“Freedom” – a week of continuous night-and-day prayer in Thurrock

“They are free yet they are slaves of the dirty & the dying”

from The Vision poem by Pete Grieg

24-7 PRAYER WEEK – “Freedom”

Sunday midday 18 November to Sunday midday 25 November
@
The Boiler Room
217 Southend Road
Stanford-le-Hope

Come and pray with us… see the times available below and contact Robb Harman on robbharman@btconnect.com to book your slot!

THE VISION by Pete Greig (1999)

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 weirdoes!
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 heroes of the faith, from Christ himself.

And he is the original dreamer, the ultimate winner.
Guaranteed.

>>> watch The Vision here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-tl9fPy7bk (with words spoken by Pete Greig, music by the Mills Bros. and graphics by Relevant)

“The Vision” is a rally cry to generation tired of luke warm Christianity. Play to hear the heart of the 24-7 Prayer movement and read on to find out how it was written.

Before long The Vision was being printed in magazines, remixed by DJ’s in New York and Sweden and even choreographed in Spain! In August 2001 The Vision was published in a magazine called ‘The Way’ which circulates a staggering 100,000 underground churches in China. The very same week the words were quoted by 10,000’s of American young people at an event called ‘The Call’ in Washington DC. Somehow the words scrawled on a Prayer Room wall had taken on a life of their own. The Vision had become a personal mission-statement for many – a generational call to arms.

>>> watch also here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6AHZYzRhok (with music by Sigur Ros)
>>> and here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koUcySLfalo (with graphics by Freedom House Church)