On Saturday, June 8, 1991, Robert Howe Morse, Sr. (1923-1993) gave a talk on prayer at a church in Phoenix, Arizona. I received the tape recording from his colleague, Joel Lillie, who called him "Uncle Robert". I will share a portion of the transcript below, but first I want to give some background.
Uncle Robert was a second-generation missionary who translated the Bible into the Rawang language of northern Burma from 1951 to 1987. He, his folklorist wife Betty (1930-2001), and the rest of their family, are most famous for the six years they spent in no-man's land between Burma and India from 1965 to 1972, after the Ne Win government ordered them to leave -- an adventure documented in his brother Eugene's book Exodus to a Hidden Valley. These years were difficult, and he reportedly resented the ordeal for a good while, and was surprised to find that these were the years that Reader's Digest wanted to focus on for Eugene's book.
After reading the book as a child, I assumed that Robert and Betty continued together in ministry for the rest of their lives after the events recorded in the book. However, I later found out that they divorced after the ordeal, with Betty taking several of their children from Hidden Valley to Chiang Mai, Thailand, in 1968, briefly marrying a Kachin officer, and traveling to the US, Thailand, India, and Nepal. Robert remained single for several years, even as he returned to the US and then transplanted his ministry to Chiang Mai. He later married a local woman named Phonsri, who was with him when he gave the talk in Phoenix.
It was in Chiang Mai that Robert and his brother Eugene realized more their need for unity in prayer with other believers of different backgrounds. They joined a Tuesday night interdenominational prayer group in the home of Allan and Joan Eubank. Allan tells about one particularly intense prayer session in his memoir Where God Leads... Never Give Up:
One night Robert Morse, a long-time missionary friend, brought a tribal lady and her sister to see me. Actually, he had much more experience than I had, but he wanted me to join with him in prayer. The lady was a backslidden Christian who had been cursed because of a conflict with a non-Christian lady on the mountain where they lived.
Her sister brought the woman to see the Morse family. They had prayed for her an entire week without effect. As we began to pray to cast out the spirits, the woman’s voice changed, becoming high, shrill, and comical saying, “Oh, it’s gone. See, it’s under that chair over there.” Obviously a spirit itself was speaking. It spoke in such a ridiculous tone of voice that the sister burst out laughing. Even though we knew this was a very serious situation, we had to laugh with her. In spite of our commands in Jesus’ name, we knew the spirits were still there. Finally, we remembered the story of the Gadarene demoniac in Mark 5:1-17. The demons begged Jesus to send them into the herd of pigs, and Jesus granted their request. We then asked the evil spirits, “Where is your home, and where are you allowed to live?” I don’t remember how the spirits answered, but we understood they lived on the same mountain as the woman. So we commanded them to go back to the place where Jesus allowed them to live. Then the spirits left, and the lady became her normal self.
Uncle Robert alludes to a similar incident in his Phoenix talk:
I find that in prayer, a very necessary element in prayer is agreement. It's for this reason that I've been effective as a worker, most recently, just with my wife. My wife and I, in agreement, bring matters to the Lord, and claim and pray, and get answers.
Jesus sent his disciples out two by two. Two people agreeing together, pull the Lord into it -- you don't say, "Well, I want a Cadillac, she wants a -- what's another big one? -- She wants a Mercedes. Lord, which one do you agree with?"
No, that's not, that's not barely… In the first place, I think your old man's sort of gotten on top, there, to make a prayer like that. "Lord, whatever you want me to have, I leave it to you. Yes, I feel the need for a car. If you want to give a car, good. If you don't, feel I don't need one, good also."
But be it alone agreeing, with whom? There's no agreement. You've got to have others, a coworker, someone else. Whatever it is that you're praying about, whatever it is, work that you're doing, get someone who will agree with you.
You know, I don't mean to preach about unity and all that, but it's very important. Where there is strife, God cannot bless! That's my experience!
Where there is strife, you're way out on a limb. First make that right. First clear up the strife, to where there is unity, unity of spirit, one way or the other. Husbands and wives, find that unity and put that unity high, high on your agenda, for God's blessing. Because God blesses you when you have unity.
I was in Chiang Mai, as a single, oh, maybe fifteen years ago, and I felt under attack, the enemy was attacking in more ways than one -- that's north Thailand, where I was. And I was the only missionary of my group, in the city. I went over to two other missions, missionaries from two other missions, and said, "Look, I would like for you to come and pray with me, because I've got a problem, I have a need, and I need to pray God to overcome it."
They were a little surprised to say the least. They'd never had anybody do anything like that. But they were fellow believers in prayer, at least. So they saw my point when I explained it to them. I had to take 15-20 minutes to explain it to each of them, why I wanted them to agree with me. "Oh, yeah!"
There's people that would have, I suppose, some doctrinal differences, if we got to discussing theology, but we weren't in a place where we needed to discuss theology. Theology wasn't a question. They were God's children, I was God's children. I had a need, I needed a prayer that would be successful, be answered, I needed support. So I got their unity. I got them to agree with me. And we prayed together -- just like that, the situation was clear.
So -- find it! Even if you're a single! Get out there and find someone who -- or if you're not a single, but still, you're in one job all by yourself, go out and find a fellow believer, and say, "Hey! Would you mind stopping your work for five minutes and praying with me?" "Uh-huh?"
Going to blow somebody's mind, making a request like that, but, really! Unity of spirit is something that doesn't have to have long years of work to build up. It doesn't mean that you're all agreed in every detail of your work, and every bit of your theology and all that. But God wants to see our unity of spirit, and come to him, and ask for something, and he will listen.
It is encouraging to me to see that, first, a missionary like Uncle Robert could learn and grow even after many years in the field, and that, second, he was willing to share the painful and lonely parts of his experience, and not just his triumphs, with those of us who came after, in the hopes that by our inviting others to unite with us in prayer, God would meet us too in our hour of need.
