Coopers On A Mission

CLICK HERE to view Prayer Walking Resource

“The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” -James 5:16

We caught up with teammate Carter Cox last night during our South Florida team church.   He and Hannah just returned from their Thanksgiving in OKC where he spent time with Dr. Bruce Carlton (the man who trained our team leader, Jeff Sundell).  One of the things Carter was reminded of from his time with Dr Carlton is the importance of getting laborers out in the harvest to prayer walk through their community. Dr Carlton developed a simple, reproducing prayer walking tool that equipped believers to prayer for God to:

• Open Heavens: Ask the Father to open up the heavens and bless these people in specific areas of need and allow them to see the blessing as coming from Him.  (ex: health, employment, etc)
• Open Hearts: Pray people’s hearts would be open to the gospel that they would repent and believe in Jesus.  This is a good opportunity to pray out the gospel.
• Open Homes: Pray that entire households turn to Jesus and allow their lives to be transformed by His power and grace.  Pray for God to bring you to persons or homes of peace — respond to the gospel in faith and then are used by God to reach a group or community (ex: John 4).  
• Open Highways: Ask God to open up highways to unreached parts of your area and that God would raise up laborers to take the gospel to the least reached.
• Open Hands: Ask the Father to reveal to the believers living amongst the community how they can be the hands and feet of Jesus to serve them and demonstrate His love to them.

This was one of the first tools I learned from my mentor Steve P on a mission trip in South Asia. When I returned from that trip in 2011, we immediately put it to use as a family (kids too) in Indianapolis prayer walking/driving through our neighborhood & city.  It was a practical yet powerful way to engage the harvest as a community.  Our good friend Tony Lasavath created a short term missions manual (the best I have ever seen) that included a very helpful equipping on prayer walking. We took that content and created this shareable document on prayer walking which we use to train others.  Our team has seen prayer walking as a precursor to Luke 10 engagements of a community (though not required).  Even if you only have 15 minutes, I would encourage you to go out in the harvest by yourself, with a friend or your family and prayer walk (or drive) through your community. We’d love to hear how it goes!

CLICK HERE to view Prayer Walking Resource