A Glimpse Back in Time: Part 7

As far as Prayer Room attendance, junior year was a roller coaster.  Although it was often just Chris, Joy, and I, several freshmen got involved early in the year and came on and off.  One guy was immediately drawn to the Prayer Room and joined us faithfully for several weeks.  But one day he stopped coming and never really came back.  Love and hunger for God can so easily be choked out by the pressures of college, especially at W&L.  High academic stress + social pressures + extreme busyness make it very difficult to devote regular time to God. 

Other freshmen would come daily for a whole week but then not again for a month.  We saw desire in them to really surrender everything to Jesus, but that desire was so easily overcome when homework got heavy or other fun activities seemed more appealing than singing and praying in a dim, lonely basement.

Spring Term, however, which at W&L means the last 4 weeks of school, was different.  Knowing that everyone was only taking one class, we decided to offer a challenge.  It was for anyone and everyone but especially targeted to our freshmen friends who wanted to commit more to God but needed a push.  And it was AWESOME.

First, we issued the challenge.  A week or two before spring break, we wrote a commitment on the whiteboard in the Prayer Room, signed it, and encouraged others to consider signing it as well.  The commitment was to come to the Prayer Room for all 25 nights of Spring Term.  It wasn’t about attendance or checking “God time” off a to-do list, but it was really about providing an opportunity for those that said they wanted to give God more of their time to actually do it. 

When Spring Term finally rolled around, we had eight signatures counting our own.  It seemed like a small number.  Eight?  Who would be excited about an event with eight people?  But coming from our usual three, eight was pretty miraculous!  Eight people would be praying for W&L EVERY NIGHT of Spring Term! 

The first night of the challenge was awesome.  I remember sitting on the floor and listening to the sound of the worship.  I don’t know if you’ve ever heard a group of 8-10 people singing in a small, open room, but it sounds AMAZING!  Especially when people begin to sing their own songs to Jesus.  It all blends together in this beautiful harmony, literally a new song for the Lord.  And I’m pretty sure we’ve been blessed with a greater than normal percentage of talented singers.

That night, a freshman guy who had never been to the Prayer Room before showed up and added his signature to the list. Already, our little group was growing.  And with nine people, there was an opportunity for community that hadn’t really existed before.  It suddenly became easier to imagine a group of students living lives abandoned to the Lord, forsaking the temptations of college, and enjoying fellowship with God and each other.  I really believe it was a glimpse of what we’re praying for down the road.

During those four weeks, we held many special events to better focus our time in prayer.  We did a prayer walk, where we prayed at different locations on campus, asking God to move there and touch hearts.  We visited freshmen dorms to pray with people and chat about their beliefs.  We invited the other campus ministries to the Prayer Room and met Christians that we hadn’t known before.  And we had post-prayer events such as game night and prayer for gifts of the Holy Spirit to strengthen both our friendships and our hearts.  It was truly a sweet time and such an answer to prayer.  Seemingly out of nowhere, people were hungry for God and acting upon that hunger.  Nine people were signed up, but on some nights, we had even more come to pray.

Of course, there were also nights when some of our committed friends were unable to make it.  But even those nights were sweet!  On one Friday or Saturday night, there were actually only three of us.  But as I looked at the freshman guy praying with Chris and I, I was touched by the fact that his experience in the Prayer Room was so different than mine.  In those 25 days, he came to our prayer meetings consistently, but he only experienced one prayer meeting with less than five people.  To him, the Prayer Room was exciting and full of life, not lonely and boring as I had so often experienced.  I wouldn’t trade my first two years in the Prayer Room for anything, but if no one else has to experience the difficulty of two-person prayer meetings each night, it will be a cause for rejoicing.

The last night of the prayer challenge was by far the best.  I cry every year at the last night of prayer, but this night was special in a different way.  For the first time, Chris and I were surrounded by a circle of faces, a circle of friends who had been deeply affected by the Prayer Room and by our prayers for them before they even started coming.  When I think back to each of those friends at the beginning of the year, it’s amazing how far God brought them.  One girl wasn’t sure she had a relationship with God.  One girl didn’t acknowledge Jesus as Messiah.  One guy couldn’t make God a priority.  One girl constantly said, “I’ll be at prayer tonight,” but rarely made it.  And me? I wasn’t sure if God was ever going to bring people to the Prayer Room.  But He changed us all.  And He gave us a hunger to keep on pursuing Him through the summer months.  Because the Spring Term Challenge was just the beginning!  Summer is round two.  And then comes the fall.  I pray that they all come back.  But regardless, it’ll be my last year at W&L, and I am going to give it everything I have.  Jesus laid down His life for me. Why should I do any less?

This is my last post for now about my time at W&L.  Through these “glimpses back in time,” I hope you have a better idea of where I’m currently at in life, ministry, and my relationship with the Lord.  Now you are ready for my posts about this summer!!

