Last weekend my world was changed. I have been a Christian for 8 years and I would say that I have been pursuing God's purposes of changing the world for about 6 of those years. I have been to conferences, mission trips, staff training and seminars. I have read books, listen to sermons and podcasts. I have prayed to be used and I have thought long and hard about my philosophy of ministry.
In doing all of this I have often felt alive and motivated. There have been many times where I am excited about waking up in the morning. I also have often felt tired and burnt out. Sometimes I have dreamed about quitting and getting a job where I could wear a suit and simply not worry about God's work anymore. Don't get me wrong, I would still go to church. I would still tithe. Even still read Christian books. I just would no longer lend my heart and gut to some promise of God changing things. I would become a Christian who would just grin and bear the values around me. God could still have some of my time, but I have often wondered how long God could have access to my passion. At times I have often felt too tired to be disappointed again.
This all sounds very hopeful, huh? Well, it's real. This is how I have too often felt in the past 6 years. I do ministry full time, but unfortunately I am often leading out of a passion that is simply drawing from a past well. I entered last weekend in this kind of place. I wasn't sure that I really had anything less to give God, to give ministry. I felt dead inside, but was supposed to talk to the students that I work with about life. I felt like a hypocrite and like a fraud. As I prayed for our winter conference (Jesustherevolution) I felt like God was saying "this is going to the beginning of something". Could I dare to believe that? Could I dare to hope? The answer was "no". I came into last weekend with a word from God and absolutely no hope that anything could happen, that anything would change. I secretly hoped that I could simply fade away from full time ministry, get a job and be glad that I had been able to give a few years to something bigger than myself.
But something funny happened; I now believe that last weekend was the beginning of something real and something new that Jesus is doing in the northwest and at the University of Idaho.
Saturday night has long been the crying night at InterVarsity conferences. The speaker says something powerful. People cry. We then all worship together. The script is set and can easily be predicted. This Saturday night though, was not about tears, it was about life and the life of being part of a movement that God is doing. Our speaker (Trent Sheppard, google his sermons and hear a prophet speak) read the "Vision" of the 24-7 Prayer movement and invited us to stand whenever we felt "something". That something for me started in my gut and resonated through my whole body.
I cried.
I stood.
I was able to hope again.
The room was electric. It wasn't a room of weeping or feeling guilty. I was a room where 250 people just became missionaries in a moment (yes I realize that word has negative connotations, but all can be redeemed). The living, breathing, powerful, immense God just called His people to pray and serve Him in a radical and new way. And I think that we said "yes".
As I am writing this my hands are shaking. I don't think this is a response to last Saturday night, but instead to God's continued work of revival in my soul. I feel so utterly alive, so utterly real right now. I want God. I want His presence all the time. Even more so, I want my generation to meet the author of their lives, their passions, their desires. I want to see God move so desperately it hurts. I want to see something deep and real inspire and change the world.
So I am praying again. I am praying the way that I did in the Youth Room at La Villita in Chicago, the way Eli and I prayed in China until late at night and then again early the next morning. Students at U of I are also praying. We have gotten the crazy idea that we can do it for a month straight, 24-7. My basement is full of candles, Bibles, lights, and a giant wooden cross. It is time to pray!
This is happening all over the world. Go to http://www.24-7prayer.com/, read the stories let God speak to you. I really could care less if you are a Christian or not, take the risk and ask why 20 somethings in every corner of the globe have begun to pray.
I do worry that I am not really part of a movement. I worry that I am so hungry to be part of something bigger than myself that I will latch onto anything. I worry that it is not really staff work to spend 2 or 3 hours a day in prayer room. I worry when I start a facebook group that has 50 members to pray, but 6 or 7 people are actually signing up to pray.
What is a movement and what is a good idea? What's the difference?
The difference is marked down the line. Honestly you can't tell the difference in the moment, it can only be judged in historical perspective. When you are in the midst of something, it is nothing but faith that keeps you going.
