited, we were also incredibly tired!

To take a breath, we planned a small prayer retreat at an airbnb in Bangkok. We asked Mint to take a pause for a couple of days so that we could pray together, listen for guidance from the Holy Spirit, and plan out our next goals.

On the first day, I handed Mint a sheet of paper and asked her to write what she had seen God do, what she was thankful for, and to draw a generation map of where the ministry was currently at. She prayed silently for a moment, listening to the Holy Spirit. And then she started to draw. New churches were represented by a circle, and a dotted circle delineated a Discovery Bible Study group. Circles began covering the first, then the second, and then the third page as she drew out how God had been moving. She shared with us story after story of people whose lives had turned from darkness to light. Tears of joy and gratitude fell freely from all of us as we realized how God had been working.

I asked Mint, “how do you feel about all of this?”

She replied, “I’m nothing special. I never thought God could use me like this.” 

Before we shifted toward setting goals, we had a time of listening prayer, asking God to speak into our plans. As I listened, the Holy Spirit put a Thai worship song on my mind that I had only heard once or twice. Unsure with what to do with this word, I asked Mint, “do you know this song? Maybe we can sing it?”

A huge smile came across her face. “This is the song God used to call me to be a church planter!” In God’s kindness and wisdom, He brought to my mind a song that was significant in reminding Mint of His faithfulness when she first started this new ministry. As Mint’s ministry began to multiply, the song took on new meaning as our celebration of God’s fulfillment of His promises!

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Suffering Together
_Steven

After the first 5 house churches were planted, Mint’s ministry took off. Before we met her, she spent 2 years of difficult laboring to get to her first house church of about 15 people. 7 months after our first training with her team, there were 70 new believers and 5 house churches. 3 months later, 120 new believers and 12 house churches. We were traveling constantly with her throughout her region to train new church planters and follow up with new believers.

But with the highs of fruitfulness also came the lows of resistance and trial. During one coaching meeting, she shared with us that some new believers had gotten into a dispute about money with another believer in the church. Even though Mint tried to resolve the conflict, the new believers decided to leave the church without a word. Instead, they simply left their Bibles on Mint’s doorstep and disappeared.

Mint was devastated.

She said, “it wasn’t just that they rejected us, but that they rejected Jesus too.”

She also told us that this same month, her dad had decided to leave them in the northeast and move back down south to his second wife. Mint’s mom had just baptized him a few months before.

We sat in silence and mourned together with her. And with as much feeling and intention as we could convey in our limited Thai, we prayed for Mint and asked God to be her comfort.

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The first time I hugged Mint after three years of working together was in the hospital. We were in a province I had never been before to help train some new church planters that Mint had raised up. Upon arriving to the hotel after a 6 hour drive, Jenn had multiple seizures and was taken to the hospital in an ambulance.

After texting my teammates to pray, the first person I called was Mint, searching for the Thai words to explain “faint, unconscious, seizure.” She told me to tell the hotel to call an ambulance and was there in 10 minutes next to me as Jenn started her 3rd seizure.

We rode in the front of the ambulance together; I remember that Mint was carrying Jenn’s shoes for her. When we were getting ready to move from the government hospital to the international hospital, Mint disappeared for 10 minutes and came back with the bill paid. She wouldn’t let me pay her back.

Around midnight as the hospital was closing, I went to the lobby where Mint and some of her teammates had been waiting for almost 6 hours. With tears in my eyes, I told them thank you for being with me that day, and I gave Mint a hug. For context, Thai culture isn’t very touchy as they ‘wai’ each other instead of hugging or handshaking, and Mint in particular isn’t a touch person. Jenn and I aren’t sure if we’ve even seen Mint hug her own family. But it felt like we had been through something significant and intense together and a ‘wai’ just wouldn’t suffice; she was there with us through one of the worst days of our lives.

The next day, she ran the training for the new church planters by herself and was back at the hospital to see Jenn. 

After we were gone from Thailand for almost 2 years for Jenn’s treatment in the States, we came back to see her and it was like things just picked up right where they left off. Mint gives Jenn a hug now almost every time we see her.

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Encouraging Towards Jesus Together
_Jenn

Two days after my seizure, Talia sent a text to me and Steven.

“Last night, I had a dream about Jenn. I was really worried and woke up early to pray for her. Jenn, please don’t work too hard!” 

To that point, we hadn’t updated most of our Thai friends about what had happened, and I was recovering in a hospital ICU. It still blows our minds that the Holy Spirit had alerted her of my situation from hundreds of miles away.

After Steven told her the news, Talia responded immediately:

“Jenn, I thank God that we are going through these situations. Everything that happens is in God’s control and in his care. I believe we will see and understand His promises much more, together.”

At the time Talia texted this to me, she was incredibly sick herself. For months, she had been fighting constant weakness and nausea, eventually ending up bedridden from hyperthyroidism, with doctors unable to figure out a medical plan. For the next two years the Lord knit our hearts to each other for a season of suffering and sickness that we would weather together. 

While we fought our respective battles, Talia and I texted constantly. One of the terrible effects of sickness is isolation and loneliness. With brain cancer, no one else was able to experience what my body was going through the way I did. I didn’t have the energy to explain my experiences and the storm of emotions in my heart. But Talia and I had each other – no explanations needed.

We shared with each other verses about God’s promises in suffering, frustrations with sickness, the painful words of people around us, and pictures of new clothes we needed for our changing bodies.

As Talia’s condition worsened, she expressed to me that I had become one of the few people who she felt understood by and who encouraged her. I felt exactly the same. The lessons that she was receiving from the Lord mirrored the things that I was learning. I once asked her, has God given you any promises during this season of suffering?

She said, “God has given me a vision that he will heal me and that I’ll return to my former strength! And that many people will believe in him through my testimony. I want to spend the time I have left to serve him and share the gospel and my story to as many people as I can!” 

625 days after my seizure, we reunited with Talia in Thailand. Although our bodies were exhausted and changed from 2 years of disease and treatment, we were overjoyed to be on the other side of a season of sickness and to meet face to face again. Meeting together also gave us renewed focus and resolve to take the lessons that God had been teaching us through sickness and move forward with His work in Thailand.

When we first launched to Thailand, we knew that our role was to partner with Thai leaders to help them complete the vision God had given them. What I didn’t expect was that God would give me someone that would understand what I was going through better than almost anyone in my most difficult season, despite being across an ocean and a language barrier. I had in mind to have a close relationship with a partner in the ministry, but my good Father knew that what I needed was a dear sister and friend to encourage me in Christ.

I’m confident that God had me and Talia go through our treatment seasons together to reflect to each other what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1: 

Blessed be the… God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God… Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.

2 Corinthians 1:3-4, 9-10