Prayer Trends In The Last Decade

6. Prayer evangelism. We have always had cottage prayer meetings for revival and evangelistic crusades. We always added prayer onto evangelism, but now we know that prayer can become an integral part of the strategy of evangelism. I like the book, Taking Cities by Prayer, and the great work by Ed Silvoso, who used to be an evangelistic crusade organizer for Luis Palau.

We have seen a mighty growth in the entire body of Christ by prayer evangelism, and I believe this is good for us. In one sense, Thomas Road Baptist Church has always believed in prayer evangelism. There was a group of men who met under a piece of stretched out tarpaulin in back of the old Donald Duck Bottling plant. I credit those prayer warriors with the growth of our church. Later they met in a small room where there used to be a compressor at the Donald Duck Bottling plant, those men were great prayer warriors like Emmett Godsey, R. C. Whorley, and many of you still living in this room. You are the ones responsible for the evangelism of Thomas Road Baptist Church.

7. Prayer partners. There are many people who have taught us personal intercession for key leaders in the church. If you have listened to the ministry of John Maxwell, you have heard how a prayer warrior came to him when he first became pastor at Skyline Wesleyan Church. This brother said that he wanted to be the intercessor for John Maxwell; and from that conversation, John Maxwell’s life was changed. Maxwell wrote the book, Partners in Prayer which is the key book to telling people how to pray for leaders. These prayer partners take it upon themselves to be personal intercessors for their pastor, their missionaries, or evangelists like Billy Graham, Luis Palau, or Steve Wingfield.

We are going to organize the Pastor’s Bible Class into prayer partners this Fall. Getting our members to pray with one another for one another will be a major push in the coming months. I expect great things will happen because of concerted prayer.

8. Praying through the 10/40 window. Early in the last decade, many Christians began praying, committing days of prayer and seasons of prayer (usually in October), but praying for the people in the 10/40 window. I first reported this to you in 1993 when the focus of the Church was toward the 10/40 window. This happened again 1995, 1997 and 1999. The 10/40 window includes a latitude and longitude of a box of people stretching from North Africa above the Sahara Desert through the Middle East Muslim countries, through the Hindu country of India, through the Buddhist countries of Thailand, Indonesia, China, Japan and Korea. The 10/40 includes the largest key cities in the world, the largest heathen religions in the world and the largest number of unreached people. You’ve not seen many great victories there, but we must continue to pray for all people in the 10/40 window, knowing that is the greatest focus of:

(a) heathen darkness, (b) demonism and Satanism, (c) blindness because of false religions, (e) lawlessness and godlessness, and (f) the greatest amount of unsaved people in the world.