Luke 10 May 19 2002
The Sending Out of The Seventy-Two: Lighthouses of Prayer
We have been looking at the whole idea of drawing our friends, our family and our neighbours into a living relationship with God through Jesus.
We talked about God’s heart for the lost, we talked about how you do not have to become either weird or a “super-saint” to draw people to Jesus, and we talked about how to present the Good News to a friend.
Today I want to talk to you about the process of praying for your neighbours, and really loving people into the Kingdom. I have a confession to make – I have spoken on this before, but I’m not returning to it because I was too lazy or busy to prepare a sermon this week, but because I believe that this method of “Prayer Evangelism” is so key to reaching the people in our networks for Jesus.
I was introduces to Prayer Evangelism and the Lighthouses of prayer when Ed Silvoso came to speak at a conference at TACF about three years ago. And I was greatly impacted by what he had to say, because I thought it was Biblical, and it reconnected Evangelism to the work of the Holy Spirit. It allows us to be spiritual people in our desire to reach people for Christ.
Lighthouses of Prayer
A Lighthouse is a gathering of one or more people in Jesus’ name for the purpose of praying for, caring for and sharing Jesus Christ with their neighbours and others in their sphere of influence. The primary purpose of a lighthouse is to establish the presence of Jesus in every neighbourhood, office, school and workplace.
A Lighthouse of prayer may be:
A family praying for their neighbours
A schoolteacher praying for their pupils and their families
A receptionist praying for the people in her office
A store employee praying for the people in his Department...
The way that you become a lighthouse is to stand on your front porch and count five neighbours on your right - if you live on a corner, just keep counting going around the corner, count five neighbours on your left, pick the house directly across from you and five on each side of that house, and begin praying for them.
You can do this in any place - it could be apartments instead of houses, school lockers, your teammates, five desks on either side of yours at work, or in school.
I would do this where you most relate to non-Christians. If your primary relationships with unbelievers are in you workplace, school, child’s day-care, start there. I will talk mostly of neighbours, but take the most natural group for you to relate to.
We begin praying for these people using Luke 10:5-9 as our model.
The Model
5-6 - Bless Them - Pray for peace
7-8 - fellowship -develop relationships
9a - heal the sick
9b - preach the Gospel
If you look at this Biblical model, you can see that much of our evangelistic methods have turned it on it’s end - we go and bang on some one’s door, we have three minutes of reluctant attention, two and a half of which is spent telling them how we are different from the Jehovah’s Witness that was just there. Not only is this ineffective, it is not God’s way!
5-6 - Bless them
Often it is not blessing that we shower on our neighbours - we usually curse them. Not necessarily by actually cursing them, but by wishing them ill "I wish his stereo would just blow up!" "Those teens are so wild, one day they’ll come home in a body bag!" "how can she keep having kids when she can’t look after the ones she has?" "I hope one of these days his car actually gets stolen so we don’t have to hear that stupid alarm at all hours!"
If we do pray for them we often pray the problems rather than the promise - "Lord, He’s so lazy, look at his lawn, fix him please."...
If this is our attitude, God might say to us, "I’m glad that you never shared the Gospel with them, because you hate the while I love them!"
We need to begin to bless our neighbours - this step of faith alone may change our hearts from hatred or indifference to love.
Prayer walk your own neighbourhood, stop in front of every house and proclaim God’s Blessing upon it
- Pray for peace for these houses and the people who live in them.
PEACE: "shalom" - absence of strife, "well being," "welfare" completeness, wholeness, harmony, fulfillment. Safety, good relationships, prosperity
"Implicit in shalom is the idea of unimpaired relationships with others and fulfillment in one’s undertakings"
PRAY FOR THESE THINGS FOR YOUR NEIGHBOURS
If you don’t want to think too hard, just say, as Jesus tells his disciples
“Peace to this house!”
Or, memorize Numbers 6:24-26:
The Lord bless you and keep you
the Lord make his face to shine upon you
the Lord lift his continence upon you,
and give you peace
Bless you neighbours daily - if that is too much for you; you can pray for one neighbour at each meal, and if you eat 3 meals a day, you eat 21 meals in a week, and you have 21 neighbours to pray for! You will pray at least once per week for every neighbour. If you prayer walk once a week, they will be prayed for twice a week, which is most likely a great deal more than they are being prayed for right now.
As you get to know them you can pray more specific prayers of blessing for them.
Your neighbours will most likely feel your prayers for them - when you cut someone off on the highway can you feel their curses, Well if you can feel curses from the evil one, how much more do you think that your neighbours will feel your blessings! Ed Silvoso says that one of his neighbours commented that they always felt "good vibrations" from him every time he passed! It was because every time he passed, he was blessing them!
7-8 - fellowship - Develop relationships with your neighbours.
The vast majority of Christians came to Christ through a significant relationship in their life - even if it was at a crusade, or event, or TV program, it was all the preparation work that the friend or relative did that brought you to that place
This is why we must develop relationships with these neighbours - we may be the relationship that will draw them to Jesus!
In the contagious Christian course, they teach this principle by saying "Barbeque First!" Before you try to introduce someone to the Gospel, get to know them! Recreate with them, find areas of commonality, and do stuff together, eat together, have coffee! Get outside when your neighbour is mowing, so that when it comes time to lean on your mower and complain, you can do it together!
