A Sojourner's Quest

PA RT I V: P E R S E V E R I NG F O R T H E L ONG H A U L / 2 8 5

Seeking Revival through Prevailing Prayer

The Need for Prayer This is an amazingly strategic moment in the history of world mission, an effort which has become increasingly an urban challenge. Our deepest conviction regarding the future of urban missions is simple and potent: America’s inner cities (as those, too, of the entire world) are simply unwinnable without a new and fresh visitation from God. Nearly sixty million people live in America’s poorest urban communities, with more than 90% of these residents claiming no knowledge of or relationship to God in Jesus Christ. These tortured communities have been deeply scarred by violence, exploited economically, and suffer from horrific social conditions and severe health-related problems. Our American inner cities are hazardous on a number of different levels, and yet they continue to swell from immigrant populations entering them every day. Add to this, the mind-numbing ethnic and racial diversity of the city, and you have outlined one of the most dangerous, challenging fields in the world today. Perhaps the greatest liability of all, America’s inner cities suffer from wholesale discouragement and nihilistic despair; every- one seems to live in fear and dread, with a keen sense of hopelessness. The call to concerted, focused, disciplined prayer is not bathed in nostalgia. This is not a call to repeat the “good old days” of the past (i.e., a nostalgic return to the glory days of the great awakening revival meetings, or any other revivals of history). Nor is this a call for the guilt-ridden to simply spend a few more hours in prayer out of a sense of necessity. Nor do we make any pleas here for simply a little more effort in prayer, a kind of seasonal emphasis in prayer for the cities that could be done leisurely and conveniently “every other quarter” or so. Rather, what we advocate here is a new brokenness joined to an entirely new vision of ourselves and the city as powerless without the Lord’s intervention. We are asking here for a radical reorientation of our lives toward prayer to God based on a rediscovery and reaffirma- tion that only God can change the inner cities of America.

In order to help facilitate this radical reorientation of our lives toward prayer, we ask that you join us in facilitating prayer concerts in your