by Carla Williams
As enthusiasm for the new year infiltrates our days, we remember a different kind of excitement we experienced at Emerald Hills a few years ago – the contagious thrill of intentional prayer!
This was it.
We’d been talking for months about Light the Fire, the 10-year continuous prayer movement for the unreached nations. Since Team Expansion is an organization committed to planting churches among the least-reached people of the world, it was only natural for our home office to sign up for a week of focused prayer.
We began planning, filling open slots, and setting up the prayer room. Despite these preparations, I don’t think we realized how big the task was until the night we received our turn.
We had agreed to cover the second week in January – the second week of the whole movement. The first week had been claimed by Northside Christian Church in New Albany, Indiana. As they wrapped up their week and we began ours, we invited representatives from Northside to join us for an evening of celebration and fellowship.
Our campus, Emerald Hills, is always breathtaking, but there’s something especially glorious about our Prayer Center and Atrium after dark. The winter night and the low lights mingled in the beautiful cedar room, and the combination resulted in something soft and sacred, inviting and holy. As we stood in this sanctuary, hearing the testimony of those before us and uniting our voices in earnest worship and prayer, we experienced a small taste of what was coming.
Though our time with the Northside group was short, it was full of wisdom and excitement. As they tried to capture an explanation for their week of prayer, it was clear that they had been transformed. Their testimonies revealed softened hearts, renewed purpose and hopeful determination. We listened to their stories with a strange combination of optimism and apprehension.
After all, we weren’t without our challenges. Northside is a church of more than 5,000 people. At the best of times, there are 25 people working at Emerald Hills. With so few, we were each looking at a minimum of seven hours of prayer throughout the week. On top of this, our week to pray coincided with Launch, our intensive training program for new and potential Kingdom workers. All of us would be involved with the Launch participants to varying degrees, leaving us even fewer hours to spare.
And yet, we believed in the Light the Fire movement. With every ounce of our organization, we wanted to see the lost and unreached of the world receive the grace of God through Jesus Christ, and we dreamed of all people united in praise to our glorious Father. We recognized and celebrated the overwhelming power of earnest prayer. We desired to be challenged and transformed as individuals, as families, as an organization, as a nation.
We hoped to build on what the first week had already accomplished and to add momentum for the weeks to come.
And so, we accepted the torch – pushing aside our hesitation and fully embracing the excitement of joining in a united, global movement to see the redemption of the world realized.
