I remember meeting for coffee with one young person Sophia, she had this idea, to spend 24 hours unplugged from our devices, to draw closer to God, to detach from the busyness and relentlessness of notifications and be with God. So, we hosted a 24 hour ‘digital detox’.
We locked ourselves in the 24/7 prayer room in the car park, put all our phones in a locked safe and prayed, worshipped, sat in silence, cried out to God, studied the Bible, drew, painted, and focussed our attention on the divine. There was one phone in the room, that was my ‘baby phone’, we were expecting our first child, but it certainly felt in that first digital detox that God was birthing something new in our midst.
One of the leaders Rebecca had been reminded of the scripture from Song of Songs 2. “See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come.” There was a real sense that God was birthing faith, newness, singing, and that invitational culture.
The thing with creating space for prayer is that we hand it all to God. We can so easily become performers, pretenders, the master of ceremonies, gameshow hosts in youth ministry, but in the place of prayer we listen to Gods leading. And not only that. With the theme of peer-to-peer evangelism in the place of prayer we create opportunities for young people to find compassion, passion, direction, and the Holy Spirit. That’s to say as we focussed our prayers on those that don’t know Jesus yet, we find compassion, a gut-wrenching compassion for the lost. And with that, an unshakable passion/desire to reach the lost for Jesus, to communicate the gospel to them and to invite them to ‘taste and see.’
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