There are many purposes one can pursue while prayer-walking, but for the purposes of the 30-Day Challenge, we’re hoping participants can be involved in …
- Building relationships in the community in which you hope to multiply disciples
- Discerning prayer needs
- Asking God to begin working directly within the hearts of your new friends
- What we’re doing is asking God, through prayer, to help us communicate the gospel. In this 3-minute video, Jon and Doug share how God can work through prayer to make that happen.
Here are some tips you can use to get started:
- Schedule the time. If you don’t put a prayer walk on the schedule, you’ll rarely take one.
- Plan the route.
- Dress appropriately.
- As a general rule, don’t stop walking to pray. There might be exceptions, for example, if you walk past a vista or a particular view of the community as a whole. Praying for the neighborhood from a mountain top is a very meaningful experience.
- Pray with your eyes open as you walk. To outsiders your prayer walk should look like two people talking as they walk through a neighborhood.
- Take a camera (or use your phone). You may want to take a couple of pics as you walk to include in your prayer updates. Obviously, be sensitive to those who might not want to be in your picture!
- Take a notebook. When God tells you something, stop at a bench or in a coffee shop and write it down. You don’t want to forget it.
What do you pray? Curtis Sergeant articulates one line of thinking quite well in this little video, “Eyes to See where the Kingdom Isn’t.” He talks about creating a ‘map’ of the spiritual centers in a particular neighborhood or region. The ‘gaps’ between those centers are the places where the Kingdom isn’t… the “lost sheep,” one might say.
Here are some activities common to prayer walking
- Praise: Glorify God and offer up praise to Him as you walk. The Lord inhabits the praises of His people. God’s presence fills the area when we praise and the demons flee.
- Prayer: God can do anything He wants but He chooses to use the prayers of Christians as the vessel for releasing His power in the spiritual realm.
- Proclamation: Share the gospel with those the Spirit puts in your place.
Check out Curtis Sergeant’s “Eyes to See” video for more ideas.