Mark Mittleburg of the Contagious Christian course tells the story of meeting some neighbours that just moved in on their street, and he invited them to an event that their church was putting on. The neighbour graciously declined, and said “no thanks, but it would be get to get together and barbeque with you sometime.” As Mark walked away from the conversation, he thought, “What am I doing, I teach this stuff! Barbeque First!” When they did have the neighbours over he agreed with his wife that they would not bring up spiritual matters until they had “barbequed” with them several times, but to their amazement, their neighbours wanted to talk about faith that first night!
As the weather gets warmer, people so down and are more open to renewing relationships with us. We need to take these opportunities to eat and drink with people who God may be guiding to faith. There are some ideas on the back of the bulletin insert.
Jesus spent more time building relationship - eating and drinking with people than anything else! We need to follow his lead! You may be able to work on only a few at a time: trying to develop relationships with 21 families is too much for even the most extroverted people! Jesus concentrated on 12 disciples, and three were his inner circle, and then only John is described as the disciple who he loved.
Spirituality is a very personal and intimate topic, but we over-zealous Christians are always bringing it up to soon. You would never just meet a person and then ask the how their marriage is going - any fights lately? You get along with the in-laws? But we think it is completely appropriate to ask the same questions about someone’s relationship with God - it almost as bad as asking someone to marry you before you now their name.
It isn’t that we hide our faith from our neighbours so we can ambush them later, we need to be open about out relationship with Jesus, but we don’t invite them into our house only to trap them with a gospel presentation! We need to be open and honest and loving to our neighbours.
We as Christians need to be normal - and to do normal things with our neighbours to get to know them!
9a - heal the sick
As we get to know our neighbours better, and as they come to trust us, and fell the blessing that we are sending their way, they may share some need in their life - whether it be an illness, a loss, something in their family or their job. And at that time the most compassionate thing that we can do for them is to pray for them. They may allow us to pray for them right there in person! But even if they don’t we can let them know that we’d like to pray for them in our own prayer times.
Our desire for our neighbours is that they will have a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ, they can’t do this unless we introduce them! The only way to introduce them is through prayer - they can know as much about God as a doctor of theology but if they haven’t met him, they can’t have a personal relationship with him.
Ed Silvoso - "Prayer is the most tangible trace of eternity in the person’s heart" By praying for people in person, God touches their heart through us!
One of our greatest fears about praying in person for our non-Christian friends is that God will not answer. "If we pray and God doesn’t answer, then they will have even more reason not to come to faith!"
But God seems to love answering prayers for those who have not yet come to faith. In fact Jesus expects people to need miracles in their lives so that they will believe in him.
In John 14 Jesus is telling the disciples about heaven, and Thomas wants to know the way to get there, Jesus answers "I am the way, the truth and the life, no one come to the Father except through me." Philip says "Show us the Father and we will be satisfied."
Jesus said to him, Have I been with you such a long time and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father. And how do you say, Show us the Father? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak of Myself, but the Father who dwells in Me, He does the works. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me, or else believe Me for the very works themselves.
Jesus performed miracles so that people would believe in him, and he asks us to do the same, in fact, he says in verse 12-14
Truly, truly, I say to you, He who believes on Me, the works that I do he shall do also, and greater works than these he shall do, because I go to My Father. And whatever you may ask in My name, that I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in My name, I will do it.
When Jesus makes the promise that if we ask for something in his name, he will do it, it is in the context of bring people to faith!
Even if God does not perform a miracle through our prayers, people are usually touched deeply that we would care for them enough to pray for them.
Arlene - one of the most closed hearts in the Alpha course - infected ovary - God healed her!
Prayer touches the hearts of people - all the arguments in the world may not touch a person’s heart, but personal prayer will.
When we pray for people, the first thing that we should do is to invite the Holy Spirit to come and touch them - he will, and they will have an experience of the presence of God. You can not argue them into that type of experience.
This is where we need to be connected to God ourselves – As Marc preached last week, we can have a thousand good true words for a person , but if God is not in them, they will brush of the person like water off a ducks back. We can see people’s eyes glaze over as we speak. But God knows the words, and the actions that will go to someone’s heart. Evangelism is about listening to see where people are at first before we open our mouth, but it is also about listening to God for them, to hear what he is saying to them.
Guy Chevreaux told me at the beginning of the 90’s that he would go into meeting with people asking God “How do you want to love them through me today?”
9b - preach the Gospel
It is only after we have blessed our neighbours, developed relationships with them, and prayed for them that we present the Gospel to them. Ed Silvoso says that the blessing, the fellowship, and the miracle are the tangible evidence that the Kingdom of God has parked beside them!
And we can be like Peter who on the day of Pentecost had all these people wondering what was going on with all the strange noises, and languages, and tongues of fire. And he got up and said "this is God, and this is what he wants to say to you..."
Tell you own story of restoration with God.
Tell God’s story – through the bridge illustration, or “D.O. vs. D.O.N.E.” or your own way of communicating the gospel.
God created us to be in relationship with him
We fell out of relationship because of the wrong things we do.
God has given us a way back into relationship through Jesus.
If you accept Jesus death on the cross to pay for your sins, and give your life to him, your relationship can be restored!
Be A Lighthouse!
There may be some of you who might want to commit to being a lighthouse right now.
There might be some of you who are saying “I’ve been doing this for a long time, you’ve just put a structure around it.
There may be some of you who would like to think and pray about being a light house.
All that I am asking is that you go as far as your faith will take you - if you figure you can only pray for one or two neighbours, then you are a light house, if you will pray for 21 neighbours but going to step two and building relationships scares you, still sign up, you are a light house. Go as far as you can for now, knowing that I will be praying for increased faith, compassion, and boldness.
