Romans 14:17, “the Kingdom of God is …righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.”

Within your village and local area there are places you visit and pass by regularly as you go about your daily routines. There are also places you could visit more intentionally if you had a reason to. Pause & Pray gives you a reason to be intentional about all the places you visit and pass by. This intention is to pause at that place, even just briefly, and pray.

The purpose of the pause is twofold:

• To pray for that place to be a ‘thin place’ for encountering the presence of God.
  Romans 14:17 says that “the Kingdom of God is …righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” Your prayer is for people to experience these things in that place, along with a sense of safety, hope and presence. The presence is God’s, with the hope that they, in some way, encounter Him for themselves.
  They might not understand this encounter other than what they experience through it. This is where you come in…
• To be in that place for encountering God through you!
  The likelihood is that if you visit a place often enough, you will meet someone who is passing by or stopping in the same place. Especially so if you have saturated that place in prayer.
  Take it as an opportunity to talk to them. They may even have seen you stopping there regularly. You can comment on what a wonderful place it is and how it makes you feel. This is your conversation starter that has the potential to draw the other person into a faith conversation, and even an encounter with God.
  These moments might be one-offs, and you don’t see them again. They might also be the beginning of something: meeting them again in the same place, going for coffee, praying with them(!), or inviting them to come with you to your church or fellowship.

Ideas for places and reasons to pause and pray: benches, gates, street corners, pathways, market squares, greens, bridges, crossings, ‘black spots’, dodgy shops(!), non-Christian religious or spiritual establishments, etc.

This is suitable for individuals or pairs, but not larger groups. If you do this as a church or fellowship, you can even map out the places (and reasons) to regularly pause and pray. You can track changes and encounters, add new places where there’s new information or empty areas, and so on.