Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Prayer walking - The first experience that I can recall

My first experience of prayer walking that I can recall was in New York City.  We were on a mission trip to help a church called "The Journey Church" that the church I was on staff at had helped launch shortly after 9/11 (I was up there a few years after.)  As a "Law and Order" nut, it was cool to have one of the people point out a restaurant where the cast and crew frequented near where we were staying or to catch a glimpse of a location where they shot an episode...yeah, I'm that much of a geek.

I remember thinking that prayer walking was an interesting idea, but not really being sure of what I thought about it, but we'd see.  I'd driven and prayed, I'd knelt and prayed (sometimes for an hour or hours, just with me and God unprompted or over prayer request cards at an official "prayer" night).  I'd even prayed as I plowed my Dad's fields in Alabama...no radio, no iPods then, so there wasn't much else to do, but this was different.  We actually also would do other things...like pick up trash or, believe it or not, take disinfectant wipes and wipe down payphones or railings where people put their hands....yeah, nuts, isn't it?  But whatever it was or if we did nothing else, we were to walking among the people of the world, praying for what went on in this area we were in.

I remember walking along the streets and as I walked, asking God for what I should pray, all kinds of things came to mind.  It was slow at first, but as I listened, the Holy Spirit really helped me out.  As I looked at a business or a person, I just think through the things that might be going on in their day...decisions they had to make, whether they (or the people in the business) knew Christ, their families, their kids, their kids work at school, the relationships with their parents, sickness for them or in their family, conversations that they were going to have that day at work or at home, for any addictions that someone might be struggling with privately (or privately that was starting to become public), etc...


Those are the types of things you can pray for and God can help you with that as you walk.  I prayed for their confidence, their insecurities, their fears, their hurts and hangups.  I prayed for things that they might have experienced in church or with people who were Christians...that if it was positive, that God would use it to bring them closer to Christ and if the experiences were negative that God would bring someone into their life to befriend them and show them what they missed in Christ.  I thought about their financial situation and prayed for them to learn to be generous and more importantly, if they already followed Christ, that God would encouraged and remind them that generosity is to be done as worship to God, not just done to those less fortunate.  Every gift to the poor should be given as a gift to the King.


The experience was more like I was actually participating in some way, rather than just asking God to help "over there" with "that person" from the comfort of my home or a church.  This activity was more like I was asking God to help "this person" and "this business" right in front of me...like I giving the best thing that I possess, influence from my relationship with the most powerful Being in existence, to their lives.  It was a faith exercise to allow the Holy Spirit to direct me to things, things I didn't even fully understand that was going on in their lives, because it was really weird the way I'd pray one thing for some and something completely different for another...that was the Holy Spirit's leading, based on His knowledge, not mine.

The truth is that I don't know what good I did that day for people, and it wasn't my place to know in the story God had written for my life.  I do know that I experienced a new kind of faith, just expecting Him to provide, in a way that wasn't that risky to me, but it built a greater understanding that He is there and what it meant to give Him the focus and wait on Him, because sometimes there was silence on His end.  Sometimes, He wanted me to exercise focus and patience and not just eject from the situation because it was momentarily put on pause...it was increasing positive habits in my Christian walk, on a small scale, that He would stretch with other situations, using this activity as a catalyst to draw from to say "well, I waited there and He came through at the right time, so maybe He can do that on a bigger thing."

In a lot of ways, the greatest impact that I saw directly was my own life, but we also saw difference in God's work on the Upper East Side.  The church experience growth just in the week we were there and actually that year, it surpassed the church I was working at in number (and my church wasn't small by any means)...but I know that God moved there in the lives of people and I believe that my prayers weren't in vain for me personally, for the area of New York or for the people who commuted/traveled/shopped/work in the area that I walked.

This Saturday at 10am, we'll be meeting at Palm Bay Regional Park to Prayer Walk some of the neighborhoods around Heritage High School.  It will only take about an hour to an hour 15.  We'll meet at the first soccer parking lot...look for the FBC Melbourne Bus there.  We'll break into teams and then we'll drop you off at your neighborhood to prayer walk.  We'll also pick everyone back up at an appointed time.  Come on out and learn to just "walk by faith" in a very small way...praying for people in our community, and learning to allow God to guide you in a tangible way, as you walk.  I hope that this will not only benefit the people in the neighborhoods, but also let you practice being guided by God in a tangible way.  Don't miss it.