Awaken the Dawn预览

Churches and Lightning Strikes

I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. —John 8:12, ESV

Soon after our first experience of 24-7 prayer, we became addicts. We began doing 24-7 prayer events for weeks on end every few months. It was messy, loud, and real. They were just as much worship events as they were prayer events since as much of our time was spent singing as anything else.

During the late-night shift of one of these early 24-7 prayer gatherings, something amazing happened as a handful of teenage girls were praying in the prayer room. It is amazing how little convincing it takes to get people to attend prayer gatherings when God is present. In that 3:00 a.m. prayer meeting, one of the girls had a vision of a lightning bolt striking and staying permanently in our city. God spoke to these girls that because of their prayers He was about to do something powerful that was going to have a lasting impact on our region. The permanent lightning bolt represented an ongoing move of God that was coming to Fredericksburg, Virginia, and these young girls had the audacity to believe that their voices directly contributed to its arrival. They began to pray in agreement with what they were hearing as they danced around the room in the middle of the night.

I woke up the next morning to a frantic phone call. As the girls prayed, a lightning bolt struck the church!

While they were praying about the vision of the permanent lightning bolt striking, actual lightning hit the building where they were. To all of our shock, the lightning bolt put a hole in the ceiling of the worship center right above the podium. We had to put a bucket on the platform to catch the rainwater.

Soon phone calls and feedback started pouring in. One parent said that every time they asked their daughter what happened at the gathering, she would just start crying, as she was so overwhelmed by the love of Jesus. One group of youth who had been with us at the event went back to their hometown a few hours’ drive from us. Three years later, we were told they were still experiencing a move of God as a result of what God did when the “lightning” struck. This was the stuff of dreams.

The glory and power of God is overwhelming.