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He challenged the people to pray biblically for every person in their community. Beginning with just two people, they drove the country roads and prayed for every house. They walked the city streets and prayed for every business. They made a list of church members and family members. They began to pray daily. The congregation was reborn and began to grow as lives changed. The lost were saved and believers were revived. As T.W. Hunt wrote, "It may be put down as a spiritual axiom that in every truly successful ministry, prayer is an evident and controlling force."
A. Three Parts to a Great Commission Prayer Plan A thorough prayer plan will consider the differences needed for effective prayer and witness in urban, rural, wealthy, or poor communities. The thorough prayer plan could include these three parts.
1. Renew a personal passion to pray unceasingly (1 Thess. 5:17). Begin your prayer plan by helping each person to begin a system for daily prayer. One believer said, "I was a Sunday School teacher and felt guilty about not praying enough. I would promise the Lord I would pray more. But after five minutes I had prayed for everything I could think of. After I began a daily prayer plan I soon learned that there is so much to pray for that I just didn’t have time to get it all in. The quantity and quality of my prayer time grew a lot."
Create your own plan or use one of the many helpful products in the bibliography. The Personal Prayer Plan provides a notebook of categories to help with daily prayer. The categories include praying for believers, unbelievers, and personal needs. Believers are reminded to make daily prayer lists of everyone in their circle of influence. The Sunday prayer list may include the pastor, staff, visitors, prospects and the personal need to share Christ more. The Monday list may include international missionaries, school teachers, politicians, entertainment and sports figures. The personal need may be to walk in the fruit of the Spirit. The process continues each day. The On Mission Prayer Map provides a monthly calendar to systematically pray for all of North America by state and province.
It does not matter what system you use, or even if you use a system. Prayer should be a program. What matters is to find a way to improve the amount of time and quality of specific, intentional, biblical prayer.
2. Reclaim the church as a house of prayer with a passion for the lost (Matt. 21:13 and Luke 19:10). Jesus was very clear that the church is to be a house of prayer. This requires a lot of work. There are so many important things that compete for our time and our energy. A praying church comes most quickly through the leadership of a praying pastor. Praying leaders will develop praying followers. Don’t forget that the biblical house of prayer is a community of believers, not just a building. Those lessons from Luke 19:10 are important for those who wish to follow Christ. Jesus said, "For the Son of Man has come to seek and save that which was lost." Believers must follow Christ in seeking the lost to introduce them to Jesus so they may be saved.
One way to build unity is to show believers how to link together through agreeing in prayer. Matt. 18:18-20 and Acts 2:42 can be very powerful influences in a church that has begun to focus on the wrong things.
Some helpful information can be found in the Lifeway manual A House of Prayer: Church Prayer Ministries for your church. There is a particularly helpful list of tactics and events that congregations can use as part of their overall Great Commission prayer strategy.
a). On Mission as a Lighthouse of Prayer. Making your home a Lighthouse of Prayer is one way to help the church become a house of prayer with a passion for lost people. A Lighthouse of Prayer consists of a group or an individual committed to intentionally praying for, caring for, and sharing the gospel with individuals in their neighborhood or community. Lighthouses of prayer are evangelistic prayer cells that are extensions of a local church’s evangelistic prayer ministry.
Pray, Care, Share
You don’t need specialized skill and training to begin a lighthouse of prayer. The only requirement is a passionate commitment to a threefold mission—pray for, care for, and share Christ with five neighbors on each side of your house and ten neighbors across the street.
Lighthouses of Prayer can be started anywhere. A family can be a Lighthouse of Prayer in its community. Believers can unite in a home to form a neighborhood Lighthouse of Prayer. College students can meet in a dorm room and prison inmates can meet in the correctional facility. Lighthouses of prayer effectively help take prayer to the streets of North America.
T.W. Hunt writes about the early strategy of the church in Acts 13, "Imagine tackling the job of exporting a new faith, born in Judaism, outside the borders of Israel without Prayer! The Holy Spirit initiated the missions movement in prayer, communicated to all the participants in prayer, and carried out what He had instigated through their prayers."
3. Link believers in focused prayer for evangelization and awakening (Matt: 28:18-20, 2 Chr. 7:14). The national Great Spiritual Awakening will begin in individual believers and in individual congregations. An excellent resource is NAMB’s Prayer for Revival and Spiritual Awakening Seminar.
Believers must become passionate about the absolute need for revival in North America. The United States has no hope of survival without a radical spiritual awakening. Take the opportunity to pray for revival every time you are confronted with the spiritual decline and relativism. Listen for God to call you to some all night and seasons of prayer for true spiritual awakening in your life, your church, and your community.
"When we pray, we must be ready to take action."
II. Response Time: Pause for a time of prayer. Allow each participant to ask God to renew a personal passion for prayer, to make the church a house of prayer with a passion for the lost, and to send revival to North America. Remind each person that revival will generate prayer and passion.
When God is about to pour out His unusual mercies on His people, He first of all sets them a-praying." Matthew Henry
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