a world christian

Paul and Julia live in Washington D.C. and Paul is my boss for the national side of my responsibilities with the Student Volunteer Movement2. This week we are meeting, planning, preparing and praying here in Washington D.C. Another SVM2 full-time staff member named David from Oklahoma City arrived tonight as well. As we consider what God might be doing on the University campuses across the nation, one thing seems clear. Different Christian student groups that span a broad range of beliefs and ideas within the Christian faith, have had a growing desire to fulfill a certain destiny, part of which involves being a "world Christian" - a man or woman who has a global vision and a global passion to see not only their campus and their nation come to a living faith in Christ, but the nations and generations globally.

One of the highlights for me today was being able to be back in our nation, and no less to be in our nation's capitol -- the nation I was born in. What were the principles that forged our nation when it first came into being? It had a lot to do about freedom. Today it seems we've strayed so far from that. Yet, as I biked through Capitol Hill and over to the White House, I realized that this nation started with a dream too. A freedom dream. A dream to forge a new nation from the old. Great Britain's restraints and laws had become oppressive. People could hardly eek out a living. The United States was birthed to fulfill a common destiny.

I think about the girl I met in our nation's capitol. Fabiola. She came up to me to take her picture. She's in our nation as a nanny to a family in Northern California. She's from Brazil. I think about Brazil and the people.

And that brought me back to thoughts of what brought me to D.C. The Student Volunteer Movement2. Haven't we as believers come to know freedom internally -- freedom to genuinely worship our Creator, freedom to live a life that isn't given over to those natural base desires, but for greater purposes, greater possibilities? YES. I have been freed from so much and I want to be part of the freedom band.






Then I think about movements. What makes a movement a movement? The definition of a movement in one dictionary states. "a group of people working together to advance their shared ....ideas." More thoughts are spinning through my head. We look at some old books that Paul got off E-bay all about the FIRST Student Volunteer Movement. And then I remember what I read on the plane. It's a book I picked up almost four years ago but has been packed away in my parents storage room in Carson. A book called "The Vision".

As I consider what I read on the plane, I ask myself, Is this the cry of my heart? Sometimes. Sometimes it's not. But I want it to be. Here's "the vision"

The Vision - by Pete Greig

So this guy comes up to me and says:
“what’s the vision? What’s the big idea?”
I open my mouth and words come out like this:
The vision?
The vision is JESUS – obsessively, dangerously, undeniably Jesus.

The vision is an army of young people.
You see bones? I see an army.
And they are FREE from materialism.

They laugh at 9-5 little prisons.
They could eat caviar on Monday and crusts on Tuesday.
They wouldn’t even notice.
They know the meaning of the Matrix, the way the west was won.

They are mobile like the wind, they belong to the nations.
They need no passport.
People write their addresses in pencil and wonder at their strange existence.
They are free yet they are slaves of the hurting and dirty and dying.

What is the vision ?

The vision is holiness that hurts the eyes.
It makes children laugh and adults angry.
It gave up the game of minimum integrity long ago to reach for the stars.
It scorns the good and strains for the best.
It is dangerously pure.

Light flickers from every secret motive, every private conversation.
It loves people away from their suicide leaps, their Satan games.
This is an army that will lay down its life for the cause.
A million times a day its soldiers choose to loose,
that they might one day win
the great ‘Well done’ of faithful sons and daughters.

Such heroes are as radical on Monday morning as Sunday night.
They don’t need fame from names.
Instead they grin quietly upwards and hear the crowds chanting again and again: “COME ON!”

And this is the sound of the underground
The whisper of history in the making
Foundations shaking
Revolutionaries dreaming once again
Mystery is scheming in whispers
Conspiracy is breathing…
This is the sound of the underground

And the army is discipl(in)ed.
Young people who beat their bodies into submission.
Every soldier would take a bullet for his comrade at arms.
The tattoo on their back boasts “for me to live is Christ and to die is gain”.

Sacrifice fuels the fire of victory in their upward eyes.
Winners. Martyrs.
Who can stop them ?
Can hormones hold them back?
Can failure succeed?
Can fear scare them or death kill them ?

And the generation prays

like a dying man
with groans beyond talking,
with warrior cries, sulphuric tears and
with great barrow loads of laughter!
Waiting. Watching: 24 – 7 – 365.

Whatever it takes they will give: Breaking the rules. Shaking mediocrity from its cosy little hide. Laying down their rights and their precious little wrongs, laughing at labels, fasting essentials. The advertisers cannot mould them. Hollywood cannot hold them. Peer-pressure is powerless to shake their resolve at late night parties before the cockerel cries.

They are incredibly cool, dangerously attractive

Inside.

On the outside? They hardly care.
They wear clothes like costumes to communicate and celebrate but never to hide.
Would they surrender their image or their popularity?
They would lay down their very lives - swap seats with the man on death row - guilty as hell. A throne for an electric chair.

With blood and sweat and many tears, with sleepless nights and fruitless days,
they pray as if it all depends on God and live as if it all depends on them.

Their DNA chooses JESUS. (He breathes out, they breathe in.)
Their subconscious sings. They had a blood transfusion with Jesus.
Their words make demons scream in shopping centres.

Don’t you hear them coming?

Herald the weirdo’s! Summon the losers and the freaks.
Here come the frightened and forgotten with fire in their eyes.
They walk tall and trees applaud, skyscrapers bow, mountains are dwarfed by these children of another dimension.
Their prayers summon the hounds of heaven and invoke the ancient dream of Eden.

And this vision will be.
It will come to pass;
it will come easily;
it will come soon.

How do I know?

Because this is the longing of creation itself,
the groaning of the Spirit,
the very dream of God.

My tomorrow is his today.
My distant hope is his 3D.
And my feeble, whispered, faithless prayer invokes a thunderous, resounding, bone-shaking great ‘Amen!’ from countless angels, from hero’s of the faith, from Christ himself. And he is the original dreamer, the ultimate winner.

Guaranteed.


The Cambridge 7. A band of men. The movie "A Few Good Men" reminds me that it only takes a few who catch the vision and run with it. History is changed. People are touched. We are taken out of the context of the mundane and brought into the realm of global living. I can't afford to just think of myself. I can't afford to just think of my nation. He holds all nations in His hand.

And then I think of Iran. I'm praying for Iran - the people, the leaders......for freedom.