Through the revivals that have happened over the course of history, prayer; passionate persistent prayer has always been a key.

So why am I saying that we need to take prayer out of the church?

I’ll explain.

A few months ago I was in South Asia where the Spirit of God has seen millions brought to become followers of Jesus.

Whilst I was there I met a bunch of passionate, soul winning, disciple making pastors and heard their stories.

Invariably none of them had been Christians earlier in their lives when they had encountered sickness or misfortune that they couldn’t overcome. But then they met a Christian who would pray for them with the result that God turned up and intervened miraculously to overcome their dilemmas with the result that they came to believe in Jesus and chose to follow Him, first as believers and then as ministers of the gospel.

What really hit me was the power of the prayers that were prayed outside of the church. Yes, we need prayer inside the church and for believers to come together and pray. We so desperately need this.

But this is only the beginning. We need to take prayer out of the church to those who don’t know Jesus and have likely never been inside a church.

It occurred to me that the vast majority of our prayer time is spent in praying for the already saved. It’s not that this is unimportant but what if we took prayer outside of the church? Imagine if across our nation we had men and women praying for the unsaved and like the Apostle Peter saying “…Jesus Christ heals you…” (Acts 9:34)

So what are the steps we need to take? Following are a few thoughts:

1. We do need to pray for the Holy Spirit to open people’s hearts to be receptive to Jesus and His good news; for Him to do what we cannot. Whether it’s the outpouring at Pentecost or the Welsh Revival, or Azusa St or pretty well any other move of God we have read about, heard about or experienced, the simple truth is that we need the Holy Spirit to move.
2. We also need to pray that men and women be raised up as workers for the harvest. Jesus told us to do this in Luke 10:2 “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” The problem isn’t in the harvest. It’s there and waiting. The issue is whether men and women perhaps like us will rise up to be the harvesters that Jesus calls us to be.
3. We need to extend prayer beyond the walls of the church. David and Paul Watson in their book Contagious Disciple Making offer a great suggestion that I have seen bear fruit. They recommend a prayer calendar where you write down the name of an unchurched person on say the 4th day of the month and every 4th day of the month you message that person and tell them you are about to pray for them and ask if there is any particular need you can pray for. Hopefully they will respond. The next step is to send a message back and briefly pray “Jesus I ask that you…” After that, get ready to see miracles happen. It’s amazing how often you will see answers to prayer, or the person you have prayed for will say “can we catch up for a coffee?”

Prayer works. More than that, it’s vital, it’s essential. We will never see the move of God we hope for without asking for the power and presence of God to do immeasurably beyond what we can do in our own strength.

Will you pray?

Will you pray for God to move in your community and across our nation? Will you pray for workers to be raised and sent into the harvest? And will you extend your prayer life beyond the church to those who don’t yet know Jesus but need to know Him?

Tim O’Neill is the National Leader of Exponential Australia and is passionate about seeing ordinary men and women being used by God in extraordinary ways.

Exponential Australia exists to see church planting multiplication become a primary and widely embraced measure of success in the church.

Tim can be contacted at tim@exponential.org.au