One Million Young Christians Fast and Pray This Decade

Christian leaders are
calling on one million people, particularly youth in the United States, to fast
and pray, at the beginning of each year this decade, for a spiritual awakening.
The Roaring Twenties Fast (see thinke.org) aims to cultivate
expectant hope for another great spiritual awakening in America and in the
nations around the world amid bitter divisions and political turmoil.

At
a gathering of young leaders in 2019, Passion Movement founder Louie Giglio
used the phrase The
Roaring Twenties to refer to what he expects God will be
doing on earth in the upcoming decade.

Dr.
Malachi O’Brien, a pastor and leader within the Southern Baptist Convention,
sees many direct correlations between the 1920s and the 2020s—politically,
spiritually, and economically. “The decade began one way; it ended a vastly
different way,” O’Brien says. He senses God’s direction to call one million
young people to fast and pray through the next decade—especially given the way
prayer has shaped recent decades.

In
1995, Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade (now Cru), issued a call for
fasting in hopes of spiritual revival. The idea was considered radical at the
time, O’Brien notes. But by the end of the 1990s, two global 24/7 prayer
movements were launched, one in the United Kingdom and one in the United
States. 

O’Brien
believes the Lord wants to mark a new generation with spiritual hunger and
thirst. He longs for them to know that “there is something powerful that
happens when we really consecrate ourselves to a place of fasting and prayer.”

Jon
Groves, digital mission director of Think Eternity, says, “The younger
generations have rarely been taught about fasting and thus do not know the
power of it.”

Groves
explains the vision: “Throughout history, communication shifts and true
revivals have walked hand in hand. The printing press and Martin Luther.
Movable-type printing and George Whitefield. Television and Billy Graham. And
today, in the biggest communication shift in 500 years … social media apps and
networks exploding by the millions every single day.

“There
has never been a greater opportunity to flood the world and saturate the air
with the message of the gospel—to raise up digital Billy Grahams, cultural
missionaries, to take Christ to culture,” Groves says. “My prayer is that [this
vision] does not end in January, but that its ripple will be seen and the roar
will be heard for generations to come, the next great awakening.” 

–Brandon Showalter, adapted from The Christian Post.