What happened to the old fashioned way of getting the job done. Pray hard, and get out there on the streets and see what happens. Maybe I’ve gone a bit soft over the years, or maybe I haven’t been listening keenly enough, or maybe I just haven’t been listening to the right preachers… but I don’t remember hearing a lot of talk from too many pulpits recently on getting down and dirty (the knees that is) in the prayer closet, or in fact, what is just as important, and sometimes more so… good old prayer walking.
Charles Wesley used to do it, DL Moody used to do it. Many of the greats of church history used to do it, spending countless hours wandering the streets praying for their communities.
And today, we seem to have forgotten all about it. (or at least I had) I remember as a 17 year old driving the streets of Darwin in the Northern Territory praying for opportunities to witness to someone. I would sometimes go out with a bunch of mates in a ute or a small truck, and we would have three guys in the cab and one on the back (it wasn’t against the law back then) and we would cruise around looking for hitch hikers.
If we saw someone looking for a ride we would thump on the roof, so everyone knew what was up. We’d pick up the hitcher, and the three guys in the cab would pray and drive, while the one on the back with the hitcher would have the task of witnessing and trying to lead the hitcher to Christ.
I remember one time I was out driving by myself when I saw a guy walking in the opposite direction (not hitching) when I heard an inner voice tell me I should go and talk to the guy. So reluctantly I turned the car around and drove next to the guy, but then lost courage and kept driving. Eventually I had enough courage to stop the car and get out, but I was already several hundred yards past him and parked around the corner. I began walking towards him and when I got there I again lost courage and kept on going. But about 20 yards further on I eventually stopped, turned around and with a deep breath and a loud voice said “hey buddy”. He stopped and half turned to look at me. I hadn’t thought through how I would start a conversation with him at this stage, and I just blurted out “Jesus loves you man”.
“What did you say?” (by this stage I was asking myself the same question) But I found myself repeating “Jesus loves you”
“Why are you telling me that?” he asked. (yep, that was going through my mind as well) “I was driving past, and as I saw you on the side of the road I thought God wanted me to come over and tell you that He loves you.”
“Wow thanks man… You probably won’t believe this” he said “but I’m on my way to the beach to commit suicide. I haven’t felt loved by anyone in a very long time, I just cant live with that any longer”.
Needless to say, the young guy who was walking toward Casuarina beach on a sunny day in Darwin in 1984, did not commit suicide that day.
I can’t tell you that he got radically saved and went on to become a missionary, but I can tell you that I went away rejoicing that God had used me to saved that guys life and sow a seed of love and faith where very few seeds of good had been planted before.
1 Thessalonians 5:17 tells us that amongst other things we aught to ‘pray continuously’, or as some translations put it, ‘pray without ceasing’. And I have to say that in every season in my life when that has been the case, I have seen fruit.
Just walking the streets, praying for the folk who live in those houses or apartments can bring so many opportunities to meet people and share our faith, let alone the fact that many of the people you are praying for may not have anyone else interceding for them in any way.
If we want to help Jesus fulfil His great mission on this earth then we need to get out of our ‘ivory towers’ and out there where its all happening.
I know I need to.
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