The Vision
by Pete Greig

So this guy comes up to me and says "what's the vision? What's the big idea?" I open my mouth and words come out like this…
The vision?

The vision is JESUS obsessively, dangerously, undeniably Jesus.

The vision is an army of young people.

You see bones? I see an army. And they are FREE from materialism.

They laugh at 9-5 little prisons.
They could eat caviar on Monday and crusts on Tuesday.
They wouldn't even notice.
They know the meaning of the Matrix, the way the west was won.
They are mobile like the wind, they belong to the nations. They need no passport.. People write their addresses in pencil and wonder at their strange existence.
They are free yet they are slaves of the hurting and dirty and dying.
What is the vision ?
The vision is holiness that hurts the eyes. It makes children laugh and adults angry. It gave up the game of minimum integrity long ago to reach for the stars. It scorns the good and strains for the best. It is dangerously pure.

Light flickers from every secret motive, every private conversation.
It loves people away from their suicide leaps, their Satan games.
This is an army that will lay down its life for the cause.
A million times a day its soldiers

choose to lose
that they might one day win
the great 'Well done' of faithful sons and daughters.

Such heroes are as radical on Monday morning as Sunday night. They don't need fame from names. Instead they grin quietly upwards and hear the crowds chanting again and again: "COME ON!"

And this is the sound of the underground
The whisper of history in the making
Foundations shaking
Revolutionaries dreaming once again
Mystery is scheming in whispers
Conspiracy is breathing…
This is the sound of the underground

And the army is discipl(in)ed.

Young people who beat their bodies into submission.

Every soldier would take a bullet for his comrade at arms.
The tattoo on their back boasts "for me to live is Christ and to die is gain".

Sacrifice fuels the fire of victory in their upward eyes. Winners. Martyrs. Who can stop them ?
Can hormones hold them back?
Can failure succeed? Can fear scare them or death kill them ?

And the generation prays

like a dying man
with groans beyond talking,
with warrior cries, sulphuric tears and
with great barrow loads of laughter!
Waiting. Watching: 24-– 7-365.

Whatever it takes they will give: Breaking the rules. Shaking mediocrity from its cosy little hide. Laying down their rights and their precious little wrongs, laughing at labels, fasting essentials. The advertisers cannot mould them. Hollywood cannot hold them. Peer-pressure is powerless to shake their resolve at late night parties before the cockerel cries.

They are incredibly cool, dangerously attractive

inside.

On the outside? They hardly care. They wear clothes like costumes to communicate and celebrate but never to hide.
Would they surrender their image or their popularity?
They would lay down their very lives - swap seats with the man on death row - guilty as hell. A throne for an electric chair.

With blood and sweat and many tears, with sleepless nights and fruitless days,

they pray as if it all depends on God and live as if it all depends on them.

Their DNA chooses JESUS. (He breathes out, they breathe in.)
Their subconscious sings. They had a blood transfusion with Jesus.
Their words make demons scream in shopping centres.
Don't you hear them coming?
Herald the weirdo's! Summon the losers and the freaks. Here come the frightened and forgotten with fire in their eyes. They walk tall and trees applaud, skyscrapers bow, mountains are dwarfed by these children of another dimension. Their prayers summon the hounds of heaven and invoke the ancient dream of Eden.

And this vision will be. It will come to pass; it will come easily; it will come soon.
How do I know? Because this is the longing of creation itself, the groaning of the Spirit, the very dream of God. My tomorrow is his today. My distant hope is his 3D. And my feeble, whispered, faithless prayer invokes a thunderous, resounding, bone-shaking great 'Amen!' from countless angels, from hero's of the faith, from Christ himself. And he is the original dreamer, the ultimate winner.

Guaranteed.

If you want to know more information on this I would urge you to go to 24-7 Prayer online. God is doing something great in the world. This is neither evangelical nor liberal protestant,it is beyond all normal monicres that we placefaith. It is a powerful movement that is bringing more and more of the disenfranchised into faith in Christ. Maybe I have been focusing too much on this homosexuality thing and not enough on Christ. My heart still aches when I hear the misinformation that I hear in the world, but I know that I am able to do nothing without Christ. I will neither preach anti- or pro- on the homosexual issue from the pulpit because there is where the Gospel needs to be delivered. I will preach on message and one message alone and that is pro-Christ and will never worry about the offense that that message can bring to those that find it offensive. Christ is offensive because He causes us to face our own ugliness. Life...Death...what does it matter, outside of Christ there is only death, but in Christ is a fullness of life that only He can give. He causes me to fall to my knees crying out that I need more. The Holy Spirit is working heavily in the world the only question is, "Will you take part?" It is a faith question and in it is risk.

I cry out because I see a world hungry for Christ, but we get sidetracked in our own agendas...name them...post-modernism...evangelicalism...denominationalism...non-conformism...liberalism....conservatism... what does it matter. Like Ecclesiastes cries out, "All is vanity!" We place value in meaninglessness. I am labeled because I hold views that are "conservative" by some and "liberal" by others. Some of faith call me a "liberal protestant" where others call me an "evangelical fundamentalist." I find no joy in any of these titles and don't really seek to satisfy them, but look to only satisfy the one and only King, Jesus Christ. The only one who meets us where we are and loves us as we are, but doesn't want us to stay there. I still remember when I truly met Jesus and from that moment on my life has been a mess. Oh, glorious Christ, You turned my world upside-down and continually do so, if only everyone could know this wonderful uncertainty.