Pray Big, Pray Bold.

God has been revealing and teaching me so much about prayer in the last year and a half. It's nuts. 

I'll start by giving you a brief rundown of my experience of prayer before college. I grew up going to a small Lutheran church in Meadowlands, mostly older folks, and very what I would call "traditional". structured service, certain songs we sing every week (and ones we switch up too, all of which hymns), and written out prayers. 

Thinking back, I could probably count on one hand the amount of prayers I heard during a service that were not scripted into the bulletin or our worship "guide" books (I can't remember exactly what they are really called...I always called them the "blue book" and the "green book". You knew which one to get your songs from because the green book didn't go up to the 700's like the blue book. Recently the church upgraded to the "red book". Snazzy, I know. But  I digress.)

Even the prayers we "said" (we generally sang them) before potlucks were the same old "Be present at our table Lord". Now don't get me wrong, they are good enough prayers, that's not the issue. And I bet there is genuine desire for the things we pray for when we pray them....maybe the first 50 times (okay I don't literally mean 50, but you get my point ).....but after that, can we truly say we are praying them with the passion with which we once started?? I'm going to be frank and say for the majority of us, no.

And then there were the prayers outside of church. For me at least, they mostly consisted of asking for things when I wanted them. God was the "cosmic sugar daddy" as I've heard pastor Kyle say a few times at Rock Hill. He was there for me to ask to hand out when I needed something.

My first experience of revelation of a different kind of prayer came when I came to college. I got plugged into InterVaristy and all of a sudden, these people prayed out loud and from the heart. I began to realize, hey, maybe there's more to this. Maybe it's more than just what we are reading off of the bulletin at church, or out of a book. Maybe there's something more genuine, more real.

My freshman year I went to an IV conference called Urbana. By this time I had jumped into the world of actually praying out loud with other people (gasp!) and I got to hear this guy speak. http://vimeo.com/8467883.

Seriously. Watch it if you haven't seen it.

I learned that there is a way to pray, greater than anything I had ever experienced. Not only was there powerful things happening from prayer, but I learned that prayer is not about getting answers. Sunder Krishnan put it perfectly when he says: 

"What if in every situation you that you prayed for, you took the time, pouring over the word of God, to first of all ask yourself,

 "what does it mean to bring a Sovereign God into this situation?

 What does it mean to bring the Creator God into this situation? 

What does it mean to bring the Revealer God into this situation? 

What does it mean to bring the God who is active in history into the situation?" 

and you keep that up for days and weeks and months and years, you know what is going to happen? Circumstances outside of you may never change, but you will be recognizably transformed"

Wow. This was also around the first time I had heard whispers of what was happening at the Dillon's house (a family host's a college age prayer night, which I now and a regular part of...but we'll get to that).

So. I had my first taste of this thing "intercession". Interesting. New. Exciting. What would that transformation look like in me if I prayed like that??

So, the end of my freshman year, I got to practice it a bit. We started meeting with our chapter for weekly prayer meetings. And come summer time, I had my first night of prayer with the college group. (see Prayers, Vampires, and Werewolves for that story).  There was a whole world of prayer I never even knew existed. People could hear from God. People prayed with passion. With scripture. With purpose. And there was transformation.

This last summer was a time of growth as well. Spending many late nights praying with people and taking time to listen to the Lord. And then I read the book Intercessory Prayer by Dutch Sheets. Read it. A whole new door of awesomeness was opened in the room I had just entered about prayer a year previous. I could go deeper. There was still more. What if I could take a look at specific uses of the word for Intercession, paga, and experience a whole new world of prayer? 

That I can be praying for meetings with God, for blinds to be lifted, for God to be hounding people on my campus, building hedges of protection and so much more. Dutch Sheets tells of the miraculous things he's personally seen happen through the power of prayer. This book brought me to tears many times because of the redeeming, miraculous, and saving power of the one true God, and had me laughing as well at the humor of Dutch Sheets.

What if I could start to pray like this? What if all God's people would pray like this! The transformation and power we would let loose! Definitely going to reread this book.

Also, at the beginning of this school year I found this video after seeing a brief part of it at IV Fall Retreat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MlGmO_6EoE&feature=related.

What if I approached prayer as a conversation with the God that truly is? What would be my first words to him?

So now to the present. Well, at least closer to the present. November 4th-6th I was at a conference called Cross Training in Green Lake Wisconsin. Despite the creepy barns, buildings, and back roads on the 6 hour trip there and at the place itself, this was one heck of a trip and experience with the Lord. 

I signed up for the conference not really knowing exactly what track to take, but the prayer ones had stuck out to me the most in their descriptions. So I picked "praying for a change".  

We looked at many aspects of prayer including what it really is, how God is praying for us and we get to enter into that, listening to the Lord in prayer, interceding, praying scripture and so much more. And best of all, we got to pray for each other, putting to practice what we had learned. SWEET!

But that wasn't even the biggest part for me. On Saturday night, we had our large group celebration and worship at the conference. All 1000 of us crammed into a small, hot room to worship our God, and to celebrate Him together. At first I wasn't really getting into it, and I don't like just singing. It has to mean something to me.

 I went back and got some prayer I think this surprised the prayer people a bit, because I didn't ask for anything specific, rather I was just going to receive what they would give me. I didn't know what was up. I couldn't even hear what they prayed for me because it was so loud, but that didn't really matter because God heard it. I started crying during prayer as the sound of 1000 people praising the Lord was around me. I returned to my seat and I was bawling. 

For those of you who know me, this wasn't very unusual haha. I cry quite easily, but when I do cry, I know why. I didn't know why this time.

The other student from Duluth who came, Megan, turned to me and said, "can we pray for campus?" I nodded and we sat and prayed. Prayed whole heartedly for salvation for our campuses. For renewal. For people to come and follow our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I literally was crying out, weeping asking for salvation for people on our campuses.

Have you ever hear the song "Hosanna" by Hillsong?  It's a pretty popular one, but just in case, here's a link. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ajFnnKFivY

At then end, there is a part that goes:

Heal my heart and make it clean
Open up my eyes to the things unseen
Show me how to love like You have loved me
Break my heart for what breaks Yours
Everything I am, for Your kingdom's cause
As I walk from earth into eternity

It was while we were praying for campus I realized, what I was experiencing was just what this song asks for. "Break my heart for what breaks yours". It was getting a glimpse of the hurt and pain and the hunger God has for the Lost on my campus. How badly He wants to be in relationship with those who do not know Him. Wow. It was so powerful. 

In response to that weekend (along with some other revelations about prayer from my track and the large group meetings) we decided to do something about it. Our response is prayer. With some ideas from a movement in Nigeria and 24/7 prayer movements around the world, here in Duluth, we are staring a every 2nd Friday of the month prayer night where we are hoping to move to a "pray all night". We know that if we want to see things happen, we need to pray. Not just seeing miraculous things happen in our city, although we will graciously accept that!, but even just in ourselves. 

We met for the first time last friday night and prayed, planned and cast some vision. Our next one will be December 9th from 7pm-1am. This is open to everyone! We want to see God's people here in Duluth (and around Duluth!) unite together in a night of prayer with the Lord and each other to meet God and change our city and campuses! Let us respond to the call God has set for us in prayer! I personally invite whoever is reading this to join us. December 9th. 7pm. The Northshore Church, Duluth MN (there actually isn't a church that meets here now, but a building we have to use!).

So I ask: 

What does your prayer look like? Is there more God is offering you? What step will you take to experience Him on a deeper, more intimate, more powerful level? What can God do through your prayers??

People of God, young and old and in between: 

Come. Pray. Move.