Recently, we caught up with the creator of the PrayerMate app, Andy Geers. We talked about prayer, how he’s working to help others pray more and better, and—since we just released 5 Things to Pray for Your City—to ask what he’s currently praying for the big city he calls home.
Fresh prayer ideas for 21 aspects of city life, all drawn from Scripture
Q: Why do you think we find it so hard to pray?
A: There are lots of reasons why we find it hard to pray, but I think they all boil down to this: we don’t believe we need to pray. Prayer is the natural outworking of a faith that utterly depends on God for everything - and yet our sinful hearts constantly drift towards self-reliance. We forget that it is God alone who “gives everyone life and breath and everything else” (Acts 17:25). We forget that it is God alone “who justifies the ungodly” (Romans 5:5). Without his sustaining us moment by moment we would simply cease to exist, and the gospel tells us that we could never earn our own salvation.
Sometimes we also don’t believe it’s worth praying—why would God listen to my prayers? And even if God hears, can he really do anything about it? But I think these questions are really related to the main issue—we are relying on ourselves. God is the almighty Father who loves to hear and answer the feeble prayers of his beloved children. And we give ourselves too much credit if we think we managed to get to where we are now without God’s miraculous intervention at every step along the way—so he can certainly intervene again.
If our hearts truly grasped all this, the question would be “why would we NOT pray?”
Q: What is PrayerMate and how can it help?
A: PrayerMate is a free mobile app to help us be consistent in praying for ourselves, for our loved ones and for God’s world. Over time you build up a set of digital prayer lists—“My walk with God”, “My family”, “World mission”, and so on. Then every time you use PrayerMate it selects a few items from across your lists to pray for, so that over time you can make sure you pray for everything but without ever being overwhelmed. You can also draw in content from various feeds to pray for things like the persecuted church around the world, student ministry, individual missionaries you support or your church small group—or books like 5 Things to Pray for Your City.”
Editor’s note: The Good Book Company has teamed up with PrayerMate to offer a free digital download of 5 Things to Pray for your City to everyone who buys a print copy.
Of course, a simple app can’t change our hearts and cause us to stop depending on ourselves—but PrayerMate can provide a valuable structure to help us be people of our word when we say “I’ll pray for you!”, and to help broaden our horizons a little rather than getting stuck praying the same things day in day out. It’s similar to why books like 5 Things to Pray for Your City can be so valuable—because they help you get specific and pray in the nitty gritty rather than just staying at the same high level request.
Q: As a resident of London, what do you want to be praying for your city?
A: One of the things I love about living in London is how you have the whole world on your doorstep—which creates an amazing opportunity for the gospel to reach the nations without even having to go anywhere. So I want to be praying that churches here in this city have a big vision for making the most of that opportunity, and seeking to share the wonderful gospel of Jesus with anybody and everybody. I also want to pray that this open door for the gospel continues for many years to come—that the city remains open to the Christian message and remains somewhere where people feel welcome to come and where they’re going to be respected and not feared.
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Andy Geers is a Londoner, a Christian software developer and the brains behind the PrayerMate app. PrayerMate is available for iOS and Android. It’s free to download in the App Store and in the Google Play store. To find out more, visit prayermate.org.
The book he mentions, 5 Things to Pray for Your City by Pete Nicholas and Helen Thorne, has been developed in partnership with London City Mission and Redeemer City to City. Whatever your urban context, use it to fuel powerful Biblical prayers for your city. It's available to buy now.
Peter is our International Sales and Marketing Manager. He's based in Northern Virginia and attends a local church plant. Peter loves tea and enjoys visiting friends all round the globe.