Generation Unleashed

 

A dear friend of mine sent me a whatsapp video of his 18 month old daughter taking her first two clumsy, stumbling, and yet awe-inspiring steps on her own tonight. And as he followed that video up with a half laughing, half choked up phone call, I knew that this was a moment he and his wife would tuck deep into the memory bank of things they will never forget.

This past weekend I had the extraordinary privilege to be a part of a moment that resonated deep within me, and has quite possibly become one such marker in my life.
Five years ago I met a couple named Geoff and Jane Kirsten who quite literally birthed dreams and awakened wells in my heart through one very late night of conversation. Coffees were drunk, my mind raced and plans and schemes formed as the embers of the dreamer inside of me were breathed upon.

Five years on, we met up again, four days ago, in a parking lot in Joburg as they squashed me into the front seat of their car bound for a 3 day student camp (a group called Satellite from 3CI) in the bush. Things have changed. I am no longer a skinny, wide eyed, awkward Durban teenager...I am now a skinny, wide-eyed, awkward, Cape Tonian pastor and they have blossomed into parents with wild stories of victories and scars. But as we drove and chatted something burned within me again. A sense of something new. As Chris Wienand says, there was a strange sense of electricity in the air, and the three of us could almost touch it!

Friday, Saturday and Sunday followed as a group of +-150 Pretoria based students and one red-haired, red-faced preacher felt a seizmic shift in our hearts and in our destinies. The stuffy, over-bearing, stiff and powerless imposter of religion was pushed aside as the cosmic, wild and joy-filled Gospel of Christ cut a clear and decisive picture and reality in the deep recesses of our souls and minds. Shallow moments of religious nods and hat-tippings were discarded with abandon for a life of diving again and again into the wild, unpredictable but all satisfying depths of His goodness. Salvations, baptisms, tears, repentance, joy, unhindered worship were the order of the weekend as the Spirit of God shook the bottle and began to loosen the top.

What happens next keeps me awake tonight. Just like 5 years ago, my heart is dripping with anticipation and unbridled excitement. Is it possible that I get to live THIS life?
 I feel like a teenager before a big date.

Or a parent watching breathless as their child takes her first few steps...

A generation is about to be unleashed.