COLLEGIATE DAY OF PRAYER — A STUDENT’S JOURNEY

Collegiate Day of Prayer is not until February. However, to give you an idea of what is happening in the way of prayer at Bethel University and to reinforce the need to continue praying for our students, we thought it would be good to hear from someone on campus. “I was blinded for so long by the enemy. Satan had blinded me to the ways the Lord was moving, and the ways he himself was fighting back. But recently the Lord reignited something in me that I had allowed to become dormant over the past two years: a passion for prayer and seeing the Holy Spirit move in incredible ways because of it.  As God had clearly orchestrated in advance, a few of my roommates had also sensed an urgency to meet God in prayer. We started to pray, just a few of us at first, in Shiloh, our prayer chapel, early in the mornings, and things began to happen. The Lord was speaking louder than I had ever heard Him, and as we prayed for the campus and for one another, He began to reveal and heal. We would sit and listen, and the Lord would impress something upon our hearts, or an image or word would be brought to our minds. We would then test it with each other to see if it was from the Lord. Sometimes the Lord would prompt me to ask someone a specific question that would hit a deep part of them that they did not even know was wounded. We would weep as the Lord revealed and healed things in us through each other.  All we did was go to meet Him, and then we would sit and listen, waiting to see what He would do. He not only began to heal parts of our hearts, but we also saw physical healing: ankles healed, headaches gone at just the name of Jesus, sore throats relieved. We were seeing the power of Jesus in and through us, and taking the authority we had been given in Christ and using it. So we kept praying.  More girls started coming, and at one point we had twelve in Shiloh at 6 AM on a Friday morning. That was the most beautiful thing, to see so many women coming to meet the Lord, with Bibles open, ready to see what He had for us that morning. It’s honestly what got me out of bed at such an early hour. With all of that, however, also came attacks from the enemy. Satan is fighting hard against what the Lord is doing on Bethel’s campus, but he cannot win against the Creator of the Universe, and I have seen that over and over again. This semester I have seen literal curses broken, legs and ankles healed, backs realigned, walls of lies torn down, and more. I have seen the Lord win against the enemy time and time again. Where did it all start? Prayer. It started with coming to meet the Lord and listening.  Jesus finally got through to me that prayer was a non-negotiable of walking with Him. It is not only a way of communing with God, but it has a real, visible effect. Prayer is one huge way God invites us into doing His will. The battles we fight on our knees count for eternity. Prayer can no longer be on the back burner of the Western church; it has to become a main focus. Revival is coming, and in fact I believe it is already here if we would just recognize it. We cannot forget our part, to be ready, to stand strong against Satan and his schemes with the Lord as our commander, and to pray.” — Anne Garrett is a junior Youth Ministry major at Bethel University. She is also pursuing minors in intercultural studies and theatre. She was born and raised in Senegal, West Africa, the daughter of missionaries, and claims Kentucky as her US home state.