Pray: New York

For the next week I will be in the Big Apple, the grand city, New York, on another mission trip with the school. This is a little different adventure than the last time I wrote asking for trip prayers. I will probably be challenged a lot more in expanding my relational qualities, and the people we interact with will probably be a lot more hesitant to hear what we have to say and to be connected with the local 'missionaries' we want to connect them with. Primarily we are working with a team of church planters in a section of Harlem that is primarily filled with West African immigrants, many of which are Muslim. Most of the week will be spent walking and talking on the streets of the marketplaces, trying to build short friendships and break down barriers in the community that prohibit the gospel.

Our trip leader gave us a prayer-walk guide and I wanted to share the outline of it here so you could pray with me for God to work in the lives of the people we will see and interact with. The whole prayer is premised on God opening what he will open and doing the work through our obedience that he wills to happen. Some of these should be self-explanatory.

Pray that God would:

1. Open the heavens. Isaiah 64:1-4 "Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down that the mountains might quake at your presence...no eye has seen a God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him."

2. Open hearts. Ezekiel 11:17-21 "...And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God."

3.  Open homes. This is the "person of peace" strategy, that through one peaceful person a whole family or neighborhood will be invited to hear the gospel. Luke 10:1-10 "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest...    Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace be to this house!’ And if a son of peace is there, your peace will rest upon him. But if not, it will return to you."

4. Open highways. Specifically, that God would grant proper channels and methods, that our work would not distract or conflict with God's declared plan. Isaiah 62:10-12 Go through, go through the gates; prepare the way for the people; build up, build up the highway; clear it of stones; lift up a signal over the peoples... “Behold, your salvation comes; behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him.” And they shall be called The Holy People,The Redeemed of the LORD; and you shall be called Sought Out, A City Not Forsaken.

5. Open hands. Matthew 10:5-8 "...And proclaim as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without paying; give without pay."