David Watson, in his recent book Contagious Disciple Making, wrote the following:

Certainly all Christians believe that prayer is important. Jesus told us to pray. Paul told us to pray. James told us to pray. Even God told us to pray. So… yeah, we know it’s important, but did you know that those Disciple-Making Movements David wrote about were built on a radically deep foundation of prayer? Not just occasional prayer, but up to six hours a day of prayer!

Please don’t misunderstand, this blog post is not about heaping condemnation on your prayer life. Remember there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). This is a blog post to motivate us to use the spiritual weapon of prayer to bring about God’s Kingdom in the areas that we live, work, and minister.

Below are some practical tips as well as some prompts to begin (or to hone) your intercessory prayer life specifically in the practice of prayer walking, which put simply is praying in the specific locations where you desire God to bring forth His answers.

Jesus sent his disciples out two-by-two (Luke 10) and it’s wise for us to follow that model. As a pair or a small group, you can feed off the prayers and energy of the group. Usually prayer walking in a group also extends the prayer session since the social activity of prayer is more engaging than praying alone.

If you feel compelled to stop at a certain location to pray for it specifically, feel free to do so, but in general simply pray out while you are walking making sure not to draw excess attention to yourself. This is another reason to bring a second person - your prayer walk will look just like two people chatting on the street.

If God reveals certain insights to you along the way, you’re definitely going to want to record them.

Ask God for guidance. Prior to beginning your walk, ask God what He wants from your time. Perhaps He’ll lead you on a route or to pray with a focus that you hadn’t considered before. Ask Him to reveal the spiritual needs of the area in which you are walking.

Unless God reveals something specific to us, when we prayer walk, we focus on tilling up the spiritual soil. Our focus is not yet on engaging people or intervening in the needs of the area. Our focus is on preparing the ground. With that in mind, we often pray through 2 Corinthians 10:4-5.

The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ

With that Scripture in mind and in Jesus’ name and authority, pray:

Pray that God removes all of the false belief systems, the false logic, the false reasoning, and the false wisdom that gets in the way from people hearing the Truth. Pray against the lies of secularism, deism, atheism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and any other “-isms” that block out the Truth of who God is and His perfect will.

Pray that God tears down pride in the lives of people in the area where you are walking. Pray that people would begin to turn from worshipping themselves and building their own kingdoms in order to turn toward our one true and perfect King.

Pray down his schemes, plans, lies and devices. Pray that God cuts off the voice of Satan that whispers falseness and deception into the ears of those around you. Pray that those lies will be replaced with the whispers of Truth.

In 2 Corinthians 4:3-4, it says “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.” Pray that God would remove the veil from the eyes of unbelievers so that they might see the light of the gospel and the glory of Christ.

Of course, there are many other Scriptural prayers that could be prayed on a prayer walk. Here are just a few.

The Lord’s Prayer: Luke 11:1-4.

When the disciples asked Jesus how to pray, he taught them the Lord’s Prayer. Use the Lord’s Prayer as a prayer template placing the focus on the neighbors and neighborhood through which you are walking.

Shalom of the City: Jeremiah 29:1-14.

When the Israelites were in captivity in Babylon God through Jeremiah tells them to pray to the Lord for the peace of the city for in its peace, they would have peace also.

Open Hearts: Acts 16:14.

As Paul was preaching in Philippi, the Lord opened Lydia’s heart to Paul’s message and she was baptized shortly thereafter. Pray that God would open the hearts of those in your prayer walking site that they would respond to the drawing of the Holy Spirit.

So grab a friend and hit the streets. Remember what James wrote, "The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working” (James 5:16). Our prayers have great power. It’s time to use the weapons that God has given us.