Prayer-Walking Evenings #6 and #7

I don't always know what to pray when we're prayer-walking, so I sometimes just listen to the Spirit, pray in tongues quietly, and agree with my sister (or sisters) in her prayers. 

This past Saturday, we were knocked-our-thick-winter-socks-off blessed to have Svanhild with us for the first time. She's Norwegian, like Sophia, but grew up in the Philippines, and I don't think it's a coincidence that God brought her to the Hope House church team because Svanhild has had Japan and human trafficking on her heart for a number of years. It was so exciting to meet another dear sister with similar dreams of freedom for those caught in slavery! 

These bright fake flower arrangements are how many Japanese businesses celebrate a grand opening--other shops nearby will each sponsor one arrangement. This particular restaurant wasn't dodgy, but I have seen these sorts of grand-opening flowers on not-so-nice places before. One of my prayers lately is that business will just dry up at the dodgy places, that God will put fiery angels at the doors to keep folks out, and that they will just completely go out of business and the owners will find something new and upright to do. 

Saturday night, as we were walking toward this towering building full of girls' clubs and bars, the building that makes us feel the creepiest in our spirits, I had this sense that God wanted me to fast for this particular building on Tuesday. I have no idea why, or why Tuesday, but it was thrilling to think I could be participating in the spiritual realm in this way. (Honestly, this is not bragging that I fasted--I really don't even like fasting and obviously this was from God and not my own idea. In my own flesh, I would just rather not do it. I even had visions of food, like junk food I wouldn't even normally eat, floating across my mind when I closed my eyes and tried to pray. So you see, I am not some spiritual wonder kid at all.) Svanhild and Sophia joined me in the fasting too. (I made it 20 hours, and then felt too dizzy to drive the kids to their Japanese lesson, so I broke my fast that afternoon.) Sophia was excited about it and suggested that we go prayer-walking on Tuesday at the end of our fast, so we did. Svanhild was able to come with us again, though she is leaving Kanazawa this week on Thursday. (We will miss her but I wonder if our futures will bring us together again at some point.) I just keep praying for freedom and for spiritual, mental, and physical chains to be broken! God can do this, and much more. So we wait for him and follow as he leads us in each step and down each alley. And I wonder if this Paradise Bar has a prophetic name: I'm asking God for each person who works in this building to see heaven in Jesus, to meet him, to know him, to be transformed by him. He died and was raised up again for each of us to be free--I can't imagine greater freedom than to feast and party with him for eternity. And in the meantime, I would love to see the end of human trafficking and modern-day slavery, sooner rather than later. It will take changed hearts and a complete about-face for those making money off of it. God, bring it on!