prayerwalking the sequel

I was really tempted to call this one “The Empire Strikes Back” due to some of the spiritual conflict that’s been rolling around my life this week, but since Empire was technically part 5 of the Star Wars saga, I’ll move on.

Our Midtown group met again tonight to walk our prayer route, asking God to bless the people at Penn State and make his presence known.  I was excited about tonight’s adventure, because one of the midtown lifegroups decided to rearrange their schedule to join us.  Last week they prayed before the main group of us got there, which was fine.  But this week they wanted to walk the route and pray with us.  That was cool!  Thanks, Jonathan…

Our loop is around Beaver Stadium and the Bryce Jordan Center, with a little dip out and around the PSU football buildings.  It’s right at 2 miles, and is a fun walk to boot!  We meet at the JoePa statue at 7, and after a round of introductions and instructions, we head out to pray.

I arrived before anyone else, but folks started streaming in right away.  Pretty soon there was a group of about 25 of us gathered.  There were undergrads and grad students, a dad with 2 of his kids, campus ministry leaders, some folks with children in (and out of!) college…it was a pretty mixed group, which made for some interesting conversation along our walk.  I had fun listening to all the interaction as we walked and prayed.

We stopped along most of the same places to pray as last week’s group:

• Paternoville
• The commuter parking lot below BJC
• On either side of the Football buildings–the Blue Band was rehearsing in sections on one of the practice fields, so we prayed for them!

PSU's Blue Band hard at work

But this time we added a couple of stops:

• The intersection of Dauer and University–we prayed for unity among the city church, the pastors, and the workers in the BJC
• The sign at the corner of Porter Rd and Park–we prayed in groups of 3 for various things the Lord laid on our hearts as we walked through the course of the evening

our last prayer stop

A couple of highlights:

• Praying for the CityChurch is a biggie.  God began something more than a decade ago when Ed Silvoso and his team from Harvest Evangelism came to teach us about unity and prayer evangelism.  I believe that was significant for us part of the church of the city.  I don’t think that we’ve fully explored that, or that it’s reached its potential.
• In the Commuter Lot, we were reminded to pray for the non-traditional students, those who have lost jobs and are coming back to school, those with families or jobs, juggling other big responsibilities while trying to further their education.
• As mentioned earlier, my family experienced a little push-back in the spiritual realm this week.  I talked a little about the reality of spiritual warfare.  The enemy (the devil) doesn’t like it when God’s people begin to cry out for help, and the devil will try to discourage/frighten/intimidate us back into silence and complacency.  But our God is stronger, and he has given us spiritual armor to stand against the schemes of the devil!  (Thanks Beth P for reminding us–Therefore, put on every piece of God’s armor so you will be able to resist the enemy in the time of evil. Then after the battle you will still be standing firm. Ephesians 6…)  We are believing that God wants to plunder the house of the devil, and He has the power and authority to do it!