Campus Ohio: Prayer across Ohio’s campuses begins with one girl asking God to teach her how to pray
In 2002, Allison read the Gospel of Matthew for the first time and she got captured with Jesus’ life of prayer. She began to pray the prayer of some of those first disciples: “Lord, teach me to pray.” Allison was a freshman at a community college in Ohio, living and working with people who did not know Jesus, and she was beginning to get to know Him and to follow Him with her life.
Over the next year, God took her on a journey of prayer. She prayed for her roommates and co-workers, and they came to know Jesus. She prayed for specific questions to be answered and conversations to happen, and they did. She saw Jesus do more through her little life at eighteen and nineteen years old than she thought was possible. She felt like life had just begun, and it was in prayer that she came alive.
In 2004, she began attending The Ohio State University and was struck by the small percentage of followers of Jesus on campus. She began to visit different campus ministries and churches and was convinced that perhaps the Church on campus was so few in number because there was not a furnace of preserving prayer for The Ohio State University. She began inviting her friends to pray, and they invited their friends to pray, and they started gathering people for a campus-wide prayer time… And, soon enough, students from different corners of the university gathered together twice a month, asking the Lord Jesus for The Ohio State University.
The following year, a house on a back alley on campus became available as a place for students and others to come and pray. No one lives at this house, but day and night, students gather from all over campus to meet with Jesus there and to express their prayers through writings on the wall, with paint brushes in hand, by drumming heart cries on djembes, and by dancing in worship of their Father. Prayer has been taken to the middle of campus – the Oval, they call it – in weekly prayer gatherings and in tents during 24/7 prayer weeks, where they invite more and more students to answer God’s call to pray and give anyone walking by the opportunity to experience the presence of Jesus.
In August 2005, 30 campus ministers and pastors at Ohio State gathered to meet and to talk to Jesus about what they could do together for the expansion of heaven on earth at Ohio State. They committed to pray together weekly, every Wednesday at 12noon. This Wednesday prayer meeting has continued for more than two years, and they are still meeting, persevering in prayer together.
Also during this time, Allison and the team of students giving support to this wave of prayer at Ohio State began to meet students at other colleges and universities in Ohio who were also praying and seeking for more. Over 120 students from across the state gathered in November 2005 to pray and fast for 24 hours, for spiritual awakening in Ohio’s colleges and universities. It was a breaking point for sure – students experienced personal renewal and revival in their own hearts and were sent out by God with renewed vision for the dreams in His heart. New friendships were made during this time, and students encouraged each other from across the state through phone calls and emails. Love for God, love for each other, and love for the colleges and universities of the state of Ohio were growing…and more and more students were being infected.
This past Spring 2007, 17 colleges and universities in Ohio banded together to pray continually for 40 days. They were inspired by the story of Nehemiah – by the perseverance of this man and a group of people determined to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.
During these 40 days of prayer, God communicated again and again, in prayer rooms throughout the state, the reality of Luke 1:37: “For nothing is impossible with God.” God was blowing the whistle and awakening their hearts and minds to the fact that the greatest of impossibilities are entirely possible with Jesus. It was this encouragement from God Himself to keep on praying and believing Him for the impossible among them. Only later did they discover that this was Ohio’s state motto, suggested by a nine-year old boy in the 1950s: Nothing is impossible with God.
Since these 40 days of prayer, a band of student leaders (who’ve become friends) from the seven different regions in Ohio have organized themselves into a state-wide leadership team. They are calling students on each campus in each of their region to pray, and to pray 24-7. These student leaders give support to this wave of prayer by encouraging and standing with other praying students, and connecting them to the larger picture of what God’s doing. Together, they are committing to and intentionally inviting more four-year colleges and universities in Ohio to united prayer across the state.
All this started with a dream in God’s heart for students to know Him in prayer, and with one girl who sought to respond to His prompting. Who knows what God will grow up through this one little seed planted in good soil?
