We headed out as usual in prayer to meet our local neighbours, a number of church family members, dog walkers and commuters.
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We bumped into a lady in York gardens walking her dog who knew St. Peter’s and who said her mum knew our vicar well. When we asked what we could pray for she said she was fine, life was level at the moment so we said can we pray for that to continue and she said yes, you can! We then got chatting about the old building and the different things it was being used for now, and the new loud drummers!
Then we met a gentleman who was struggling to find his destination for a meeting so we helped him out chatting to him as we walked, he was very friendly, said no to prayer and we parted wishing him a good meeting.
We were walking along the river and met a woman who was on the way for the doctors and when we asked if there was anything we could pray for she said her dad who has cancer. On asking for anything else to pray for she said her father in law was also ill, a double whammy she said, she didn’t want to pray there and so we said we would pray for them all.
On our way back we met a church family member who had been on his way to join us earlier but had bumped into another church family member out walking in what he called one of those ‘Godincidences’ ;) They were able to have a really good chat. We prayed for him and his family and for work, he said it was nice to be on the receiving end of prayer!
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We had a bit of a tricky start with meeting lots of people who weren’t very engaging. We then met a man who had a very firm, tough exterior but he did stop and chat to us. After we moved on we met a man at the station who worked on the platform and he let us pray for him.
I went over to two ladies who were handing out leaflets, their opening line to me was do you want to swap your coffee for a healthier breakfast!? I said yeah great, can I pray for you!? They were really lovely, and said they prayed themselves in the morning but if I really wanted to pray then I could pray for everybody, and take care of myself. They were a bit closed off to the idea of prayer in the way I was offering as they pray in a different way.
I met one of our church family members and his friend. We had a good chat, and I offered to pray for the friend. Because of the way the conversation had gone I asked them, ‘If you came before God tonight, would you get into heaven?’ They said yeah they reckon they are good enough to get in. I then explained about Romans that all have fallen short of the glory of god, no one is righteous and only on Jesus’ account will you get in. I felt he was open to that, he then let me pray for him and we prayed along those lines. He was very warm, very funny and amusing. Then we prayed for our church family member and for creating time for God, walking back the same way together.
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We first saw a church family member who was stressed out and we got to pray for her which was great. We continued walking and had a gentleman and a lady walking towards us… the lady was walking a little slower so we decided to approach her. It came about that her best friends son was a young man that had been stabbed last night in Battersea. It was then clear she had been crying and we prayed for the pain, and grief, her sister then joined us and I asked for permission and then just put my arms around them and prayed for them, for them to know God is there even in the saddest moment. We gave them our card saying we may not be your faith community but we are always here if you ever want to pop in. We went on and did a lot of prayer walking, met one man who said he couldn’t stop but wanted to know where we were so he could visit. We met a lady whose daughter has planted a bunch of churches; it was lovely to talk so in the end we just blessed her for more expansion because she was just really strong in the Lord. We tried to pray for a mother and daughter who were too busy going to an appointment so we gave her a card, she was really excited about Little Chefs. We said hi to a father and son who shot us a look so we let him be and then on walking back to the church building we realised we were walking behind them so from another look we changed direction as it looked like we were following him!
