Perhaps no two passages of Scripture better illustrate God’s heart for cities and those who live in them than Jonah 4:11 and Matthew 23:37. In speaking to very angry and disgruntled Jonah, God asks:

But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?

Good question, given the fact that Jonah’s attitude and behavior demonstrate a total lack of concern for that same city. Centuries later a very heavyhearted Jesus would say to unbelieving masses of Jerusalem:

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wing, but you were not willing.

Several years ago God used those two passages, especially the one from Jonah chapter four, to challenge me to look at my own hearts concern for the cities of the world. Many of them I had visited previously, but not so much as a concerned Christian, than as a tourist and traveler. All that changed one Sunday morning at the Moody church in downtown Chicago. That’s when I sensed God prompting me to set aside three days to walk and pray for the city of Chicago.

Why three days? Initially it was simply because that’s how many days Jonah had spent walking through Nineveh. But looking back now my perspective on why God had me set aside three days for that prayer walk has changed. On that initial three-day prayer walk I found that it took me the better part of a day just to slow down mentally and emotionally from life’s busy schedule in order to better pray and focus on God.

Later, I discovered that not until day two did my focus shift from buildings, buses, and the bustle of the city to people; from the masses to the individual. I began on day two to see people the way I believe God wanted me to see those people, the way He sees those people, as lost sheep without a shepherd.

Curiously on day three I found myself better able to listen to what God was trying to tell me about outreach and ministry to those people. Furthermore I began to see in Scripture a repeated emphasis on three day time periods that I had never noticed before and how God would typically speak more to the people involved in those different three day time periods on the third day. Not until day three on my Chicago prayer walk did I begin to sense that God wanted me to consider praying in and for other cities, for three days as well. Since that day I have prayed my way through:

San Diego
San Francisco
Portland, OR
Dallas, TX
St. Louis
Detroit
Cincinnati
Raleigh
San Antonio
Phoenix
Philadelphia
Austin, TX
Minneapolis
Milwaukee
Fort Worth
Indianapolis

…And many other cities as well. Often I will take others with me. As we pray, the Spirit of God will often cross our paths with people who, like the people of Nineveh long ago, don’t know their right hand from their left hand morally speaking. Each prayer walk serves only to increase my burden for the lost and my prayers’ that God would send forth more laborers in to the highways and byways of that city.

D.L. Moody years ago said:

Water runs downhill and the highest hills in America are the cities. If we can stir them, we shall stir the whole country.

I believe Moody’s desire to reach the cities of America with Gospel of Jesus Christ is a Biblical strategy, and is why many of Paul’s New Testament letters were addressed to churches in major first century cities that he had visited in his various missionary journeys. I believe that if the churches of today would step out beyond their walls and spend more time walking and praying through cities, people’s hearts would begin to experience a greater burden for the lost and the people in those cities would begin to be stirred the way Moody talked about.

Recently I was told of three pastors from Leipzig, Germany who started praying for Berlin in 1979. They prayed specifically that the Berlin Wall would come down and that God would drive communism from East Germany. They prayer for 10 years and as they prayed, others joined them, until there were literally thousands of people who were praying with them every week. In 1989 in response to those prayers, the Berlin Wall was torn down and communism lost its grip on the government.

When God moves, people begin to pray. As people continue to pray, God moves further. I believe God is moving people like myself to begin praying for major metropolitan areas around the world. The goal now is to get more people praying like those three pastors in Leipzig years ago.

But in order for that to happen, you have to start praying yourself. I challenge you to pick out a city and to begin that God’s Spirit would begin to stir that city spiritually. Perhaps even plan a prayer walk in that city with some Christian friends. If “Go Far” ministries can help you in any way to promote, plan, or join you in such prayer walks contact us. Or we can even come directly to your group and speak about prayer we can do that. Never forget: where prayer focuses, power falls.