I am extremely nervous and excited about prayer meetings this semester.
Nervous because I’m human and my flesh is so weak and more often than not I have no idea what I’m doing leading a team, not to mention even trying to discern what direction these meetings are supposed to take. It has been a humbling and really difficult experience to serve on core team, trying to still love prayer and to remain competent while understanding that at the end of the day, it’s not about competence at all. I’ve needed God to face down a lot of my darkness. Still do.
But I’m also excited. So. Freaking. Excited. And I hope you, my predominantly AACM readership, are too.
Throughout this break, I have been astonished by the grace of God. That in the midst of every sin, every stupid move, every good intention gone awry, there is forgiveness and love coupled with terrifying majesty, truth, and awe. However, even beyond that, I am astonished that God doesn’t just forgive, but he offers partnerships completely undeserved and unheard of anywhere else. He gives us a renewed right standing, and then he graces us to represent his name and proclaim to our loved ones, to the campus, to the world, that Christ is risen and he is coming home to make all things new soon, soon, soon.
I experience and understand this privilege most strongly through prayer. Our vast, never-say-die, unchanging, and mysterious God who is on a rampage to glorify his name, says that he is ready and willing to answer our prayers. In fact, he calls us to so persist in prayer that it becomes comparable to annoyance (Luke 11)!
And God responds not because of our merit. Rather, Jesus who is standing at God’s right hand, makes our intercessions valid because he is constantly interceding on our behalf (Hebrews 4). His blood, which washes us clean, allows us to approach the Father and with great boldness claim victories, cry out for salvation, and spark revivals.
Throughout the Bible, there is this mysterious relationship between man’s responsibility and God’s sovereignty. For example, despite the fact that it had already been promised by God that he would send rain, Elijah still prayed. Relentlessly (James 5:17). God made a decision but Elijah was called to enforce it. EM Bounds says this:
“God shapes the world by prayer…The prayers of God’s saints are the capital stock of heaven by which God carries on his great work on earth. God conditions the very life and prosperity of His cause on prayer.”
That’s a huge responsibility for us. But it’s an exciting one too because at the end of the day, we are reassured that God has already won. He won’t screw up because he wants his kingdom to come. He has people on his mind. Nations to unshackle. Wrongs to right. And he lets us be a part of it. Our responsibility is not to save people or to have the best ministry in the world. We just get sit with God (unthinkable but for Jesus), know and pray the Father’s heart, go out with boldness, and see Him move in power and partnership with us in our obedience. How cool is that?
And so finally, I am getting to 8:59. I strongly urge and invite all of you to come, and especially to stillness which is changing up and going to be awesome because God is awesome.
I am excited because we have 90 minutes every week to come together as one of the largest prayer meetings on UT campus to ask God to do what we cannot. There’s no touchy-feely in it, no right or wrong way to do things, no good or bad at it, no have to do this or else mentality. It’s just God and his people. And I know it’s hard to make weekly commitments. To be honest, if I wasn’t on prayer team, I wonder sometimes if I would go to prayer meetings. Sometimes they aren’t life giving and sometimes they’re boring and awkward and exhausting and seem like they don’t do anything and a million other things. But there is prayer. Powerful and effective (James 5), hungry, humble, and raw. And God desires prayers, collecting them in golden bowls as incense (Revelation 5). God has everything to do with 8:59PM.
We are just one generation of so many at UT who have prayed for revival to come and potentially many more will come after us. These prayers bind the body of Christ at UT together in a beautiful picture that only God fully sees and comprehends. Who knows how long it spans; all I know is that I want in. This revival that we love to tout won’t spontaneously emerge. Revival blows in on the prayers and obedience of the saints. And it will come because God desires the worship of UT campus. So we are just going to pray and pray and pray and persevere and press forward until it happens. Tomorrow or in twenty years, I am excited nonetheless to be part of this story. The desperate invitation for God to claim all that is his on UT is a dream that I have no right to apart from the power and reign of Jesus Christ. He is so good. To him be all the glory, honor, and praise. Amen.
