"You're blessed when you've worked up a good appetite for God. He's food and drink in the best meal you'll ever eat.”
(Matthew 5:6, The Message)

Nadine Arendse is one of 24-7 Prayer’s very good friends in South Africa and in this fifth installment of our series on "Stories of Prayer", she shares with us just a little piece of the amazing story of what God is doing in her country.

Nadine’s introduction to the world of 24-7 Prayer came while she was working with the Jericho Walls Prayer Network in Cape Town. It was 2003 when she first discovered the idea of prayer rooms (or ‘Boiler Rooms’, as they’re known in South Africa), and that first prayer room was enough to light a fire of passion and excitement in her which has burned ever since.

“We set up our first 24-7 Prayer Room that year in the heart of our city, in an old Moravian church. It was just crazy! For the first time, young people really got excited about prayer, not just for 5 minutes, but actually spending time with God for a while.  Some came out yelling out of frustration that an hour just wasn’t enough, but we only had one room, so groups of young people had to line up to spend time in it. They were hungry for a connection with God. It was a beautiful sight, to see the thing we’d been trusting God for, for so long. It was only later that we realized the significance of where we started our first youth prayer room!”

The ‘community’ which Nadine represents has grown significantly since that first truly prophetic prayer room.

“The next year, we had 15 prayer rooms throughout Cape Town, and the year after that we had over 30, running in 10-day cycles. That was the start, and since then it’s grown to over 2000 prayer places across our country."

“I now work for the youth section of an organization called ‘Transformation Africa’. We are a group of churches and community workers (and whoever has the heart for it actually!), and our passion is to see a generation reconnect with God’s heart, and so reconnect with their own hearts, using the vehicle of prayer. Some 24-7 Prayer happens at set places - homes, businesses, churches etc. – and some moves around, as some of our workers travel through their regions, to get everyone involved. Some groups take a month of 24-7 Prayer, while others do 10 days or less. With some it is a continuous cycle.”

24-7 Prayer Networks often develop in surprising ways, and we asked Nadine to give us a flavour of where 24-7 Prayer is having the greatest impact in South Africa at the moment.

“The phenomenon is that it is booming in our schools these days, which is awesome! We see students, teachers, headmasters and parents working together to fill the hours. It’s crazy to see how, if you just scratch the surface of our young people’s heart’s, there are pools of desire after God which just burst forth at the slightest release. Today the journey still continues, and we’re finding that this hunger for prayer hasn’t lost any of its momentum.”

Nadine has the incredible job of sharing the vision of 24-7 prayer around her nation, and helping churches and groups to run Prayer Rooms, but this is way more than ideas and administrative tasks...

“I think I have an amazing position, to be able to go around and cast the vision, to present the invitation:

‘Draw closer to God, and He will draw closer to you.’

“I’ve felt most alive, seeing that connection happening in the hearts of young people. When they realize the desire God has to be with them, it’s as if they cannot believe it, especially the broken. To be wanted that much blows their minds. That’s when I feel most alive, seeing that breakthrough … seeing God just step in and embrace  kids who have been fighting the whole idea of living completely for him … seeing their hardened hearts break, and seeing them surrender, so often in tears … It’s a beautiful sight. It’s then that you see them alive, and there’s a vulnerability and a gentleness that was hidden before – a want for more.”

As in any 24-7 community, there are danger points which Nadine needs to watch out for … times when focus can slip, and priorities get out of order.

“At one stage, it became about number outputs, and not about input. I believe that is why God continuously calls us back to the foundational principal that it’s ALL about HIM. We lost focus, and we became synthetic producers of something which MUST grow naturally.

“The thing God keeps bringing us back to is intimacy - God before everything … the poor, the broken, and everything else.  Once we get that right, then reaching out and meeting a need will never be something we’ve done, but an act of grace on God’s part. That we are only the vessel of such honor becomes our identity.  We keep the perspective of God being central to everything. If you look at Him long enough, it is easier to see Him in everything.”

And this intimacy has made its mark on Nadine’s own prayer life too.

“When I come before God, I stand before One who knows me completely, and yet still loves me unconditionally. I come as someone greatly loved … many times with bumps and bruises from fighting my own battles, but always to loving arms.”

In the midst of this amazing network of Prayer Rooms, Nadine knows clearly what she wants this move of 24-7 prayer in South Africa to be about.

“There truly is a hunger for God here. Once people get a glimpse of Him, they grab hold of Him with both hands, only to realize He’s been holding on to them since forever. My prayer is that we will be guides to lead people to the greatest revelation of their lives – God, their Creator.”

And what one message would she give to 24-7 Prayer?

“We’ve learnt that the one thing we can’t leave out is prayer. Without it, everything else becomes fleshly inspired, and loses its impact on the communities we work in. Without it, we will see no lasting differences.

“Unless we do what we do for the Glory of God, Him being the central point and purpose of all our endeavors, we might be endanger of falling in to the trap Jesus warns us of in Matthew 7:21: ‘Many wonderful things have you done for me, but alas I don’t know you’. scary!

“We move on to the 2nd commandment too easily. We need to stop and remember the first commandment: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength’.”

We’ve been asking our 24-7 communities to tell us what prophecies they have been given by God. The prophecy Nadine shared with us is a good place to bring this article to a close. Next time you get buried in the detail of your life, take a moment to remember what incredible things God has promised to do in this world when his people pray.

“God has promised us that we will see revival. A fire will start from the South, spreading out to many nations!”