Pray for your street one house at a time

Quick answer: Pick a loop you can walk in about twenty minutes. Walk it the same way for thirty days, pray with your eyes open for what's in front of you, and write down names as you learn them.

The house at the end of my old block had a wheelchair ramp made of pressure-treated lumber, still that raw yellow color, and a pickup in the driveway that didn't move for two months. I walked past it every morning at 6:40 for most of a year. I prayed for "whoever lives there" for weeks before I found out a widower lived inside, the truck had been his wife's, and he couldn't bring himself to sell it.

That's what a prayer walk is for. It isn't a lap around the block with a spiritual soundtrack. It's slowly learning who God put next to you, and asking Him for things you'd never have known to ask for from your couch.

Pick a loop, not a territory

You'll hear people quote Joshua 1:3 about prayer walking: "Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you." Read the verse in context. It's a promise to Joshua about the land of Canaan. It isn't a deed to your subdivision, and you're not marching to claim anything.

The better verse is Jeremiah 29:7, written to exiles living in a city that wasn't theirs: "Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare." That's the posture. You aren't taking ground. You're seeking good for people.

So keep it small. One mile. Twenty-five to forty houses. Walk the same route every day, in the same direction, at roughly the same time. A big route sounds ambitious, but you'll end up praying for a blur. A small one, walked daily, starts to show you things.

Pray with your eyes open

When Jesus saw the crowds, "he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd" (Matthew 9:36). Notice the order. He saw, then He felt, and then He told the disciples to pray.

Your street is full of things to see, and most of them are prayer requests in disguise:

• A for-sale sign. Somebody's leaving, maybe by choice and maybe not. Somebody new is coming.
• A dumpster in the driveway. A renovation, or a grown son clearing out his mother's house.
• Toys left in the yard every night. A tired parent.
• A wreath on the door announcing a new baby. A mom running on no sleep.
• The car that used to be there and now isn't.
• The curtains that haven't opened in two weeks.

Pray for exactly that. Not "bless this house" but "give the people selling this place peace about where they're going." Specific prayer keeps your mind from wandering, and it keeps you honest about whether you're paying attention.

One practical thing. Don't stop and stare. Walk at a normal pace, eyes open, and wave if someone's out. Nobody wants a stranger standing in front of their bay window with his hands raised. You can pray silently at three miles an hour, and God hears you just fine.

What to pray at the places you pass

Your loop will probably take you past more than houses.

At a school, pray for the teachers, for the kids walking home, and for the boy nobody sits with at lunch. At the fire station or the sheriff's substation, pray they come home tonight. Passing city hall or the county building, take 1 Timothy 2:1-2 seriously: pray "for kings and all who are in high positions." That includes the council member you'd never vote for.

Pass another church? Pray for its pastor to preach Christ crucified and risen, plainly and faithfully. Pray that the people who walk in there hear the real gospel.

Then there's the house with the yard sign that makes your jaw tighten. Pray for those people too, and mean it. You can disagree with every idea on that sign and still ask God to bless the family behind it. If that's hard, our piece on holding a conviction without holding people in contempt is worth your time.

Most of all, pray for salvation by name. Jesus said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6). Nobody drifts into heaven because they lived on a nice street with good lawns. Your neighbors need Jesus exactly as much as you did.

Keep a card in your pocket

Carry a 3x5 index card and a pen. When you learn a name, write it down that afternoon. When you learn a detail, like a new job, a diagnosis or a kid leaving for basic training, write that too.

Within a couple of months, "the blue house" becomes a family with a name and a daughter who just got her license. Your prayers change completely when that happens. They get warmer, and they get longer.

Replace the card when it's full. Keep the old ones. Reading through them a year later is one of the most humbling things you'll ever do.

Bring your family

Take the kids on a short loop after dinner. Ten minutes is plenty. Let each child pick one house to pray for out loud. Your six-year-old will pray for the dog behind the fence, and you should let her, because she's learning that prayer is about real things and real neighbors.

Walk with your spouse once a week. One of you prays aloud for a block, then the other takes the next one. It's a quiet, steady way to be on the same side about the people around you. If you're working on building habits like this at home, see what your children keep is what you repeat. A walk the kids do a hundred times will stay with them longer than a lesson they hear once.

Carry a trash bag

Prayer that never reaches your hands is incomplete. James asks what good it does to tell a hungry brother "go in peace, be warmed and filled" without giving him anything (James 2:15-16).

So bring a grocery bag and pick up litter as you go. Roll your neighbor's empty trash can back up the driveway. Move the branch that came down in the storm. Leave the street a little cleaner than you found it every single morning, even when nobody notices and nobody ever finds out who did it.

And when your walk shows you a need, act on it. The widower with the ramp needed his gutters cleared. That took one Saturday and a borrowed ladder, which went back cleaner than it came.

When the walk turns into a conversation

It will. Somebody will be out weeding, or chasing a loose dog, and you'll stop.

Learn names first. Don't open with "I've been praying for your house." It's true, but to a stranger it can sound unsettling. If someone asks why you walk by every morning, tell them plainly and cheerfully. Then be ready, as Peter put it, "to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect" (1 Peter 3:15).

If you freeze up when a conversation turns to the gospel, Way of the Master's training is a good place to learn how to share it clearly with a stranger. Most of us need the practice.

The annoying parts

Some mornings it's twenty-eight degrees and dark. Your mind will drift to the grocery list by the third house. A beagle will bark at you every single day, and you'll feel faintly ridiculous murmuring to yourself past the mailboxes.

And somewhere around day twenty, it'll feel like routine. That's not failure. Routine is how a habit becomes part of you. Jesus Himself went out early, "while it was still dark," to pray (Mark 1:35). He didn't wait to feel inspired.

Prayer walking isn't more spiritual than praying in your closet. Matthew 6:6 still stands, and some seasons the closet is right. A walk just gives you something a closet can't, which is faces.

Keep walking past the ramp. One morning the door's going to be open, and you'll already know his name.