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Friday Fax 2000 issue 23, 9 June
A young man called Count Ludwig Nickolaus von Zinsendorf gave shelter to
refugees in Herrenhut, near Dresden. After five years, the tension and
discussions became so great that the Count finally had enough. He called a
general meeting in the church, so that people could forgive each other,
celebrate the Lord’s supper and pray together. The 48 men and women carried on
praying around the clock - and the 24-hour prayer chain continued for 100 years.
The event probably influenced Christianity more than any other recent event in
church history.
The same thing continues today. Among all the more recent prayer movements
around the world, one in particular is getting young people excited about
prayer: 24-7 Prayer. In February 2000, Pete Greig, a 31-year-old from
Chichester, England, started a simple prayer movement at a conference in
Southampton when he challenged young people all over the world to pray 24 hours
a day for at least one week. Since then, the movement has exploded. Thousands of
young Christians in a constantly growing number of countries are praying around
the clock. They pray in prayer rooms, paint their prayers in graffiti, drum and
stamp, cry and laugh to touch God’s heart for their generation. Their aim:
“turning the tide in youth culture.” The following vision, received in one of
the prayer nights, gives a taste of the movement’s heartbeat:
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 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 loose
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 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 man
with groans beyond talking,
with warrior cries, sulphuric tears and
with great barrow loads of laughter! 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 - the original dreamer, the ultimate winner.
And that, my friend, is Guaranteed.
Source: www.24-7prayer.com
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