Why & What You Need To Be Praying For Your Mission Trip Sponsors
Your mission trip is just as much how God uses you over there as it is how He uses you to impact the people around you. When you go on a mission trip, you’re not just building the kingdom overseas (or wherever you’re going), but you’re building it all around you.
What you do doesn’t just affect the people you visit; it affects the people around you.
By allowing others to fund your ministry, you’re allowing God to use you to work in them. They see you, and they see Him.
You should be praying for people to support you, and you should also be praying for the people who support you.
I’ve been on two overseas mission trips, and on both of those trips, I sent out support letters to my family and friends, many of whom did not have a relationship with Christ and/or were not following Christ. I didn’t think much about it the first year I sent out the letters, selfishly just hoping for someone to say, “Hey, I want to give you money so you can go and have an impact on people in Peru!” I never thought about the impact that my act of obedience would have on the people around me.
After I sent those letters out, a few things happened. People started asking me questions about the mission trip and about why I was going, and this opened up doors for me to share the Gospel with the people around me — people who I had neglected to share the Gospel with prior to sending out the letters. After generously supporting me, I also noticed that some of them started giving more to more people. It was like a wall had broken down and love was pouring out of them. A couple people even became super interested in doing missions themselves. Almost all of them were very interested in what it was I was doing and, after coming back from the trip, wanted to know what it was like and how God had shown up.
Mind you, many of these people do not have a relationship with God, as far as I know. Yet simply sending out support letters in the hopes of funding my mission trip somehow gave them a thirst to learn more.
The year after that, I sent out support letters again. Except this time my vision went beyond getting money so I can help others in another country. I prayed that sending out letters would open up my supporters’ eyes to see my King for who He really is: a caring, faithful, compassionate, all-powerful, meet-you-right-where-you’re-at, gonna-make-dirty-hearts-clean kinda God.
I prayed for people to have the hearts to support me, but I also prayed for their hearts to see my God’s heart.
Here’s the thing. God is going to use you to impact people that you never thought would be impacted, and He is going to use you to build the kingdom all over the world, BUT He can do so much more if your heart aligns with His.
What am I saying?
See every conversation you have, every action you take, every person you meet, and every interaction as a divine appointment scheduled by God.
One way to do that is by praying for the people around you, especially your mission trip sponsors, because prayer aligns our hearts with God’s.
You need to be praying for the people who support you for a number of reasons:
They’re partnering with you, committing their money to you (something that they probably hold very dearly, considering the world we live in), and they’re trusting you to do what they cannot do themselves.
God is using them to build the kingdom through you, which makes them a prime target from the enemy. The enemy does not want God’s kingdom to grow, so he’s going to attack anyone and anything who poses a threat — you and your mission trip sponsors.
They may really need to see Christ in you and through your ministry.
With me so far?
You need to be praying for your mission trip sponsors because they are partnering with you to build God’s kingdom, and they are sacrificing something for you.
SO, here’s a list of things that you should really pray for your mission trip sponsors:
They will have open and generous hearts and give whatever it takes to build God’s kingdom, whether it’s sacrificing time in their lives to pray for you or sacrificing a few Starbucks coffees to fund you.
They they will see Christ in you and through your ministry.
They will have open hearts to receive the Gospel.
Their faith in God will be renewed and revived.
They will be blessed by giving.
They will be protected from the enemy.
They will be used to build God’s kingdom.
They will be inspired to live faithfully and obediently, following Christ wherever He leads.
They will love God even more and love others more, too.
They will be free from whatever lies, sins, fears, doubts, insecurities, and chains that are keeping them from being completely His.
There are so many more things that you can be praying for them, but I encourage you to start with these.
They are placed in your area of influence for a reason, and that reason is not just to fund your mission trip. That reason is also because you have the opportunity to impact them in a new way. Be bold in that calling.