The Gospel On Grant Street

Recently, as I was writing a recap article about my experiences during Pray Americas, I was reminded of God’s faithfulness.

The same God who listens to our prayers to see nations changed and lives transformed in faraway places like Cambodia and Tibet is also faithful to respond to prayers for our own neighborhoods. This simple but important reminder came to me as I was prayer walking around my house during the first week of our 40-day prayer initiative.

I spent most of my five-mile walk that day, remembering all of the things that we had seen God do in our little neighborhood over the little more than ten years since we had moved in. At the time, we were told that it was the worst block in town, and that the local police were responding to calls on a regular basis.

Grant Street, our street, was a place where people from the area came looking for trouble. In fact, both sides of a duplex across from our house sold drugs. With one side specializing in prescriptions and the other side dealing street drugs, the police were outside of the duplex almost every day, sometimes multiple times a day.

Our daughter was three years old at the time and asked me if this was going to happen all of the time. I remember writing my landlord an email to find out the answer to her question, and he replied that the problems had become pretty common and that maybe we could work together on some community redevelopment.

In that season, I was traveling the country quite a bit, training college students on how to live like missionaries on their campuses. My wife and I decided that maybe we should practice what we were teaching in our own neighborhood. We began to prayer walk the neighborhood and get to know the names of our neighbors.

We never really developed a “community redevelopment” strategy, but as we walked and prayed, God began to move. As we began to connect with our neighbors over cookouts and our daughter’s sidewalk chalk art, we watched God work in the lives of these individuals as we began to see genuine friendships form. In those first few years, we witnessed God’s faithfulness as marriages were restored and neighbors came to Jesus with some of them even getting baptized right here on Grant Street.

The children who were growing up in the duplex across the street started coming over for popsicles. I found myself playing basketball with them in front of their house and could tell that our family was starting to gain their trust. When the police would show up at their door, their parents would send them to our place. I remember one night, the kids were with us until 2 AM as chaos and confusion were being worked out at their house. God was allowing us to love these children and share the Good News of who Jesus is with them.

Over time, things began to change on Grant Street. A simple church started in our living room and more believers began to join us in our prayer walks. The duplex that had once been a drug house, became a training house for college students and recent graduates who would move to Grove City for a season of discipleship and training before being sent out to follow Jesus and make disciples.

Looking back over the stories of the hundreds of people whose lives had been impacted through what God had done on Grant Street, I remembered that prayer walking is a type of invitation from God to participate in the story that God wants to tell in the places where we live life. He has a story of love and redemption for every heart and for every home. When we walk and pray for His kingdom to come, we co-operate with Him and join Him in seeing His story unfold.