Steve Hawthorne - Prayer

Steve Hawthorne –

Eric and Sam met Steve in Dubai. They couldn’t sleep and they got a call from Steve who asked them to come and prayer walk the city.

They got in a motorcycle and moved around India. The Dalit’s or untouchables are very open to conversion because of their poor state.

Prayer is common to many city reaching movements. But it is difficult to maintain. City reachers are often activists and prayer often comes later.

In Sam’s entire ministry, he’s had prayer leaders that seemed to be on another plane spiritually. Steve is a different breed.

Eric and Sam thought Steve would bring help us in the area of prayer.

CCDA. Christian Community Development Association emphasizes social justice and community development in inner city America. Steve is also on the national

A women said God has done all he will do, the rest is up to us. A Christian leader wrote that God has done all he’s going to do about Satan, the rest is up to us.

There’s been a disconnect in what God does and what we do.

Steve wrote a book on prayer walking with Graham Kendrick. He learned a lot from traveling and seeing what others have done.

They also did a lot of research on the book in order to write it. NO one could remember any intentional on-site intercession in cities before 1970.

There are a lot of how-to’s about praying. In 1984 there was a burst of prayer walking. Many things that have lasted started in 1984.

God is shifting the way we pray. The reformation of prayer is still on. What God is doing is not credited to our prayers. But we will say when it is accomplished that God has done everything that he promised.

There is not a particular father of the various prayer movements like concerts of prayer or conversational prayer.

It is not the how to’s that should occupy us, it’s the why to’s that should occupy our attention.

Americans are ferocious pragmatists. Why to’s do not come easily. Many have begun to pray. Many do not know why they are praying in the U.S.

In Washington DC, In 1996 was the launch of Mission America. Paul Cedar announced that they would form around a simple strategy: praying for every person and sharing the gospel with every person by 2000.

Peter Wagner was there and said to Steve: “has there ever been a country that has seen a strategy to pray for every person in that country. Peter thought about it and concluded that there has never been such a strategy.

We have class action prayers where we pray for all but not each.

Prayer Care Share is a foundation triplet of the lighthouse movement. Steve watched it with sorrow in the meetings. Prayer opened up ways to care for the community and then share the gospel. That was the strategy. Many who led the movement were campaign evangelists who led stadium evangelism movements. They asked to take the evangelism part, which separated evangelism from each one participating. Then their developed a prayer group, and a serving group. This created competing priorities and unsettled friction.

Unity was held up as an idea and is pursuable but God himself had to bring it about.

There was also a group who demanded revival first. They separated themselves because of a definite prerequisite: unless this happens, nothing else will happen.

Not much happened because there was so many priorities.

Prayer Care Share was an effort to bring prayer into city reaching.

We were experimenting with prayer to achieve a desired result: taking our cities for God.

John Dawson’s book was called Taking our cities for God. He didn’t like the title. In the book Dawson subtly attacks the dominant masculine idea of taking our cities. He encourages feminine ideas of giving birth to renewal in cities.

Military strategy ruled prayer strategy. Your prayers will reverse what Satan has done, to take our cities back to God.

If it worked other places it would probably work in Minneapolis. People in Minneopolis prayed fervently and things got world: crime increased, church’s split.

There is a better “why to” package. It’s not that prayer works, God is at work. Prayer is God’s way of inviting us to work with him. When we are severed from collaboration with God, that makes prayer difficult and confusing. Prayer is has just been a problem solving mechanism, because we have despaired of seeing the goodness of God in the land of the living.

If we can with generations before to lay hold of what God is doing we won’t give up. If we mobilize prayer by promising it will work, then if it doesn’t work then we should stop praying. Then we need more fiery stories about God working to get people to pray.

When that doesn’t work then we leave prayer to the prayer lady or those “special” ones who pray so we don’t have to.

If we lose prayer, then our activism is organized despair in working to do what God seems to refuse to do.

We have exhausted ourselves experimenting with so many prayer strategies.

Steve has a sense that God is going to do something great like he has never done it in history. But God wants those things prayed for before they happen. Then those who prayed can rejoice in it when it comes.

5 or 10 people who prayed for their neighborhood can look back, ten years later, to see what God has done. This is why we need to keep prayer journals.

