Campus California

Hello friends! I was sitting in church minding my own business when suddenly I felt a bowling ball sized hole in my chest. I couldn’t stop weeping for over three hours. That was six years ago and life is completely different now.

I was reading the book ‘Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire’ by Jim Cymbala the summer before my sophomore year in college in 2005 when suddenly I found myself on my knees crying out to God for my campus. Within a week of getting back to school I had a burning zeal to gather students together to pray, and I met a guy named Alex who had been doing the same thing for three years. He gave me the book ‘Red Moon Rising’ by Pete Greig. I devoured it in two days and realized this growing movement of prayer on my campus was a part of something MUCH bigger than us!

We had an explosive first-ever 24 hour prayer room in Spring 2006. Little did we know that over 80 campuses across the nation were partnering in prayer too! The entire semester was covered with non-stop prayer, then a bunch of us strangers caught up in the Wind of the Spirit gathered to figure out what the heck God was doing in San Diego, CA that summer.

I remember talking to a girl from Ohio named Paige. Everything was so similar: the burden to pray in the fall, growing momentum throughout the school year followed by joining the semester of unbroken prayer… and she was halfway across the country!

A young fiery revivalist named Jaeson Ma gathered a handful of students from about a dozen universities in southern california the next year. He implanted in us a DNA lifestyle of Intimacy with God and a passion for the Great Commission expressed through planting simple expressions of church on our campuses. We became a family and the majority of those people are still actively involved in the campus prayer movement, planting churches, or traveling the world starting businesses that transform culture and give open doors for the Gospel, or entering the media and entertainment culture.

The summer after I graduated in 2008 God put a vision in my heart for seeing 24-7 prayer connected across universities in California. I emailed it to my friends Wendy Andrews and Allison Brooks from Campus America. They responded with the State Coordinator job description that had eerily similar language to what I had just written. They invited me to fill the void and I accepted. I have been living out my literal visions and dreams ever since.

However, it has been hard. Without a team of friends around me the ‘task’ seemed to great to handle on my own shoulders. I questioned my ability to ‘do’ this and went to our national gathering in Minneapolis last May wanting to quit. When I walked into the message a bit late the first words I hear from Rustin our Executive Director are ‘this is impossible and we cannot do this along. We are weak and we need God.’ I received the comfort and answers I needed.The task seemed too large because it is. It’s a God sized dream that requires constant petitions on our knees.

Then everything changed on July 1st, 2009 when Jesus invited me to travel around the country to pursue intimacy with him instead of going on a missions trip to Egypt. I’ve dived deep into my Father’s arms and learned about the passion of Jesus. I’ve stayed at mansions in Utah, meth addicts in Kansas and the Campus America National Team in Kansas City.

I worked at two state fairs where some days I made less than $5 and learned what it’s like to not have enough to provide for your daily needs. I’ve met countless people who live on the street and continue to teach me how to humble myself like Jesus; I’ve been to the IHOP Student Awakening services where the Holy Spirit always encounters me powerfully and I got to pray for students and share the Campus America vision at the Urbana student missions conference to usher in the new year too.

Life is radically different than it was before I left California, and I KNOW that widespread awakening to the awesome love of Jesus is imminent, beginning on college campuses. How do I know that? Because I SEE it!

Blessings,

Justin