Onething 2010

Tomorrow marks the start of the Onething conference of 2010! Each year, IHOP hosts roughly 20,000 college students in downtown Kansas City at this conference! Most of the staff members you meet on the missions base say they first heard of IHOP through the Onething conference! This is an amazing and exciting time and I really encourage you to take a look at it on IHOP's website!

God will be glorified!

This week I will be playing on the worship teams in the prayer room during the conference (as the prayer room actually moves to downtown KC in the conference center), and I will be an official Onething photographer! I am so excited for what God has in store for this week!!!

Romans 4

Every student leader and youth worker who works regularly on high school campuses struggles time-to-time to maintain an optimistic outlook on the future of our schools. In many ways, our current model of youth ministry doesn't seem to make any difference when it comes to our schools. Across the country there are ridiculous new mandates and laws being laid out against God in our schools. Year after year, the schools tend to look worse and worse because our enemy is surprisingly intent on taking this ground.

Our failures, however, ought to point us in the direction of the solution. Whereas one youth ministry models fails, another springs to life. The age-old cry for a revival of prayer among the youth is growing louder and louder still. For 5 years I have prayed the dream of God over my alma mater, and for 4 years I have contended for an entire city of schools and have labored aggressively to take ground. After these beginning years it is easy to grow weary and be discouraged at the task still ahead. Yet we must not grow weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up (Galatians 6:9).

My point is this: God is raising up laborers who pray all the way through to the breakthrough. God never called anyone to a simple task that didn't require faith, and we must lay hold of the promises of God in faith. Having seen these promises from afar, this is our chance to lay hold of them in faith and begin to lay the foundation for an end-time harvest. Consider Abraham:

Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. - Romans 4:18-21

We need to have the faith of Abraham over our schools. The promises of God are nothing we can fully accomplish in our own strength, but we can partner with "the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not" (Romans 4:17). We serve an awesome God who has awesome plans for our schools, and I am fully persuaded that God has the power to do what he has spoken to me.

Years ago, the Lord spoke to me concerning a great youth movement that could happen in this generation. From an early age, my heart has been broken over American teenagers. As I sought the Lord in how I might contribute to this movement, He replied, "Can you raise up a prayer movement in the schools that contends with the plans of the enemy over this generation?" I realized, in that moment and through other confirmations, that the Lord had commissioned an assignment over my life, yet no only me, but many in our nation.

This invitation extends to anyone who shares this burden of the Lord over our schools. This generation needs fathers of faith. This is Malachi 4:5-6, when we turn our hearts to the children and the children turn their hearts to the fathers of their faith. We must not have another fatherless generation. I urge you, pray.

Or, in the old cliche, P.U.S.H.

Pray

Until

Something

Happens

High School Missionaries

I just visited Olathe North High School this morning. I joined as a participant in their early morning prayer group that meets daily (praise God) and has met for the last 4 years (praise praise God!). I was struck freshly with the crucial opportunity that high schools present to the church. There is literally no better place to evangelize than a high school. I've been evangelizing on streets and in train cars and in public squares and none of it compares to the opportunity and the harvest that sits every day in high school classrooms. God is specifically highlighting middle school and high school ages because we are entering into a new season of history where the youth will once again be God's catalyst to revival.

As I walked the halls, the Lord put heavy on my heart the supreme importance of high school missionaries. There is no better mission field in America than a middle school or high school. While the marketplace and media and politics are all worthy mission fields, high schools present a specific opportunity to reach students in every neighborhood, regardless of whether or not they attend church. Being a high school missionary is the great missionary calling of our day in America.

High School Missions is not just another good idea, it is a divine opportunity that if missed will result in weighty consequences for our generation. Middle schools, high schools and college campuses must be reached. Will you go?