I still remember the evening this stopped being abstract for me. I was sitting at my kitchen table, phone in hand, reading about a pastor who had been arrested for holding a church service in his living room. My own church had met freely that same morning. We had sung loudly, stayed for coffee, and argued — gently — about the sermon. He had whispered. The contrast sat heavily on me, and I did not quite know what to do with it. I could not fly there. I could not hire a lawyer for him. I could not even safely share his name. But I could pray, and I realized, a little guiltily, that I had been treating prayer as the small thing you do when you cannot do the real thing. These prayers for missionaries and the persecuted church come from a different conviction: that prayer is the first real thing, the thing the suffering church itself keeps asking for, and the thing that binds us to people we will never meet.
This guide holds two groups together without blurring them, because missionaries and persecuted believers are not the same, even though their needs overlap. A missionary has often chosen to leave home, learn a new language, and live far from everything familiar, and that choice brings its own loneliness, culture shock, and pressure to show results. A believer born into a persecuted church did not choose the danger in the same way; it found them at school, at work, at home, in their own family. Both need courage, protection, provision, and bold witness. Both need the grace to love people who wish them harm. And both need ordinary Christians in free countries who will not just feel sorry for them for a week after a bad headline, but will remember them, name them when it is safe to do so, and keep praying when the news cycle moves on.
Right now, while you read this in freedom, there are Christians meeting in secret, missionaries far from home, and believers choosing, day after day, between their safety and their faith. Some are in prison for owning a Bible. Some have lost jobs, families, or homes because they would not deny Jesus. Some are missionaries learning a hard language in a hard place, wondering whether their work matters at all. You cannot go to all of them. But you can do the thing the persecuted church itself asks for again and again: pray — not with vague sympathy, but with specific, biblical, sustained prayer.
A Prayer for Missionaries and the Persecuted Church
Heavenly Father, You see Your people whom the world overlooks, misunderstands, or oppresses. Be near right now to missionaries far from home: give them the words they need in a language that still feels foreign on their tongue, friends who understand both their calling and their homesickness, health for their bodies, and courage to speak Your name clearly and kindly. Be near to believers in prison, in hiding, and in danger: protect their bodies, steady their minds in the long nights, and let them know, somehow, that they are not forgotten. Provide food, shelter, medicine, Bibles, and fellowship where every one of those is scarce. Keep their children safe, and give them a childhood that still has room for laughter. Strengthen pastors who lead churches that cannot put a sign outside the door, and comfort families who have lost jobs, homes, or loved ones because they would not deny Jesus. Turn the hearts of persecutors, as You once turned Saul on a road he thought he knew, and let enemies become brothers and sisters. And give us, who pray in freedom, grateful hearts and faithful voices — that we would remember our suffering family, speak for them wisely, and never treat our freedom as something we earned or something that will last without care. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Pray that prayer slowly, out loud if you can. If you know a missionary by name — someone your church sends, someone you grew up with, someone whose newsletter you actually read — put their name in it. If you have read about a country where Christians suffer, pray it for that place by name, too. A general prayer for “the persecuted church” is a good start. A named prayer is different. It turns a category back into people, and it changes the way you read the news the next time that place appears in it.
Why Prayer Is Not the Least You Can Do
It is tempting to rank help: money first, advocacy second, prayer somewhere near the bottom, as if prayer were what you offer when you have nothing better. The New Testament ranks it the other way round. When Peter was in prison, the church did not first organize a campaign; it prayed earnestly, and the prison doors opened. When Paul was in chains, he did not ask first for release. He asked for boldness to speak. When the early church was threatened, it prayed for courage, not for safety. That pattern tells us something important: the people closest to the danger believed prayer reached further than they could.
Prayer also does something to us, the people praying in freedom. It refuses to let suffering stay at arm’s length. Hebrews tells us to remember prisoners as if we were bound with them. That “as if” is not sentiment. It is theology. In the body of Christ, their pain is family pain. When you pray regularly for people under pressure, you start to notice things you missed before: how casually you take your own freedom, how quickly you complain about small church annoyances, how much of your faith has never actually cost you anything. That noticing is not meant to make you feel guilty and stop. It is meant to make your faith more honest, more grateful, and more useful.
Scriptures to Pray for Missionaries and the Persecuted Church
When you do not know what to ask for, pray God’s own words back to Him. These verses are not slogans to print on a poster. Each one names a specific need, and each one can become a prayer of its own if you slow down long enough to turn it into a request.
