more stirring

today has actually been a pretty intense day. it's been good, just a bit hectic. today was my long day, and i was busy trying to get a paper turned in at 5 and some homework by 3, not to mention a very long application for a summer project in San Francisco. i ended up going to Campus Crusade for Christ at 9, and saw one of my friends Michael there, who i went to middle school with. he invited me to some prayer thing later that night.

i always look forward to Tuesday nights, because that's when the Asians go to play basketball. if i went right after CRU, i could get into a game or two and have a good time. in worship, i started praying and somehow, i felt like there was a huge choice between whether i should go to the prayer thing Michael had invited me to or whether i should go play basketball. and i speculated for a while, but the issue had come up because i had been praying that i would hear God's voice and become more confident in it, and for some reason i really felt like i should go the prayer meeting.

after more frustrating speculation, i finally ended up going. because it seemed like i should do with my time what God wanted, and it seemed like one night playing basketball wouldn't be as eternally relevant as a night of prayer. (i also realized that basketball doesn't really give me the kind of comfort i think it will...honestly, several nights, i have gone to play basketball to relieve stress and i have come back worse.) the prayer event was from 11 to 12 and was held in the basement of the Sig Ep house, of which included Michael and a bunch of other guys from CRU. the theme was supposed to be praying for God to move and really bring unity and revolution to the Greek system.

i honestly didn't expect that much and was pretty skeptical when the guys joked about beer cans, and then i would think that maybe i should have gone to play basketball. they had a bunch of couches laid out, and they turned off all the lights and just had Christmas lights and candles on the ground. people started showing up, and after we officially started...things just changed. you could tell something in the atmosphere had moved, and people just started praying. there was grace, tremendous grace.

and it was really nice. it was sorta what i needed - i admit i felt God. it was important to remember that i was not going after my own glory, but God's. and it was just great getting to be there, in a basement with about forty or fifty other people, seeming to really cry out and lift up to God, just like me. it felt like i had never really been a part of something like that. it felt like we were a body of Christ, like we really were being united even though we didn't really know each other and we were probably of different denominational backgrounds and everything. but with God as our common factor, all of the differences seemed to fade away.

and i started thinking, what if... what if we got a bunch of people - real Christians - so consumed by passion for God, so driven by glorifying God and not glorifying themselves, who really listened to His voice and Word. what if we got a bunch of people like this together and we all acted as a body... what if we sought God together and sought to do His work together? we would be a force to be reckoned with, not of our own strength, but because of God.

one changed life can make a ripple in a spectator's life, but i think a collection of changed lives moving in motion that could only come from God would seem to make a much more lasting impression on that spectator.

we prayed for the hour, and it was really surprising. at the same time, it was truly great. it was so much greater than anything i think i could have gotten out of basketball. and it seemed like...God was moving. God was really stirring, in the underground, shifting ideologies underneath kingdoms (it helps the analogy that we were praying in the basement of a frat house). but i could see it. it was like God really was raising up His people. i don't know. it just gave me a lot of hope.

and it was refreshing. it helped me a lot, it stilled me, and i felt it, but i also knew it. i saw God tonight.