Prayer Walking & Prayer Living
I. Prayerliving is about sharing your everyday ups & downs with God ... .staying in touch & in tune with Him!
Your Daily Time with God ... many try to work for God without praying, and many try to live for God without praying, but you can’t walk with God unless you are LISTENING & TALKING with Him!
Include at least these items in your daily time with God:
LISTENING ... spend at least half of your time with God just listening to Him speak to you through His Word. Read a passage slowly. Look for His insights for the day. Underline any verse or phrase that “speaks” to you and put the date or a note by it. Pray the underlined words back to God.
TALKING ... spend the other half of your time sharing your heart/life/needs/challenges with God.
P ... PRAISE His strength, love, wisdom, power to change lives, etc.
T ... THANK Him for things He has done, is doing, will do, for your present circumstances, His plans for your life, etc.
L ... LORD ... put Him in charge of everything, every person, every issue in your life, include your needs, frustrations, and wants.
C ... CONFESS any wrongs and trust Him for forgiveness ... accept it.
A ... ASK for His touch in people’s hearts, for your daily needs, for His fruit in your life.
T ... TRUST Him in each matter, and tell Him so!
II. Prayerwalking is about you joining His plans for reaching a group rather than asking Him to join your plans! (an important difference)
Begin using a “Prayer Plan” instead of an “Activity Plan” as you seek God’s guidance & power to (a) help you connect with an unreached group, and (b) help you plant a church in their midst. Don’t substitute an event/activity/advertisement for the Spirit’s preparation of hearts and for God-arranged encounters with those same “prepared hearts."
Try weekly “prayerwalking” (or just “prayer-hanging-out) wherever this group lives or spends time together. As you walk/hang ask God to bless persons and show them concrete proof of His love & provision in their lives ... .. ask God to cross your path with someone He has made ready for your mission!
This method puts “flesh” out of power because you are depending on God to arrange the right relationship connections. Be faithful and watch God work! (read Acts 16 ... and note how God redirected Paul to Lydia) (The ideas in section 2 are edited excerpts from a workshop by Kenny Moore, kennybmoore@gmail.com)
III. Prayerwalking to Birth a Church ... a living example!
Around eighteen months ago, the Lord showed us prophetically that we were to start a church in one of the low-income housing projects, Springfield, about twenty minutes from our home. So we gathered together a team to pray for the area, and for several months, it was a prayer project. From time to time we would actually go and walk the area claiming it for the Kingdom, but most of our praying was done on an individual basis.
One day, Tony and I happened to be driving by, and on impulse, decided to stop and prayer walk again. Tony was specifically asking the Lord that we would meet our ‘person of peace.’ A torrential downpour surprised us and we ran to take shelter under a balcony with two Hispanic ladies who turned out to be sisters. Conversation started, and they inquired what we were doing there. (We obviously did not fit the local profile!) We explained to them that we were praying for their neighborhood, and as the conversation went on, asked if we could come by occasionally to pray about the needs in their family. They immediately agreed, and so for the next few weeks, once or twice a week we would drop in and pray for them, staying just fifteen minutes or so. It was not long before we were seeing very specific answers to prayer.
One of the sisters, Rosa, turned out to be our person of peace. (She has a heart as big as Texas - everyone is welcomed and loved by her.) Our next step was to ask if she would bring some of her friends and family members together, and so a weekly meeting time was set up at her home. She very quickly became a Christian, and this led to many of her family members also doing the same. We have touched several other homes in the complex, too. Now a year later, her apartment is crowded out every week with 30 to 40 people jammed in, sitting on the stairs, on the floor, kids everywhere. Neighbors are telling us that the project has begun to change; there is less violence and some of the drug dealers are moving out. We have started a church in the home of another family member in a different housing project as well. (Excerpt from Getting Started, by Felicity Dale, page 100 and 102, used by permission.)