The Burning Hearts 21-Day Adventure not only radically changed my life personally but also made a huge impact on my college campus.
It all started summer 2013, when I was out surfing and I ran into a friend from high school. She invited me to do a prayer challenge and the next night I found myself signing a commitment paper, agreeing to pray an hour a day, be sexually pure and sober, and being more bold in my faith. After doing the challenge, I experienced revival in my faith. I was still a new Christian, only a year and a half, but I never knew how intimate I really could be with Jesus. After the challenge, not only was I completely in love with Jesus, but I had a real, amazing, living, intimate relationship with Him! My love for him and for life grew with every minute I spent with him. Intentionally spending an hour a day with him overflowed to the rest of my day and I found myself constantly thinking and praising him and constantly looking for ways to be used.
At the end of the summer, I moved back down to Point Loma Nazarene University to start my junior year of college. I was bubbling over with my excitement about my newfound relationship with Christ. I kept talking about this challenge I had done multiple times that summer and decided to immediately invite my friends to do the 21-day adventure with me. That September 1st, 11 of my friends and I met in a conference room in the library and began the 21-day adventure together!!!
During this time, another friend of mine who had done the adventure with me during the summer, AJ, was also doing the 21-day adventure with 4 friends also on Point Loma’s campus.
By September 22, God had done HUGE things in all 15 of us. We all had a spark for Jesus and we weren’t quiet about it! At this point, AJ and I decided that starting October 1, we would lead a group together for another wave of the 21-day challenge because of the work we saw God doing. I had the opportunity to share my testimony that week at a college Young Life meeting on my campus. Of course, my excitement about prayer made its way to become the main aspect of my whole story. By the end of the night I had challenged all 40 students to join me in another 21-day challenge. That same week, one of the boys from AJ’s group decided to share his experiences with the challenge at a youth group that met on our campus and the room ended up filling with both high school and college students from the area. By the end of that night, we had 50 people’s names and emails that wanted to do the 21-day challenge the next month.
By the night of October 1st, we had 150 people signed up to do the challenge and get a daily encouraging email everyday! We went from 15 people to 150!!! 150 hours of prayer every single day was happening on Point Loma’s campus. This was a prayer revival. There was a spark around campus as I kept overhearing people talking about “their hour with God” that day. It was incredible.
Since I first started this challenge July 1, 2013, I have spent an hour with God everyday. Many people that I have journeyed through this challenge with have decided to commit to spending more daily time with God as well. For me, it has become my lifeblood, my source of peace and energy, and the way I am able to stay in God’s word and not miss his voice. Time spent with the Lord is non-negotiable in my life now because I know how life giving it is. Every single day, I am able to remind myself Who I belong to. I never want to get to a place in my life where I think I do not need this time with Him. He is the breath in my lungs and the reason for my life.
