I have been reading a wonderful book on prayer called "God on Mute" by Pete Grieg. He has started an international chain of prayer rooms where people pray 24-7. You can find out all about his ministry
here. On the wall of one of the prayer rooms, someone once wrote this piece of prose called
"The Vision". I have been enjoying simply focussing on these words, which are deeply inspiring.
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 know the meaning of the Matrix, the way the west was won.
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 this is the sound of the underground
The whisper of history in the making
Foundations shaking
Revolutionaries dreaming once again
Mystery is scheming in whispers
Conspiracy is breathing…
This is the sound of the underground
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!
Waiting. Watching: 24 – 7 – 365.
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. And he is the original dreamer, the ultimate
winner.
Guaranteed.
