I am writing right now on a plane, headed back from Paris to my home in Mijas. I have spent this past week with some guys I used to minister with in the 90’s—where we used to call the youth of America to pray and fast for our nation.
Back then, we called a generation to fast and pray for our leaders regarding issues of abortion, racial division, godlessness, etc. We use to hold massive week long events, known as ‘Prayer Storms’, with thousands of young people who would fast for the week. It culminated on the Washington D.C. Mall, with hundreds of thousands of teens and twenty-somethings fasting and praying for the United States!
While we were reunited this weekend, we realized that we are in the midst of the answer to both the prayers and fasting of those seeds sown sixteen years ago.
Reconnecting with these guys in France was monumental. They asked me to rejoin them, as they now focus on mobilizing the people of Europe, beginning with a call to a 40-day fast starting March 1st!
Insane, right?!
Through some miraculous meetings that they have had with the major Catholic leaders, Protestant leaders, and others in Europe, coupled with some amazing prophetic encounters with leadership at the highest levels around the globe, including America—they now see that Europe is ripe for revival!
We will be joining them in Mobilizing and calling the globe to a 40-day, (Jesus), fast.
These past few days together in France were like the days of old—ministering prophetically together, and once again feeling a life shift.
In the midst of it all, my thoughts kept returning to Lisa and my current World Race Expedition Squad. Twenty-one young people whom we love and care for are in India right now, wrestling with what it looks like to walk out community. They are asking themselves daily ‘How does a group of people that are journeying around the planet together live and breathe unity?’
The simplest answer: It’s hard!
My life’s call and my priority are focused on this next generation: to see them meet their own Jesus, to see them become activated at the heart level with compassion and souls, and to watch them transform their wounds and sin into freedom.
My heart is grieving for our squad as I literally picked up their burdens as my own.
Sure it will be insanely cool to see stadiums of Europeans fasting and praying for their people. As amazing as it will be to see the world come together for the great harvest of souls in a time of fasting and praying, I still cannot shake the space these twenty-one World Racers have taken in my thoughts and prayers.
The sacrifice and investment they are making to live as a Church is no small feat.
Coaching a World Race squad means carrying a commitment to their lives. For me, it looks like being consumed with walking individuals through the most difficult parts of their lives thus far. It means walking with them as they learn to undo patterns of transmitting their pain and wounds onto others, and to then see each of them transformed by that same pain into a life of compassion and mercy for everyone around them.
France and India, Europeans, Americans, the World’s youth: For me it’s a “yes” and “yes.” My answer is “both/ and.”
Each of us needs to have vision and dreams. We need to find the people who will help get us there. We must stop being so easily fragmented in our thoughts, and instead be focused on investing in the people that God has placed right in front of us: our family, our neighbors, our community.
In the upcoming years, I will be a part of overflowing stadiums across Europe, and a small piece of the story of the world calling out to God for revival. I will spend those same years, sitting next to individuals who are crying out just to get through the day.
Through it all, I have learned that neither of these things is better, nor more spiritual. Neither warms God’s heart more than the other. He looks at the cries for the revival and the cries for grace the same.
He looks at them and simply says, “Yes and Yes.”