In spite of my worries, in faith I have to believe that God wants to catch up this generation in a movement that will start in wild, crazy, obsessive prayer then will lead to...who knows?
I feel too alive to play it safe. I feel to alive to build a net if we fall. Someday we will all know if this is a movement or a good idea. As for today, I choose to believe that it is time to pray.
Here is the "Vision" as it was scrawled on a prayer room wall by Pete Greig in England at 3 AM:
THE VISION
So this guy comes up to me and says "what's the vision? What's the big idea?" I open my mouth and words come out like this… The vision?
The vision is JESUS – obsessively, dangerously, undeniably Jesus.
The vision is an army of young people.
You see bones? I see an army.
And they are FREE from materialism.
They laugh at 9-5 little prisons.They could eat caviar on Monday and crusts on Tuesday.They wouldn't even notice.They know the meaning of the Matrix, the way the west was won.They are mobile like the wind, they belong to the nations. They need no passport.. People write their addresses in pencil and wonder at their strange existence.They are free yet they are slaves of the hurting and dirty and dying.What is the vision ?The vision is holiness that hurts the eyes. It makes children laugh and adults angry. It gave up the game of minimum integrity long ago to reach for the stars. It scorns the good and strains for the best. It is dangerously pure.
Light flickers from every secret motive, every private conversation.It loves people away from their suicide leaps, their Satan games. This is an army that will lay down its life for the cause.A million times a day its soldiers
choose to loosethat they might one day winthe great 'Well done' of faithful sons and daughters.
Such heroes are as radical on Monday morning as Sunday night. They don't need fame from names. Instead they grin quietly upwards and hear the crowds chanting again and again: "COME ON!"
And this is the sound of the undergroundThe whisper of history in the makingFoundations shakingRevolutionaries dreaming once againMystery is scheming in whispersConspiracy is breathing…This is the sound of the underground.
And the army is discipl(in)ed.
Young people who beat their bodies into submission.
Every soldier would take a bullet for his comrade at arms. The tattoo on their back boasts "for me to live is Christ and to die is gain".
Sacrifice fuels the fire of victory in their upward eyes. Winners. Martyrs. Who can stop them ? Can hormones hold them back?Can failure succeed?
Can fear scare them or death kill them ?
And the generation prays like a dying manwith groans beyond talking,with warrior cries, sulphuric tears andwith great barrow loads of laughter!Waiting. Watching: 24 – 7 – 365.
Whatever it takes they will give: Breaking the rules. Shaking mediocrity from its cosy little hide. Laying down their rights and their precious little wrongs, laughing at labels, fasting essentials. The advertisers cannot mould them. Hollywood cannot hold them. Peer-pressure is powerless to shake their resolve at late night parties before the cockerel cries.
They are incredibly cool, dangerously attractive inside.
On the outside? They hardly care. They wear clothes like costumes to communicate and celebrate but never to hide. Would they surrender their image or their popularity? They would lay down their very lives - swap seats with the man on death row - guilty as hell. A throne for an electric chair.
With blood and sweat and many tears, with sleepless nights and fruitless days, they pray as if it all depends on God and live as if it all depends on them.
Their DNA chooses JESUS. (He breathes out, they breathe in.)Their subconscious sings. They had a blood transfusion with Jesus. Their words make demons scream in shopping centres.Don't you hear them coming? Herald the weirdo's! Summon the losers and the freaks. Here come the frightened and forgotten with fire in their eyes. They walk tall and trees applaud, skyscrapers bow, mountains are dwarfed by these children of another dimension. Their prayers summon the hounds of heaven and invoke the ancient dream of Eden.
And this vision will be. It will come to pass; it will come easily; it will come soon.How do I know? Because this is the longing of creation itself, the groaning of the Spirit, the very dream of God.
My tomorrow is his today. My distant hope is his 3D.
And my feeble, whispered, faithless prayer invokes a thunderous, resounding, bone-shaking great 'Amen!' from countless angels, from hero's of the faith, from Christ himself. And he is the original dreamer, the ultimate winner.
Guaranteed.