You can’t just tell people these things. God is urging us to simplify our praying to know why we’re praying so we can present to God a prayed for world.

Could you turn to the person next to you and comment or ask a question about something I said.

Murmur, murmur.

Do any comments lead to good questions?

John Lamb: Steve you mentioned not praying for problems but seeing what God is doing. What does that mean?

Steve: I’ll cover that as we go. To unite and pull together we must share a vision of the future. We tend to look backward at problems. But Jesus wants to pull us to pray for his kingdom to come in the future. What kind of prayer are we after, different prayer.

The Lighthouse Program. Some guys found it successful and wanted to export it via email. So many people prayed. Instead of carefully praying for 3 people and what God would do in their lives and monitor it to share the gospel when they are ready, they got into standard prayer meeting mode. Our prayer habits are request management: Do you have any requests? Usually it’s stuff that’s gone wrong in lives and we want God to restore the status quo. Someone has a car accident, now they need to be healed. Most prayers are for the status quo, not about the future.

Many people feel they have already tried lighthouses, but they never prayed differently. They never prayed for the future, assertively for change in others lives, it turned into a standard prayer meeting mode.

They are realizing they must change the cultural tendency to move other than walk with God work with God fruitful praying.

We have seen instances of certain things coming together, relational, purpose focused with dogged determination. When I see that happen I watch it.

I’m seeing people exhausted of trying methods with the promise it’s going to work. I could produce that with good graphics and sound principles. But it would be a non starter.

I’m going to talk about praying with purpose.

Axel: Harrer our associate says we need to pray not about problems but about the future of God’s will. What do you do about those who insist on certain prayer methods?

Steve: George Otis Jr. is doing something that I like. The first transformation video is generational not instant, three generations earlier. Another thing I’m involved in. To lay hold of this purpose we must realize we are not just coming into this but we are honored to do ancient things not urgent things.

John Mulinde says he has seen results from what they advocate.

Paul: Did we impose an arbitrary date fixing with the year 2000?

Steve: I liked the closure Missiology of going after everyone by a certain time. There were a lot of people who were shook up by Y2K to avoid God’s wrath with inside information. I think we’re exhausted from doing this on our own apart from him. But we better be ready to keep on it. I have not gimmicks or guarantees, but I tell them that prayer doesn’t even work. All I can call you to is hope. If God has promised it, it will happen.

IN the Lord’s Prayer Jesus starts with not praying like the gentiles. They use many words. Is it many words, loud words? The gentiles think there is a formula. It’s not just uploading data to make God aware.

He watched how many other religions pray and many denominations. There are 3 similar things:

Is it a default setting on pop religion?

1. Procedure if properly performed will produce a result.

2. You need and expert to teach you the proper procedure (counter spell). Shaman, Imams, Priests, Saints using them as mediators. We can treat our intercessors as Protestant Saints.

Everyone prays. That doesn’t mean that some don’t have special times of prayer in a season. But everyone is an intercessor. Many thought that the city would change when the intercessors took their place. But it’s to the good, but we’re exhausted.

3. People pray for the status quo of the story they are in. For some it’s very small and cyclical. People end up praying for the circle to turn.

The reason to pray for revival is that God has promised to bring forth his people to shine like the sun. There is purpose. Don’t pray about revival because things have gotten so bad.

City wide movements can be led to pray

Satan wants us to believe that this is as good as it gets, maybe it could be worse. Spiritual warfare practitioners ask us if we’re going to let Satan steal our joy. That leads to vigilante spiritual warfare, to clean up the bad things to restore the status quo.

That’s why people are tired.

Jesus taught us:

1. Instead pray to a person, not a procedure.

a. The Hebraic idea of heaven is not split between this world and the next. It is coterminous with this world. Prayer in scripture is in courtroom language. We are coming before our father in heaven when we pray.

2. Everyone Prays, our father.

3. Pray for the great story. Not small circles.

We will find ourselves collaborating with God.

Steve is on the national prayer council. There is an order of worship for prayer on a city wide scale in a wide way, not in an 11 o’clock at this time way. I’d like to tell you more about that, how this pertains to city wide things.

Much of the content of this time can be found on pages 2-4 of the booklet Seek God for the City 2005.