There is a unique movement within our generation, a movement to get back to the ancient. a movement towards the upper room, a movement of radical obedience, a movement of constant prayer... a movement of the next wave of Jesus Freaks.
I was first introduced to this movement a little over a year ago when I heard about a crazy 24 hr pray house started by a campus ministry in the Midwest. My initial thought was: "Man, these people are insane!" I listened to their testimonies, heard how God was moving... and knew that they had found something special in the place of prayer.
A year later, I find myself longing for one of those crazy rooms in our city, on our campus. I'm not alone. God has been stirring many of our hearts to increase in prayer... we've had prayer meetings, 24 hr prayer on Thurs, went to prayer conferences... committed to a sacred charge of a lifestyle of prayer... we have been praying to see prayer increase in our hearts and within the Church. Charles Spurgeon once said that "Prayer itself is an art which only the Holy Spirit can teach us. Pray for prayer. Pray until you can really pray" Oh, how we have been and will continue to be praying for prayer...
The prayer movement is growing around the world. College campuses are creating prayer rooms, churches are planting prayer furnaces, cities are hosting prayer meetings... a global movement to return to the place of prayer is well underway and increasing everyday. Across continents and denominations, the Church is returning to the upper room...
For the last several months, I have been contemplating a poem that has emerged out of the prayer movement called The Vision. Every time I read it, my eyes well up with tears... because- to quote a Jonah 33 song- "I want a faith like that". I want to be apart of that generation, of that army, of that movement... sign me up. Here I am, and I am grabbing hold of the vision.
The vision is for this generation to cry out to God 24/7/365.. every moment of everyday... to serve in the temple day and night like Anna the Prophetess, to be the voice in the wilderness like John the Baptist, to wait on the Lord and respond with radical obedience like Peter and the early church... the vision is Jesus, the vision is His Church, the vision is allowing the Spirit of God to work on us and in us and through us in this generation.... This is the vision and I'm claiming it.. because I want to be one of those people, 100% bonafide Jesus freak..
"The Vision:
by Pete Grieg
So this guy comes up to me and says, “What’s the vision? What’s the big idea?”
I open up my mouth and the words come out like this…
The vision?
The vision is Jesus:
obsessively, dangerously, undeniably Jesus.
The vision is of an army of young people.
You see bones?
I see an army.
And they are free from materialism—
They laugh at nine-to-five 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, 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 minimal 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, from every conversation.
It loves people away from their suicide leaps—their Satan games.
This is an army that would lay down its life for the cause.
A million times a day, its soldiers choose to lose that they might one day win the 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 underground, the whisper of history in the making, foundations shaking, revolutionaries dreaming once again.
Mystery is scheming in whispers, conspiracy is breathing…
This is the sound of the underground.
And the army is disciple(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 man with groans beyond talking, with warrior cries, sulfuric tears and great barrow loads of laughter!
Waiting.
Watching.
24-7-365.
Whatever it takes they will give:
Breaking the rules,
Shaking mediocrity from its cozy little hide,
Laying down their rights and their precious little wrongs,
Laughing at labels,
Fasting essentials.
The advertisers cannot mold them.
Peer-pressure is powerless to shake their resolve at late-night parties before the cockerel cries.
They are incredibly cool, dangerously attractive on the 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 lives, swap seats with the man on death row, guilty as hell: a throne of 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 though 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 malls.
Don’t you hear them coming?
Herald the weirdoes!
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 Hound of Heaven and evoke the 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 3-D.
And, my feeble, whispered, faithless prayer invokes a thunderous, resounding, bone-shaking, great “AMEN!” from countless angels, from heroes of the faith, from Christ himself.
And He is the original dreamer, the ultimate winner.
Guaranteed."
The Vision
Some encouragement for all those with a heart for prayer on college campuses:
Picture This- Campus America
Any thoughts?
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