Ephesians 6:18-20 (WEB) — “With all prayer and requests, praying at all times in the Spirit, and being watchful to this end in all perseverance and requests for all the saints, on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in opening my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the Good News, for which I am an ambassador in chains.” Paul wrote this from prison, asking for prayer for boldness, not for an open door out. That is still the model. Pray first for a clear, bold witness, and trust God with the outcome.
Matthew 5:10-12 (WEB) — “Blessed are those who have been persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” Jesus does not promise that faithfulness will be safe. He promises that it will be blessed, and that the blessing is not distant or theoretical. Pray that persecuted believers would hold onto this when suffering makes it hard to believe, and that their reward in heaven would feel more real to them than their fear today.
Hebrews 13:3 (WEB) — “Remember those who are in bonds, as bound with them; and those who are ill-treated, as being yourselves also in the body.” Remembering is the first command, before giving or going. It is also the hardest to sustain, because memory fades when headlines fade. Ask God to keep specific people and places on your heart longer than a news cycle lasts.
Acts 4:29 (WEB) — “Now, Lord, look at their threats, and grant to your servants to speak your word with all boldness.” Notice what the early church did not pray: it did not ask God to remove the threats. It asked for boldness inside them. Pray the same for missionaries weighing every word in a sensitive place, and for underground pastors deciding whether this Sunday is safe to meet.
Romans 8:35-37 (WEB) — “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Could oppression, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” Nothing on that list — and it is a painfully concrete list — can separate believers from Christ’s love. Pray that this truth would be more real to suffering Christians than their circumstances are, especially on days when they feel defeated rather than conquering.
Matthew 5:44 (WEB) — “But I tell you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who mistreat you and persecute you.” This is the hardest prayer in this guide and, in a way, the most important. Persecuted Christians are called to pray for their persecutors, and so are you. We will come back to this below, because it deserves more than a single line.
2 Corinthians 4:8-9 (WEB) — “We are pressed on every side, yet not crushed; perplexed, yet not to despair; pursued, yet not forsaken; struck down, yet not destroyed.” This is the honest picture of the persecuted church. It does not pretend things are fine. It insists on the “not” in the middle of the sentence: not crushed, not forsaken, not destroyed. Pray that believers living this verse would feel that “not” holding them.
Philippians 4:19 (WEB) — “My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” Missionaries and persecuted families have practical needs that are easy to spiritualize away: rent, medicine, school fees, legal help, a bus ticket out when they must flee, a visa renewal that decides everything. Pray for provision as concretely as you would for your own household, because these are your brothers and sisters, and their needs are as real as yours.
Revelation 2:10 (WEB) — “Don’t be afraid of the things which you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested. Be faithful to the death, and I will give you the crown of life.” Faithfulness to the death is not a metaphor for some believers; it is a choice they may actually face. Pray for those facing it: for courage that does not flinch, for families left behind, and for the crown of life to be more vivid to them than the cost of faithfulness.
Prayers for Missionaries, Specifically
Missionaries rarely ask you to pray for “success.” If you read their letters closely, they ask for smaller, harder things. Pray for language: that the words would come, that jokes would land, that they would understand what is really being said in a meeting and not just the words. Language is not a technical skill for a missionary; it is friendship, dignity, and safety. A person who cannot explain themselves well is lonely in a way that is hard to describe to people back home.
Pray for their families, and especially for their children. Missionary kids grow up between worlds: fluent in a language their grandparents do not speak, at home in a place their passport says is foreign, grieving friends every time a family moves. Pray that they would know they belong, that they would have at least one deep friendship, and that they would not grow to resent a calling they did not choose. Pray, too, for marriages under unusual strain — for couples who are colleagues, roommates, co-workers, and parents all at once, with very little privacy and very little margin.
Pray for wisdom about staying and leaving, because that is often the heaviest decision a missionary faces. Staying can be faithful; leaving can be faithful, too. Pray that they would hear God clearly rather than hearing only the expectations of supporters back home, who sometimes treat a return as failure. And pray for missionaries who have been deported or forced to leave suddenly: for grief over work left unfinished, for provision in an unexpected transition, and for the grace to trust that God was not surprised, even when their plans were.
Prayers for the Persecuted Church, by Situation
Persecution does not look the same everywhere, so a single vague prayer misses the point. For believers in prison, pray for their bodies and minds in the long stretch: for sleep, for food that does not make them ill, for protection from abuse, for a guard who shows unexpected kindness, for a verse remembered exactly when it is needed. For secret churches, pray for wisdom about when to meet, whom to trust, and how to welcome a newcomer without endangering everyone else. That last prayer matters more than most of us realize; hospitality and security pull in opposite directions, and underground leaders live in that tension every week.