A Glimpse Back in Time: Part 4

Sophomore year started off much differently than I anticipated.  All summer, I envisioned a glorious return to the Prayer Room where a crowd of students would gather to lift up harmonious worship to the Lord.  I thought it'd be like Spring Term of the year before, where the musty basement had come alive, with 8, 10, and 12 students attending each night.  But the excitement had died down, and one of our faithful prayer warriors transferred.  School got harder.  Everyone got busier.  And after a few weeks, it was back to just me and Chris. 

That semester, I entered a season of loneliness.  Suddenly, the things that had once brought me pleasure were no longer appealing.  I began to desire God more and more, and that yearning to know Him consumed every other desire in my heart.  And not just the bad things.  Hanging out with friends, watching movies, and even reading novels no longer seemed worth pursuing in the face of a relational God of the Universe that I could get to know.  God was answering my prayer for more of Him, but it was difficult because few could relate.  People didn’t believe that I would actually rather sit by myself and read my Bible than attend a game night with friends.  But that's how I felt, and at times, normal, everyday conversations seemed so shallow and pointless that I wanted to explode.  Although my lips stayed sealed, my heart would cry, "I don't want to talk about homework anymore!  I want to talk about Jesus!"  He was drawing me away, and I think He really enjoys such seasons, though they may be painful for us.  (If you’re really interested in this, check out The Saint Must Walk Alone by A.W. Tozer or Apostolic Loneliness by David Sliker.)

So I was lonely.  But that didn’t mean that I was disengaged from what was going on around me.  God was really moving on campus and I was not blind to that.  Three of my friends got baptized in September, and one of them hadn’t even known about the baptism.  She’d been praying for over a year about getting baptized, though, and happened to run into us when we were on our way to the river, to a spot appropriately called “Jordan’s Point.”  Just a few weeks later, another girl who I’d been talking to and praying for accepted Jesus as her Savior.  She's from China and didn’t know much about God before coming to W&L, but now she loves Jesus, and I’m so thankful that I’ve gotten to be a part of it.  These events and others made it impossible to believe that God was ignoring our cries.  But at the same time, I struggled with understanding why no one would join us in the place of prayer.       

I think this piece that I wrote during Christmas break of that year helps explain what we were experiencing.  It describes a detailed vision that Chris received during that fall semester.  In the vision, the Prayer Room was like a prison that God had put us in.  But instead of breaking down the walls by our own strength, we needed to dig deep into God.  Check it out: 

Darkness is closing in.  Deep, deep darkness.  It’s all around.  You can almost taste it.  And with the darkness comes despair, anguish, and wickedness.  It brings great blindness and confusion.  The darkness has reigned for so long in this place that many people have forgotten the Light, most people even. 

They don’t realize what they’ve lost.  Some of them have actually come to love the darkness.  They embrace it and relish it with every breath, and the mere thought of the Light is completely unappealing to them.  Others are deceived.  Wielding a lamp or other cheap imitation of the Light, they think they are clinging to what is good.  But they have forgotten what the Light truly is. 

My heart breaks for these people.  Their satisfaction is counterfeit and they are missing out on true joy. I suppose it doesn’t look like joy, not while we’re in this cell, at least.  But it will one day, when the Light suddenly bursts forth to reconquer this place.  Then they will see.

I can’t blame them for losing sight of the Light.  The darkness is powerful, and it seems to control everything.  I hate it down here, often longing to return to a life where everyone loves the Light, or at least pretends to, a life where the darkness cannot parade before the people but must instead hide in the shadows.  I ask myself all the time why God sent me to this dark, dark place.  Yet part of me loves it here.  Because I’m being changed.  For the better. 

Even while the darkness seems overwhelming, every now and again, a tiny ray of Light slips through the cracks of our prison, reminding us that the hope we cling to is not in vain.  I love those tiny rays and the encouragement that comes with them.  When everyone else abandons the Light, forgets it, and gives up hope, we hold onto those little bits of sunshine, and we keep fighting.  Well…sort of.

In one sense, we’ve stopped fighting.  At least, the physical battle.  But believe me, war is still raging.  The battle has simply changed.  We used to pound the walls, beating the cold, metal bars until our knuckles were raw.  Our goal was the same: escape, returning to the Light.  But beating metal bars with fists of flesh never did a thing.  We'd eventually collapse, exhausted, without an inch of progress or a dent in the bars to show for it.  We’d get up and try again the next day, but still nothing.  And the darkness kept closing in. It thickens even now.

So we stop “fighting,” but now what?  We must get out.  We MUST.  This darkness CANNOT win.  Then what do we do?  We dig.

Now trust me, that wasn’t my idea.  I tend to go for quick and easy solutions, and digging our way out of this cell is certainly not going to happen overnight.  However, it’s the only way out. 

