Gold Dust & God Encounters at UK UniversityGeorgina Micklewright - 21 May 2009
You may not have realised, but in the history of Christian revivals many, if not most, have come out of students groups. In fact, 24-7 Prayer started out from a group of students in Chichester, UK deciding to get together and pray. Currently, american students are carrying on that mantle with Campus America: calling every university across their nation to non-stop prayer in 2010.
Over the last couple of years, we have started to see students in the UK catching the prayer bug. Prayer weeks have been springing up in universities (that we know of!) such as Bristol, Surrey, Durham, East Anglia and Royal Holloway. The stories from these prayer weeks have been incredible and just this week we had this report from Dominie Heald, a student in Durham:
“We’ve been having prayer meetings about the specific issue of finding a permanent room in Durham, and about prayer in Durham in a more general context: we’ve been praying for people to be brought in, for God to put his passions on more people’s hearts, and for a turning in the intellectual apathy we keep coming across. Things have really been happening and we’re all getting very excited.
Last Tuesday night we had a spontaneous prayer time after a cell group – we thought we’d have a 5 minutes of prayer together, when everyone was about to leave, but God clearly had another agenda and 3 hours later we were still there praying. God has been speaking to different people about the same things, in some cases giving people the same visions and dreams. People keep getting matching verses etc, not even at the same time or place. The various students who are involved are from all kinds of different churches and colleges in Durham, they’re not all in the same groups and in fact lots of people are meeting for the first time as God brings us together.
We prayed for hours on Tuesday and God was speaking through various people about his plans for Durham and the way he’s going to rain on it, and we had a long time in silence just hearing God in the quiet. Then as we tailed off, we all found gold dust on our hands! Not exactly something that happens often in Durham, and it had never happened to me before, or anyone in the room except one. Then some complete strangers walked into the room, out of curiosity, (they thought we were hypnotising each other!) and so we asked them if they wanted prayer and they jumped at the chance, and couldn’t get enough! When they eventually left, they returned after 10 minutes with a friend in tow who also wanted to get in on the prayer action! Totally supernatural, and we felt completely peaceful resting in whatever God was doing, not as though it was our job to convert them or answer to debate; we just let God do what he wanted to with them and had fun with it!
We’re having regular prayer meetings, and are in the process of setting up a kind of prayer web, where everyone involved in this is being prayed for by two other people, and is praying for two people themselves. We feel like we need as much prayer cover as possible because the further we stick our necks out the more spiritually vulnerable we are.
This weekend is pretty crucial because we’ve just written to the Principal of our college to formally ask for a room to be given to us for the purpose of prayer. We’re all praying like mad, as he and the Senior Tutor read it and make a decision.”
It goes without saying that we ask you to pray for these wonderful students up in Durham, and for the 24-7 Community in Newcastle who are connecting with them. We are convinced that God wants to move powerfully throughout all the universities across the UK, and we want to see communities of students praying for their friends and their campuses. Our future leaders, entrepreneurs, doctors, managers and engineers come out of our universities and more international students come to study in the UK than anywhere else. UK universities are potentially international mission fields. We need to pray for them and in them.
If you’re a student and want to set up a Prayer Room or simply want to get your friends together to pray for your campus, we want to hear from you. There are many resources in the 24-7 shop such as the 24-7 Prayer Manual and the 24-7 Chill CD, and you can also email us for guidance and information.