You Can’t Pray for a Country You Don’t Know Exists

Kids have questions. I mean, lots of questions. When my son was four, I think he broke the world record for most consecutive questions asked by a human in one sitting. I would be driving to church and he would say, “What’s that?” about 268 times in 15 minutes. To say he was curious is an understatement.

It seems that over time curiosity wanes. We become more certain about things because science has taught us how things work and history has taught us what has happened to our world so far.

In The Voyage of The Dawn Treader, C. S. Lewis addresses this scientific certainty with a conversation between a boy named Eustace, who considers himself a man of books and science, and a retired star in the form of an old, wise man named Ramandu. In Eustace’s conversation with this retired star, he, being a student of science, declares confidently that stars are only made of gas.

Eustace asserts, “In our world a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.” Ramandu answers, “Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of.”

Here is where our problem lies. We reduce things to the elements that comprise them, give them a tag and move on. This makes us full of information but short on wonder.

My son would ask questions when I expanded his world. When we went for car rides or go places he had never been, he would ask questions because he saw things he didn’t have a label for.

Curiosity is something we can learn from children. We get older and get used to things that used to make us marvel. Part of the good work God does in those who are conformed into His image is to help them recapture wonder.

Wonder is more than a childish gift; it is also a missionary skill.

I remember growing up captivated by missionaries showing slideshows of exotic, far-off places (this was before the internet). These slides incited wonder in my mind, wonder that I have not had since I was a child.

The missionary that came to our church all those years ago said something so profound, I remember it to this day: “You can’t have a burden for a country that you don’t know exists.” He explained that if you don’t know a country or a people group even exist, how can you pray for them or go to them?

That missionary hit dead-on one of the biggest hindrances to missions: a lack of curiosity. When I was young, the lack of curiosity came from an ignorance of what was out there in the world. With the internet and globalization, we are no longer ignorant but we still lack curiosity. Why is that?

Familiarity is the biggest modern threat to curiosity.

Now we know so much about almost everything. We do what Eustace did in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. We stick a label on something and move on. We place something in this big, beautiful world on a petri dish, observe it, catalog it and move on. Once Eustace had a scientific label for a star, he defined it by the elements that made it, then moved on to the next discovery needing a label or a name.

Wonder is what turns a country you can’t find on a map into a people you’d cross an ocean to reach.

How do we grow in our ability to be curious about the world around us?

• Ask more questions.
  Ask a person questions. AI knows facts about countries but knows nothing of the story of the people who have lived there. Asking questions is humbling. It’s an admission that we don’t know it all. Matthew 7:7, which says Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you, reminds us that asking is inseparably connected to receiving. If you want to have God’s heart for the nations, ask people questions about countries you know nothing about.
• Pray for the people you know and may not know yet.
  I have found that questions lead to awareness, awareness leads to prayer, and prayer leads to God’s heart. So pray for the people you just became aware of, even if the prayer is one clumsy sentence in the church parking lot.

  Pastor Paul Miller, in his masterful book on prayer, reminds us that our heart should match God’s heart. We welcome others because we have been welcomed by God. Miller writes,

  This is the gospel, the welcoming heart of God. God also cheers when we come to him with our wobbling, unsteady prayers. Jesus does not say, “Come to me, all you who have learned how to concentrate in prayer, whose minds no longer wander, and I will give you rest.” No, Jesus opens his arms to his needy children and says, “Come to Me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28, NASB). The criteria for coming to Jesus is weariness. Come overwhelmed with life. Come with your wandering mind. Come messy.

  We don’t need to have it together to come in prayer. We simply need to head to the right source.

• Look for ways to place yourself in contexts that are not comfortable.
  Why did Jesus’ disciples stay in Jerusalem after His ascension? The same reason you pull into your garage with a garage door opener and don’t even greet your neighbor. We like comfort and safety. If you want to expand your “Why” skills like my son, go somewhere new. Say hello to someone who you don’t know. Go to a country that doesn’t speak your language.

Jesus’ last command to His disciples before ascending must be our priority. Go into all the world and preach the Gospel!