It’s hard to even start digging.  I look down at my hands, still clenched and a little bruised from beating the iron bars.  Inside each curled up fist, I feel all the things I still hold onto: the anxieties, the distractions, the fears, the pride.  I glance at my shovel.  Can I hold all this at once at once?  Perhaps I can dig with one hand and clutch all these other things with the other.  No way.  The shovel will be too heavy.  I have to let them go.  But I don’t want to.

I stand there for a while.  This is pointless.  We have to get out of this prison, and that means that we have to dig.  So one finger at a time, with some supernatural help, I pry open my hands, fixing my mind on the Light and letting everything else fall to the ground.  It’s harder than it sounds. Painful even.  As all these things I used to cling to hit the dirt and scatter, I resist the urge to snatch them back up.  I look at my empty hands and realize that I actually feel lighter, perhaps more free.  But I can’t stop here. 

After what seems like ages, I pick up my shovel.  As I press it into the ground and raise up the first scoop of dirt, I wonder how long this is going to take.  But I guess it doesn’t matter.  It’s the only way out, so we have to dig or let the darkness win.  And we’re going to have to dig deep.  Really, really deep.

It’s been about an hour, and my body is already begging me to stop.  The shovel is heavy and awkward.  My back aches.  My arms, which are pretty weak to start with, are screaming, and I’m hot and tired.  The worst, though, is my hands.  The blisters are emerging already, and I know that my palms will soon be rubbed raw.  I consider laying down the shovel and gathering all those things I worked so hard to let go of.  They were much easier to hold, much more comfortable.  But the Light keeps beckoning.  We can’t quit.

At least I’m not alone.  I give thanks for that every day.  Multiple times.  Yet even as I give thanks, it’s easy to complain.  Why is it just the two of us?  Is there really no one else who will help us dig?  There isn’t one other person here who’s willing to go deep? Lots of people think they’re willing, even say they are, but no one sticks around.  That took some getting used to.  We’ve had to learn to just keep digging. 

At first, I was really distracted by the others.  I still am sometimes.  First, it was excitement.  Someone would come into our cell, pick up a shovel and start digging with us.  I thought they’d stay forever.  I cried when they left.  Then, it was anger.  The first time some kid dropped by to tell us, “I love what you guys are doing!  Keep at it!” I wanted to hit him.  Really?! If it’s so great, why don’t you give us a hand?

After that, it was a bit of desperation.  Every time someone passed by, I tried to convince them to come dig with us.  I wanted to show them that it’s worth it even though it’s hard.  Maybe it was because I was lonely, but at least part of my motivation was wanting them, too, to experience the Light that we so dearly love.  Some of them showed interest, would even dig for a while, yet no one truly believed in escape, in the revival that we knew the Light will bring forth.  So they didn’t endure. 

Several times I was determined to make them stay.  I laid down my shovel to grab their hand, stopped digging to plead with them some more.  But they didn’t get it.  The darkness continued to cloud their understanding, and I couldn’t force them to stay.  I should have just kept digging…

We’ve been learning that we can’t pour our energy into these others if they’re not really committed.  We just have to dig.  And dig.  And dig.  Deep.  It doesn’t get easier.  Actually, it probably gets harder.  As we go deeper, the soil turns to hard clay, our bodies grow weak and weary, and our hands start to bleed.  Worst of all is the battle in our minds.  “Quit!” screams a voice within.  But we can’t.  What about the Light?

Somehow, though, as it gets harder, the digging also gets sweeter.  Our hearts are filled just as our hands were emptied.  We can soar even when we feel weary.  Escape is ever nearer.  Breakthrough is coming.  And we can hear, albeit faint, the river that lies beneath this prison, the river that will take us out of the darkness and back to the Light.

I wonder yet again how much farther we have to go, how much longer darkness will reign over this place.  When will people realize the goodness of this life we’ve found?  Who will be first to take up a shovel and stay with us?  Will it be the girl that digs with us for an hour or two every other week?  Or will it be the guy that stands outside and laughs at our foolishness, insisting that we should come drink a beer instead?  I think they’ll both have a shovel when this is all over with.  But how long?

I keep asking that question, yet I know the answer really doesn’t matter all that much.  Because whether we escape tomorrow or next month or two years from now, what we do in this moment doesn’t change.  Either way, we keep on digging.  We dig deep, and we don’t stop until darkness is conquered.  Because our Light, our GOD, is worth it.  And He’s with us all the way, never once despising His beloved prisoners.

Even crazier than the fact that Chris had this vision, so full of meaning and relevant to our experiences was the fact that, the next day, he stumbled upon this verse “For the Lord hears the poor and does not despise His prisoners" (Psalm 69:33).  Even now, there are times when I feel like God has imprisoned us at W&L, but He has not forsaken us. 

To be continued…