[by Pete Greig]
Last night I met a girl with dyed black hair and listened in surprise as she described her passion for prayer, tears welling up in her mascara eyes. Later a 29 year-old wearing a Johnny Cash badge told me, in all seriousness, that he would like to become a monk so as to devote himself to undistracted prayer. I met these people in Germany.
In Kansas City, where I'm currently living, there are at least six churches praying night-and-day right now. Recently more than 200 million people from 170 nations joined hands around the world for the first ever Global Day of Prayer.
 
I haven’t even mentioned The Catholic Renewal movement, the underground church of China, Prayer Mountain in Seoul Korea, IHOP, Taize, March for Jesus, The Cause, The Call, us lot and countless other prayer ministries.
 
All this amounts to rather a lot of prayer.
 
We are part of a global prayer explosion. The world, it seems, is waking up to prayer in a way that should thrill every student of church history. What's also exciting is that this global uprising of prayer is bigger than any one brand, personality or product. Thank God.

The history books may well take note of all this, but I wonder what they will actually say? What (without wishing to be sacrilegious) is the point of so much prayer?

I believe that we have a very limited period of time in which to set the DNA of this emerging global movement. We have momentum which is always better than inertia, but where are we heading? I believe that it's wrong to delegate responsibility for the direction of this prayer movement to God. He has already made his wishes very clear indeed: He wants us to focus our lives outwards on the gospel imperatives of the poor,  the marginalized and those who are spiritually lost.
 
Will future generations look back on this great stirring of prayer as the launch-pad for the great missions movement of the 21st century? Or will they merely look back on it all as a mass-manifestation of post-millennial, post-modern angst; an introverted decade of spiritual self-absorption, magnified by the advent of the internet to fill conferences and church calendars without ever truly touching a disinterested world?
 
The prophet Habbakuk prayed: "God, I've heard what our ancestors say about you, and I'm stopped in my tracks, down on my knees. Do among us what you did among them. Work among us as you worked among them. And as you bring judgment, as you surely must, remember mercy." (3:2 MSG)
 
At formative moments like these, the importance of our decisions is magnified for years to come. In movements as in nature, there's a season for sowing seed. Miss it and you miss the harvest. When the season for sowing comes, it matters where we sow. It matters what we sow.  What does this mean in practice right now for you and me? Let me suggest just three things for starters:
  • This is a season for going deep which may mean getting yourself trained so that your own DNA is right.
  • This is a season for friendships and farewells: a time for relational re-alignment and adventure.
  • This is a season for playing the long game: We have a massive challenge ahead and it's not gonna turn around overnight. We may even need to be thinking 25 years ahead. If we don't we may miss the moment a year at a time.
If you've been in a 24-7 prayer room, or if you feel like a part of this web community, then you are also a part of this crazy global prayer revival that's going on... That being so, let's agree together afresh to live our lives and give our all for those who need Jesus but do not yet know his name. The simple vision of the 24-7 Prayer community is to “transform the world through movements of Christ-centered and mission-minded prayer”. Every city, every church, every campus has a part to play in such an era of prayerful possibilities.
 
And that really does mean you!