2 of 3

In January 2006, I determined to visit 23 state, private, and Christian college campuses in 11 states over 40 days, linking them in 24-hour prayer rooms in chapels, classrooms, dining halls, and on-campus apartments. Between January 20 and March 1, students prayed 960 consecutive hours for revival in America. I visited every prayer room during those 40 days.

It was an amazing journey. For example, at Carnegie Mellon, only 30 students covered their entire 24 hours of prayer for revival in America. At Mid America Nazarene University in Olathe, Kansas, the staff covered half of the campus's 48-hour "watch" in prayer.

But the greatest turnout happened at Northwestern College in St. Paul, Minnesota. I watched more than 400 students, including entire athletic teams, enter their prayer room to pray, from 8 p.m. to midnight. Many entered with big smiles but left in tears, saying that God had met them powerfully and intimately during their hour.

In addition to praying silently alongside students and faculty in the prayer rooms, I often spoke at chapel, evening services, or student-led gatherings. And whenever permitted, I followed the simple patterns seen in so many revival meetings in church history. These always include worship, prayer, and a non-negotiable call to confession of any and all sin—whether those attending are professing Christians, ministers, students, completely sin-ridden, demon-possessed, or lost. The result is always the same—the bottom falls out. Confessions of pride, eating disorders, pornography, and sexual immorality rush out of the mouths of innumerable students, as well as confessions of unforgiveness, same-sex attraction, jealousy, and doubt.

At Oregon State, in front of 1,000 students, near the end of my message, a young man approached me, uninvited. It was an awkward moment—the audience looked at me, then at him.

He asked to speak. I said, "Right now?"

He said, "Yes."

I don't normally relinquish the microphone without knowing what a person is going to say, but after I looked in his eyes, I went ahead. He told the audience, "I am the person Becky is describing. I'm a senior here. I'm getting married in six months and I plan to attend seminary. But I'm hooked on pornography—and I have been since the age of 11. If any of you are in the same place and want to fight this battle together, meet me at 7 p.m. tomorrow night in the lobby of Wilson Hall." Nearly 100 seats emptied and young men came forward to kneel and pray.

These scenarios have played out everywhere I visit, capturing Dietrich Bonhoeffer's explanation of public confession perfectly: "As the open confession of my sins to a brother insures me against self-deception, so, too the assurance of forgiveness becomes fully certain to me only when it is spoken by a brother in the name of God. Mutual, brotherly confession is given to us by God in order that we may be sure of divine forgiveness."

I stay after each meeting for one to three hours to hold hands, hug shoulders, kneel with confessors, or wipe away the tears from the faces of students who are sick and tired of their sin. They want immediate relief, divine forgiveness, and hope for change. At one evening chapel at Asbury College in March 2006, six professors spent over two hours in a hallway lined with armchairs, listening to and praying for students.

next page... |  2 of 3

share this page

December 2007, Vol. 51, No. 12