Here's what happened when we started praying two hours every day.
I work for Christian Union, a collegiate ministry thatfocuses on America’s Ivy League institutions, where many of the world’s topbusiness and government influencers are trained. Our staff consists of godlymen and women, most of whom have seminary degrees and have previouslyministered as pastors and missionaries.
It was quite a shock to our staff when I let them know a fewyears ago that God had put it on my heart for us to pray together two hours aday, up from a mere one hour per week. Ministry leaders are busy people, as youknow, and I got pushback on such a big request. Many simply didn’t think wecould afford to take that much time to pray. But we decided to go for it—tomake prayer a high priority in our daily work.
We initially set aside 9:00–11:00 every morning to ferventlyseek the Lord. During the first few months, we examined the Scriptures todiscover what seeking God wholeheartedly actually is, and what “normal”Christianity should look like. We listened to and learned from great saints aroundthe world (most notably Uganda, Korea, and Fiji) and great saints from the past(such as Jonathan Edwards).
We significantly increased our own personal prayer and Biblereading as well, and for myself, I started allocating one hour in the morningand another in the evening to this purpose. When I noticed the spiritual impacton myself, that caused me to examine the Scriptures with fresh eyes. Idiscovered that, as a pattern in both the Old and New Testaments, prayer timesscheduled multiple times per day were actually quite normal for God’s servants.
We also began fasting, sometimes for a few days andsometimes up to forty days and longer. The Lord had mercy on us, and we beganto see dramatic change on campus within a few months at Princeton. We started ourtwo-hour daily prayer in March of 2009, and by August, a new normal began tocome over the ministry. During the worship times, God’s Spirit came into theroom, and students spontaneously began to confess their sins loudly anddesperately, while others were unable to stop praising God.
God’s Spirit now regularly falls on student gatheringsduring retreats and during the weekly lecture and worship meetings held oncampus. During one retreat, a student called her mom at 1:30 a.m. Her motheranswered the phone in a panic, given the lateness of the hour. The student, whohad never experienced the presence of God before, exclaimed, “He’s here! TheHoly Spirit is here!” The vast majority of these students have never seen orexperienced anything like this before.
The ministry had been steadily growing every year since itsinception in 2002, but everything changed at Princeton starting in the fall of2009, and at Harvard in January of 2011. At Princeton there are now 320students in Christian Union Bible courses, and this is the third year in a rowwe have had to create waiting lists. At Harvard there were 10 students in Biblecourses our first year of ministry on campus; then that number jumped to 130.Here, too, we cannot keep up with the demand.
Our daily prayers have been hard work and have required manysacrifices. This commitment has meant saying no to many evening socialengagements, sometimes praying all night together, missing many meals infasting, and earnestly seeking to obey the Spirit of Christ as Lord in allmatters.
But not a one of us would ever go back. The presence of God is awesome and wonderful, beckoning us to experience all the more of God. We praise God for this, and we desire for every believer to experience the power of a God-seeking lifestyle.