Pacôme is a 2nd year law student in Lille, France. He loves sport and also has a specific love for Italy. This is his story of how God has been giving Him a heart to see His uni turn back to God. God is on the move in France!
In August 2016 I was praying with my friend at his house and we both had the same revelation: we need to dream!
God does not call us to have a limited vision of Him, but to dream big about how He can act in our lives. Just after the beginning of term in September I asked God simply to show me how I could go about sharing the Good News of Jesus with people at my uni. A few weeks later God laid the idea on my heart of starting a prayer group for my uni. I wondered where I might begin and who might come with me on this…
As I spoke to some of my friends about it, they told me about another student from my church who’d had the same idea the year before, but it had never taken off. I managed to meet her a little while later at the end of a service, and went straight over to her to talk about this prayer group that God had put on my heart. The more I told her all the details of what God had been speaking to me about, the more her face lit up with a massive smile.
She started telling me everything God had been saying to her about the same prayer group. She said she also wasn't alone in it, as two of her friends came over and started talking about what God had been saying to them too. The more we shared about this prayer group, the more we realised that the visions we had fit perfectly and this whole thing had been planned before I had even prayed it. For us, this day was an answer to prayer and a confirmation that this idea was actually God’s idea and His will.
Since then we've started meeting together each week whenever we can fit it in. Each time we meet, as we each bring our own questions and uncertainties, the Holy Spirit reveals to us afresh God’s heart for our uni to turn back to Him!
As I write this story, we still don’t know exactly how God intends to use us, but He has already given us some clues of what it might look like. He wants us to show His love to our uni, and to bless these students before we start to talk to them about Jesus.
I have personally been holding onto the verses in Ezekiel 37 where God tells Ezekiel to prophesy over the dry bones that they will live again. He tells Ezekiel to declare life over what is dead!
What we see all around us is a pile of bones, a field of the dead. But Jesus commands us to speak, in His name, to what is dead and without hope or salvation, so that by our prayers the Spirit of life might come and bring this place back to life for the glory of God! Our uni is a place void of life, but by the grace of our Saviour and His Spirit we possess something that our world does not know: true new life.
Even today, a friend shared a vision with me that she’d had several years ago without realising that it was for this very same prayer group and that it reflects perfectly a prayer I had just prayed. She said that the work God has given us to do will go far beyond what we had imagined, that this work will spark off a national revival. For He is the One who can do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine according to the power of Christ at work in us.
Lastly, I wanted to say that all of this is only possible because we are a generation with prayer behind us. Our parents and grandparents have prayed a lot for us and for a time such as this! I won’t go into all the details, but this move of God is the outworking of a life of prayer that we live here as a group and that many people have already lived and are still living around the world! Each of us is a small part of a massive assembly, joined for the glory of God. We join in with what Jesus prayed in Matt 6:10, as He calls by prayer for His Father’s kingdom to come.
May your Kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.
My prayer for you is that God would draw you closer into His Father heart each day; it’s the best thing I could hope for you!
