deliver us from the evil one
In my experience, Christians tend to divide into two broad camps. There are some who see demons lurking behind every bush and who attribute anything even vaguely unpleasant to their activity and there are those who while acknowledging that Satan and demons exist, are unwilling to admit that they actually do anything. I, of course, am perfectly balanced down the middle!
Whatever your view on this issue, it is very hard to deny that Christian workers, especially those who are taking the Gospel into new areas will face attacks from the evil one. These attacks come in many forms. I remember lying in bed in Kouya-land listening to a mask dancing ceremony going on around midnight and being able to palpably feel the evil in the air. You might find it hard to believe and you may wish to rationalise it in some way, but you weren’t there. It’s hard to describe what it feels like to experience such a solid sense of evil surrounding you – quite frankly I was scared rigid!
But the evil one doesn’t always manifest himself in that sort of obvious display. Missionaries and Christian workers face assaults by corrupt governments, persecution at the hands of religious zealots and other less obvious forms of attack. I don’t doubt for one moment that Satan and his minions are involved in this sort of thing.
So, please pray that you missionary friends would be delivered from the evil one. There is nothing that he would like more than to disrupt the progress of the Gospel around the world and the best way to do that is to render ministers of the Gospel ineffective. Don’t just tack this on to your prayers either. Mission work can go ahead (for a while at least) without daily bread, but the attacks of the evil one can render it useless very quickly.