Walking the Walk and Praying the Prayers

It's important that we increase our sense of what God wants to do in our lives and in the situations for which we pray.  I came across a passage on the Cru website dealing with the topic of prayerwalking:

Joshua and Caleb walked throughout the Promised Land with a desire to see it as God saw it. They walked in godly vision. In identifying enemy powers, do so in the context of the vastly superior power of God. We need to be aware of the enemy BUT in awe of God...

How we need to see as God sees and to pray with spiritual eyes!  The Cru piece refers to parts of 2
verses in Numbers 14 - here's are the complete verses:
8 If the Lord delights in us, then He will bring us into this land and give it to us, 'a land which flows with milk and honey.'
9 Only do not rebel against the Lord, nor fear the people of the land, for they are our bread; their protection has departed from them, and the Lord is with us. Do not fear them."

Through directed and focused prayer, we can expand our sense of what God wants to do in our midst. He has given us this powerful tool, and we do well to look for ways that we can improve our prayer life and enhance our communication with Almighty God.

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In James 5, we find a challenging passage of Scripture:
16 Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.
17 Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain; and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months.
18 And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit.

An International Mission Board missionary ministering in Indonesia possessed a map of the large city where he lived - his mission field. As he read the book by author Ed Silvoso called, That None Should Perish: How to Reach Entire Cities for Christ Through Prayer Evangelism, highlighting the practice of "prayerwalking" a large South American city, the missionary thought about the map.  He related to Baptist Press, "God put the vision of this particular map in my head. I thought, 'All right, we're going to prayerwalk this city.'"

In the Baptist Press story, his name has been changed to Howard.  Howard thought that he and his teammates on an urban city team could at least prayerwalk major roads in the city that is roughly the same size as St. Louis. Like most Asian cities, is densely populated with millions of people. One day, as he was walking one of those major roads, he glanced sideways.

He recalled "I'm down one of the roads and I look down a side alley and there's these two or three little grandmas and some little kids running around," adding, "And I found myself gravitating toward that road and praying for those people. That's when I realized we needed to pray for every [single] road. We needed to pray for the entire city."

Howard says that once they had committed as a group to pray for every street, the Lord provided a surplus of church volunteers from the United States that summer. More than 50 volunteers came to help partner in other ways but also invested a portion of their time to prayerwalk. One volunteer specifically came to prayerwalk.

The missionary's map is color-coded, with lines, dots, and stars - the goal is to pray for people on every street in the city; now, prayerwalkers are strategic about where and when to focus their prayers. For instance, if they are out on Fridays, they have a special assignment -- the mosques.

When volunteers head out to the streets, the team equips them with maps and sets of index cards tied together with string. Some cards prompt them in specific prayers. Some carry verses such as 1 Timothy 2:1-6 and 8 to pray for the city, while others prompt prayers for God to be glorified, for IMB workers and local believers to be bold and Muslims to find the truth. Howard explained, "You have people who are truly seeking God. They're not just seeking the religion part. They are seeking God -- how do you reach God? And this is the only way they know how to do it." He prays they will find the truth.

This account of what God is doing through this team in Indonesia can be an inspiration to pray for our communities.  It is encouraging to hear about prayerwalking efforts in the Faith Radio area, such as the annual River Region Prayer Walk, which takes place in the fall, as well as efforts that have been organized in the past to pray at area schools at the beginning of the school year.   As we continue to focus on upcoming prayer efforts in our area and our nation, we can be reminded about these dynamics of prayer:

Prayer transcends location and transcends our human understanding, but the immediacy of presence can have an effect on us and our prayers.  I think prayer is an effort that can intensify our senses, and by being able to walk in an area and see it geographically, it can give us a greater appreciation of what we need to pray for.  I think that we can increase our receptivity to the Holy Spirit's direction as we are, as you might say, "on location!"

We can be challenged to pray focused prayers.  Prayerwalking can help us to concentrate on the needs of the area for which we are praying, and there may be ministry opportunities that arise as we are communicating with God in a particular location.  Praying for our cities and communities, even going to critical locations, such as a capitol or city hall our courthouse, can be highly effective as we set aside distractions, make a decision to reserve time with the Lord, and to fervently intercede for the areas to which we are called.