One of the most astonishing episodes of my life happened in 1995, stemming from a phone call from New York’s Lake Ontario region.
“Hi there Jerry, this is David Spencer! Would you like to go to China?”
David’s grandfather had decades earlier pioneered the mission agency through which we had served in Africa in our younger years. David was in pursuit of friends to pull together a short term travelling prayer team.
From the early 1970s a phenomenon (afterwards labeled ‘Prayer Walking’) had been evolving, expanding its reach year after year. No single group or organization or church had a corner on this partnering-with=God practice. Prayer-walkers – hundreds, then later on thousands of small bands of intercessors donning all manner of footwear – randomly took to the streets all across a broad sector of the globe. Missiologists, evangelists and church planters took note, sensing that a burgeoning prayer movement must surely be afoot. The work of a sovereign, compassionate, proactive God.
By the 1990s small bands of purposeful intercessors (Jesus-followers directing their praying outward toward the needs of others) had lined up at airline ticket counters. It was as though the world’s nations, many of them hosts to entire people groups still uninformed of the existence of Jesus, had sized the hearts of these “travelling travailers”.
Our prayer-journeying team (most were Canadian with a handful of ‘token’ Americans) numbered twenty – ranging in age from 19 years to 81. From our Hong Kong port of entry where orientation and jet lag merged, we trekked by train, plane and automobile (along with country bus and the occasional rickshaw). Adding to these the mile upon mile prayer-walking stints along strategic venues of five ‘gateway’ cities, one of them numbering sixteen million strong. Indeed, none of the towns whose sidewalks felt the touch of our collective shoe leather boasted a population under three million.
An eye-opening, soul-stirring adventure of a lifetime.
Soon, a tidbit of news out of Pennsylvania farming country would catapult my mind to as near a place of jaw dropping wonder as I may ever know. Leaving me happily pondering,
What manner of God are you?
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Writer-Speaker Jerry Lout grew up in Okmulgee County. Jerry’s “Living with a Limp” and “Giants in the Rough”, are available through Amazon. Current projects include “Inside-Out” and “Thresholds” – a string of narratives highlighting surprises, sorrows, and adventures in the post-Africa years. He welcomes reader comments jerrylout@gmail.com (918) 857-4373
©2024 Jerry Lout