For converts — people who have left another faith or no faith to follow Jesus — pray for their families. Often the hardest pressure does not come from a government at all. It comes from a parent, a spouse, or a sibling who feels betrayed. Pray for courage without harshness, for conversations that stay open, for provision when a convert loses a job or a home, and for a new church family that becomes a real family, not just a meeting. For women and children in persecuted families, pray for safety that is specific: safe travel to school, a teacher who does not single them out, a home where faith is not a secret they are afraid to keep.
For pastors and leaders in hard places, pray for the weight they carry that nobody sees. They counsel people in danger, decide who can be trusted, bury people they loved, and preach hope on Sundays when they themselves are afraid. Pray that they would not grow cynical, that they would have at least one person they can be honest with, and that they would rest — truly rest — without feeling that rest is betrayal. The church in a hard place needs its shepherds to survive, not just to serve until they break.
Praying for Persecutors: More Than a Line
It is easy to say “pray for the persecutors” and move on. It is much harder to do it honestly, especially when you have read what they have done. So be specific, and be honest about the difficulty. Pray for officials who enforce unjust laws: that their consciences would trouble them, that they would see the people in front of them as people rather than problems. Pray for neighbors and family members who report believers: that fear would loosen its grip on them, and that a relationship might one day be repaired. Pray for guards, interrogators, and armed groups: not with a vague wish that they would “be nice,” but with the bold hope of conversion, the way the church once prayed for Saul and watched an enemy become an apostle.
Pray, too, for what persecutors need that they would never ask for: truthful friends, a moment of quiet in which to think, an encounter with Jesus they cannot explain away. Stephen prayed for the people stoning him, and one of the men standing there was Saul. You do not know what your prayer for an enemy today might be connected to tomorrow. That is not a promise that every persecutor will change. It is a reason to keep praying for them as people made in God’s image, even while you pray for protection from what they do.
Short Prayers You Can Pray in Sixty Seconds
Long guides are useful, but most of us will not pray a long guide every day. We will pray what we can remember while the kettle boils or while we wait at a red light. So keep these short, and use them often. For a missionary: “Lord, give them the right words today, a true friend nearby, and a quiet confidence that their work matters even when they cannot see it.” For a prisoner: “Lord, sit with them in that cell. Give them sleep, strength, and a song or a verse they can hold onto.” For a secret church: “Lord, keep their meeting safe, their welcome wise, and their worship joyful, even whispered.” For a persecutor: “Lord, trouble their conscience with mercy, and meet them the way You met Saul.” For Bibles reaching closed places: “Lord, get Your Word safely into hands that long for it — protect those who carry it, open doors no one can open, and let one verse change a life today.” For yourself: “Lord, do not let me forget them when the news moves on. Make my freedom grateful, not careless.”
Sixty seconds, prayed daily, will do more than an hour prayed once after a crisis and then forgotten. Persecution does not pause between headlines. Your prayers should not either.
How to Stand with Them, Week After Week
Choose a rhythm you can actually keep. One workable pattern is a seven-day cycle: Monday, pray for missionaries learning language and culture; Tuesday, for prisoners and their families; Wednesday, for secret churches and their pastors; Thursday, for converts and their families; Friday, for persecutors and officials; Saturday, for missionary children and returning workers; Sunday, for your own church — that it would remember, give, and welcome well. Put it on your phone, on your fridge, in your Bible. A rhythm beats a burst of emotion, because faithfulness over months is what the suffering church actually needs from you.
Learn a little, from trustworthy sources, about one or two hard places, and follow them over time. You do not need to become an expert on the whole world. You need to know enough to pray specifically, to notice when a place you pray for appears in the news, and to give wisely. Give to ministries that support persecuted Christians and missionaries with a track record you can check. Write to imprisoned believers when trusted ministries make that possible. Welcome missionaries and refugees into your church and home as family, not as guests to be displayed. And advocate for religious freedom where you have a voice — locally, nationally, and in your own conversations — without turning suffering people into arguments for your side.
Pray for the sending church, too — the congregation, family, and supporters behind each missionary. They carry the worry, the fundraising, the long silences between newsletters, and the phone calls with bad news. Pray that they would keep giving generously, keep writing, and keep welcoming their worker home without demanding a performance. A missionary who knows their sending church is still praying is a missionary who can keep going.
