My Prayer Journey field team was prayerwalking near San Diego. We paused to pray briefly in front of several small apartments. A young man came running downstairs and asked if he could help us find someone. We responded: "No thank you, our church is out praying for the community today. Is there anything we can pray for you about?" The man looked shocked and slowly nodded his head. "I was just upstairs praying that God would send someone to tell me He is real." One member of field team smiled. "We're here."
Prayer really does make a difference. Not the hollow ritual prayers or shallow rhymes of contemporary culture but the prayer that rekindles the spark of holiness and differentiates humans from the rest of creation. In John 17 Jesus teaches believers to make a difference by interceding for believers, praying evangelistically for unbelievers and praying personally for spiritual needs.
Believers around the world are responding to God's call to reclaim a personal passion for prayer. This is happening in ways to indicate a new spiritual great awakening is at hand.
People are scrambling to find physical solutions to spiritual problems, largely because believers have failed to show the relevance of God's Word and the church. On mission believers can show this relevance--prayer is an essential preparation for evangelism.
Readiness in Caring, Sharing, Praying
In Luke 19 Jesus summarized three primary functions for a relevant church:
1. Be ready to care for others.
Jesus took time to care about a seeker named Zacchaeus (Luke 19:5). The first fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22) is love. Believers must be salt and light by penetrating the darkness.
We have hidden too long in modern monasteries and allowed the world to rot around us. It is time to reassert that Christ-empowered love has begun hospitals, orphanages, schools and disaster relief. It is hard to find an atheist society's hospital or orphanage.
My Prayer Journey field team had noticed a young woman crying on her porch. The pastor spoke to her with obvious compassion. He asked if there was anything we could do to help.
"Only if you brought some hope for the future," she said. The witnessing team was prepared with copies of the booklet entitled "Here's Hope." The young woman became a believer and brought several of her friends to Christ.
2. Be ready to share with others.
Jesus said, the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost (Luke 19:10, NASB).
Believers must not let the culture embarrass us into silence. Jesus said, I am the way,and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me (John 14:6, NASB). The culture would have us believe that Jesus said, "I am some of the way, part of the truth and a little bit of the life!"
Believers do not have to be silent at the threat of being "intolerant." Truth by definition excludes error. This is not "turn or burn, cry or fry" evangelism. It is the caring and compassionate evangelism that Jesus presents in Luke 4:18.
3. Be ready to pray with and for others.
Jesus adamantly reminds people, My house shall be a house of prayer (Luke 19:46, NASB).
Would Jesus find that your church is a house of prayer?
Readiness
through a Great Commission prayer ministry Satan hates specific, biblical prayer. That's why so much of our praying requires no faith or accountability. Biblical prayer is not so much trying to change God's mind as it is letting Him know we are ready for Him to answer "yes."
It is amazing how many people say God does not answer prayer because He answers it "no" or "wait." Too much of our prayer as believers is trying to get God to approve our agenda instead of learning about and participating in His (James 4:3).
Satan also works very hard to keep us from praying at all. He tries to convince us to keep prayer on the periphery instead as the priority.
A British friend once said, "You Yanks are so ingenious, you invented the rocking chair so you keep moving even when you are sitting still." Busyness robs us of personal, powerful time in prayer.
Chris Schofield, manager for prayer evangelism at NAMB, reminds us to keep prayer foundational to everything done in and through the church. A Great Commission prayer ministry helps us do just that. Schofield suggests that a prayer ministry include these three purpose statements:
A Great Commission prayer strategy develops many events to help complete these three purpose statements. Prayer Journeys are one excellent way for on mission Christians to pray for their neighborhoods.
Evangelistic prayer isn't just for neighborhoods and apartment complexes. Even students have the legal right to pray evangelistically for their schools. (And as campuses have become danger zones for teachers and students alike, it's more important than ever to pray for schools.)
Two ways students can get involved evangelistically are through See You at the Pole and Campus Prayer Journeys. On September 15, 1999, students around the world will gather for See You at the Pole, the largest student-led prayer ministry in history. Timed to coincide with See You at the Pole, Campus Prayer Journeys offer students and their families the opportunity to prayerwalk their campuses. And it's all legal.
A student's legal right to free speech and expression--including religious expression--doesn't disappear at the door of a school.
Information: See You at the Pole, 817-447-7526,www.syatp.com. Campus Prayer Journeys, 501-376-4791, ext. 5222,www.studentz.com/prayer.
Prayer Journeys
A Prayer Journey expands the idea of prayerwalking to involve every person in the church to pray for and share Jesus with every person in the community.
According to Henry Blackaby, Prayer Journeys can help "churches to establish a real, personal and corporate church that is a 'house of prayer.'"
A Prayer Journey field team takes prayer to the streets. They walk with eyes open and heads up. Some pray softly aloud. Others drive, bicycle or take the subway. One group in New Orleans meets each week to pray and inline skate through the tourist district. Campus Prayer Journeys begin the evening before See You at the Pole (see above).
Jerry and Yvonne came to Atlanta the weekend before the Southern Baptist Convention. They found the prayer tent at the Centennial Olympic Park block party. They took a customized Prayer Journey Pocket Guide and began to walk and pray as a field team. They stopped at each of the 15 prayer station signs that had been placed around the park and convention center. Each sign listed prayer requests, a map of the Prayer Journey route, scripture and inspirational quotes, and also held gospel tracts.
Jerry and Yvonne wrote: "For about an hour, we walked that entire park and prayed at every sign and for every person who crossed our paths. We witnessed to two young women from Germany and to a vendor. We spoke to a mother about her faith and to two elderly ladies sitting on a wall. We shed tears over our personal needs and how we desperately need God's blessing in our lives. We cried and prayed for family members and friends who need the Lord. And we praised the Lord for His bountiful blessings in our lives, in Atlanta and in this world. "Our prayerwalk became an hour of deeply personal, intimate worship while walking in one of America's largest cities. It was an awesome experience that we shall not soon forget."
Prayer Journeys include support teams that remain at a prayer base. One senior couple at the Centennial Park prayer tent said, "We can't walk as far or as fast as we used to, but we won't miss the chance to pray for our community and our church."
Support teams pray for the field teams, church staff and each classroom. One support team in Spokane was led to go into the church parking lot. They prayed that there would be enough visitors to fill every visitor's space. An e-mail later confirmed the spots were full the next Sunday for the first time in years.
Arms Around Atlanta
Prayer and Prayer Journeys made a difference in Atlanta. They also make a difference in any community where prayer is taken to the streets. More than 2,100 people made professions of faith in Atlanta during the SBC. Pastor Woods Watson of Arlington Park Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, participated with several church members. "I'm not old enough to remember the Bay of Pigs incident in Cuba," he said. "But I do know they call it that because the troops arrived on the coast of Cuba with no air support. As a result, they were shot like pigs. It was devastating.
"Prayer is needed the same way--as air cover for God's troops, and without it, we would fail miserably."
For more information about prayer resources, call 800-448-8032 or visit www.namb.net/prayer.
C. Thomas Wright is a prayer evangelism associate for the Prayer Evangelism & Church Renewal Unit, NAMB.