Your eyes can help you pray.
This hit me once again while I was prayer walking with a friend near our church this last week.
It was so easy. We saw a nearby business and prayed for prosperity for the owners and a good work atmosphere for the employees. We prayed for their spiritual welfare, that someone would share the good news of Jesus Christ with them.
Passing a house for sale, we prayed that the owners would be able to sell it and for good family relations. We saw a basketball net outside another house and prayed for the teenagers there - that God would protect them from evil.
Of course, it's even easier when you know the people in the houses you pass by. You can pray for them specifically. That same evening, another couple of prayer walkers walked their own neighbourhood nearby and stopped to pray for troubled families they knew.
When we finished our church prayer walk, our group leader urged us to keep on doing this in our own neighbourhoods. I have taken her words to heart.
Of course, we can let our eyes help us pray wherever we are - at home, in the office, at school. Yet there is something mutually encouraging in prayer walking with someone else.
Jesus promised that wherever two or three are gathered together in his name, he is there among them. He goes further to say that if they agree in prayer, "my Father in heaven will do it for you" (Matthew 18:19). Powerful stuff!
We also know that if we pray according to God's will, he will answer "yes" to our prayers (1 John 5:14-15). That tells me that our prayers for our neighbours and our communities have a heavenly influence. They can change things.
Naturally, we can prayer walk on our own, too. Our pastor prayer walked for a year around the community where he was starting our church.
Similarly, Mark Batterson, author of The Circle Maker, described how he prayer walked around Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., where he was launching a new church. The church wasn't going well until he read God's promise to Joshua that "I am giving you every square inch of the land that you set your foot on - just as I promised Moses".
After that first prayer walk, Batterson said, "My feet were sore, but my spirit soared . . . I couldn't wait to see the way God would honour that prayer."
He added that "God has been answering that three-hour prayer for the past fifteen years". His church has grown into one church with seven locations in metropolitan Washington.
We are not always able to see such visible results from our prayers. But our prayers are never wasted - they are with God who will act on them at the right time (Revelation 5:8).
This hit me once again while I was prayer walking with a friend near our church this last week.
It was so easy. We saw a nearby business and prayed for prosperity for the owners and a good work atmosphere for the employees. We prayed for their spiritual welfare, that someone would share the good news of Jesus Christ with them.
Passing a house for sale, we prayed that the owners would be able to sell it and for good family relations. We saw a basketball net outside another house and prayed for the teenagers there - that God would protect them from evil.
Of course, it's even easier when you know the people in the houses you pass by. You can pray for them specifically. That same evening, another couple of prayer walkers walked their own neighbourhood nearby and stopped to pray for troubled families they knew.
When we finished our church prayer walk, our group leader urged us to keep on doing this in our own neighbourhoods. I have taken her words to heart.
Of course, we can let our eyes help us pray wherever we are - at home, in the office, at school. Yet there is something mutually encouraging in prayer walking with someone else.
Jesus promised that wherever two or three are gathered together in his name, he is there among them. He goes further to say that if they agree in prayer, "my Father in heaven will do it for you" (Matthew 18:19). Powerful stuff!
We also know that if we pray according to God's will, he will answer "yes" to our prayers (1 John 5:14-15). That tells me that our prayers for our neighbours and our communities have a heavenly influence. They can change things.
Naturally, we can prayer walk on our own, too. Our pastor prayer walked for a year around the community where he was starting our church.
Similarly, Mark Batterson, author of The Circle Maker, described how he prayer walked around Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., where he was launching a new church. The church wasn't going well until he read God's promise to Joshua that "I am giving you every square inch of the land that you set your foot on - just as I promised Moses".
After that first prayer walk, Batterson said, "My feet were sore, but my spirit soared . . . I couldn't wait to see the way God would honour that prayer."
He added that "God has been answering that three-hour prayer for the past fifteen years". His church has grown into one church with seven locations in metropolitan Washington.
We are not always able to see such visible results from our prayers. But our prayers are never wasted - they are with God who will act on them at the right time (Revelation 5:8).
No comments:
Post a Comment