Do more than pray when you can, but never less than pray. Action without prayer burns out; prayer without action can become an excuse. The New Testament church did both — it prayed, and it sent help — and the persecuted church still needs both from you. That “both” includes the quieter welcome: when a missionary comes home on furlough, do not only ask for exciting stories or visible results. Ask how they are sleeping, what they miss, what the return has cost them. A church that knows how to welcome a weary worker home, without demanding a performance, is a church that understands what standing with them actually means.
There are also things not to do, and they matter. Do not publish names, photographs, or locations of underground believers from insecure or unverified sources; publicity can endanger the very people you want to help. Do not share a dramatic story online without checking whether it is true and whether sharing it is safe. Do not treat persecuted Christians as inspirational content for your own feed, and do not speak about them with a savior tone, as if your prayers or donations were the main story. They are not the supporting cast in your faith journey. You are one small part of a much larger family, and humility is part of standing with them.
Talk to your children about this honestly, at their age level. Children do not need graphic details, but they do need to know that some Christians around the world cannot meet openly, and that our family prays for them. Let them pray a short prayer at dinner for a missionary your church supports. Let them draw a picture or write a card when a ministry invites it. A child who learns early that faith sometimes costs something, and that prayer is how we stand together, will carry that lesson far longer than a lesson about being nice.
For more help in this library, visit our Guides page and explore our Leadership & Ministry archive, and keep going with companion guides — our prayers for church leaders and pastors, our prayers for grief and loss, our prayers for caregivers, and our prayers for our nation and leaders.
When the Answer Does Not Come the Way You Hoped
Here is the hardest part to write honestly. The early church prayed for Peter, and the prison doors opened. The same church watched Stephen die, and James die, and Paul eventually die. Prayer is not a formula that guarantees rescue, and pretending otherwise harms the very people we pray for. If you have prayed for a prisoner who stayed in prison, or a missionary who had to leave, or a family that lost everything, you know the ache of an unanswered prayer. Do not rush past it with a slogan.
What Scripture gives you instead is a longer view: that God is present in suffering, not only after it; that persecution has often spread the gospel rather than stopping it; that justice, full and final, is coming; and that no prayer for the suffering church is wasted, even when you cannot see what it did. Keep praying after the bad news, not only before it. Grieve with the families who grieve. And trust that the God who heard Stephen’s prayer for his killers is still hearing yours, even when the story does not end the way you begged Him to end it.
A Final Word Before You Pray
You do not need to feel equal to this subject before you pray about it. You do not need the perfect words, the full picture, or a dramatic story to move you. You need a willing heart, a few names or places held honestly before God, and a rhythm you will keep next week as well as this one. Start tonight, with one short prayer from these prayers for missionaries and the persecuted church, for one person or one place. Then start again tomorrow. That small faithfulness, repeated by thousands of ordinary Christians in free countries, is part of how the suffering church knows it is not alone — and part of how your own faith becomes less comfortable, more grateful, and more real.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why doesn’t God just stop persecution? That is an honest question, and the Bible does not give it a short answer. What it does show is that God is present with His suffering people, that persecution has often spread the gospel rather than stopping it, and that justice — full and final — is coming. Pray for endurance now, for protection where God wills it, and for that justice to come, and trust that God sees what you cannot yet understand.
Is it safe to pray publicly for persecuted Christians by name? Praying for them is safe for you, and it encourages them. But be wise about sharing sensitive details publicly: do not publish the names or locations of underground believers from insecure sources, and follow the guidance of ministries that work in those regions. Prayer itself is always safe; publicity sometimes is not, and wisdom protects the very people you want to help.
What can I do besides pray? Give to ministries that support persecuted Christians and missionaries, learn about one hard country and follow it over time, advocate for religious freedom, and support the missionaries your church sends — practically, financially, and personally. And when missionaries or refugees come to your church, welcome them as family, not as guests. Your church’s hospitality is part of their strength.
How do I pray for missionaries I have never met? Start with what you do know: they need language, friendship, health, wisdom, and boldness, and their families need belonging and provision. Pray those five things by name for a missionary your church supports, even if you have never shaken their hand. Then read one of their updates a month and let the next prayer be more specific than the last.
How do I keep praying when the news is unbearable? Shorten the prayer, do not stop it. A sixty-second prayer, prayed daily, is a faithful response to news that overwhelms you. Grieve honestly, limit how much graphic detail you consume if it leaves you numb, and pray with another person when you can. You were never meant to carry the suffering of the whole world alone; you were meant to carry a small, faithful part of it, together with the rest of the church.
The PrayersWisdom Editorial Team writes long-form, Bible-based prayer guides for Christians going deeper in prayer.
