CEE Story From The Mission Field
Interceding for Missionaries
May 23, 2006
“Let us not become weary in doing good for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” Ephesians 6:9
God has called the missionaries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) to a place where the enemy has been victorious for many years in hiding the truths of the Gospel. The spiritual soil in the former Soviet Union is so hard and packed that most of our missionaries describe their efforts of sowing the seeds of the Gospel as “plowing concrete.” They need your prayers!
Regional Leader Rodney Hammer has emphasized three main prayer needs for CEE missionaries. First, pray that they do not grow weary in the good work they are doing! Planting the seeds of the Gospel is sometimes slow work but always fruitful. God says that His Word will never return void. So CEE missionaries are hard at work sharing the message of Christ and getting the Word of God into the hearts and hands of people. Rodney’s wife Debbie and her colleagues teach children Bible stories every week in the Czech Republic because in this secular country the children do not know God’s word. A missionary in another part of the world, Phil Templin, shared recently that there is now a church-planting movement going on in one part of his region. But the first missionaries went there and started sowing the seed of the Gospel in 1963! Many Central and Eastern Europeans are hardened to the Gospel today, but God will soften their hearts over time. Please pray that CEE missionaries will not grow weary waiting for that day!
Second, pray that CEE missionaries would be bold in the face of national or cultural churches that oppose the sharing of the Gospel. Most countries in CEE have a state church that serves as a religious identity of the people—usually either Catholic or Orthodox. These churches are cultural and religious icons and have led the people with half-truths for centuries. They do not preach that people must be born again, and they do not preach the Scriptures. This is not surprising when realizing that most of Central and Eastern Europe never experienced the Reformation. There was one notable reformer on the scene in the Czech Republic about 100 years prior to the reformation. Jan Hus began to influence Czech and Hungarian Cultures, but his voice was silenced by the church when they burned him at the stake. Other than Hus, though, there has not been any emphasis on the authority of Scripture, the acceptance of salvation through faith alone, or the necessity of being born again in Central and Eastern Europe’s modern history. Pray that God would raise up the John Huses, Martin Luthers, and John Wycliffs from among the Catholic and the Orthodox like he did once before, and that reformation and spiritual awakening would come to Central and Eastern Europe for the first time.
Lastly, pray for perseverance as missionaries awaiting a breakthrough begin to see the firstfruits of their ministries, and praise God for the work that He has begun. One example is the Udmurt people of Russia. Two years ago they were an unknown people group to IMB missionaries. In 2004, two of our regional office personnel traveled to Siberia to find out about this “people of the woods.” What they found was a group of 770,000 people that make their houses from wood, make the things they use from wood, live in the woods, and still seek spiritual guidance from wooden idols and totems. They found a society drowning in alcohol and losing their cultural identity. They also found that hidden among these people were a few souls touched by God that considered themselves evangelists among their own people—resulting in about 200 believers scattered about in small house churches.
Recently in Moscow, an updated report on the Udmurts was delivered by an IMB missionary that had just returned from a brief stay with the Udmurts. He and a Southern Baptist pastor from Arkansas had gone to Siberia to deliver Bibles written in the Udmurt language. These Bibles were given to new Udmurt believers that had never held in their hands the Scriptures written in their own language. What they found there were 1,000 Udmurt believers. From 200 two years ago to 1,000 today!!! Praise God for this and pray that this kind of awakening would spread among all the peoples in Central and Eastern Europe.
Click to find out more about how you can be a part of what God is doing in Central and Eastern Europe through praying, volunteering,or giving.