'See You at the Pole:' Millions of Students Pray for Spiritual Awakening
Millions of students across the country and globally are participating in a "See You at the Pole" event at their schools today, praying for a spiritual awakening, the theme chosen for the 22nd annual prayer rally.
"If two or more people join together and pray for something, that can move mountains and I love that," Illinois high school student Lasha Lobo told The Christian Post on Tuesday. "I love that I can go to school without feeling like I'm drowning in the sea of high school."
See You at the Pole, the global day of student prayer, began in 1990 as a grass roots movement with ten students praying at their school. More than two decades later, millions around the world pray on their campuses on the fourth Wednesday in September.
Organizers say SYATP is simply a prayer rally where students meet at the school flagpole before school to lift up their friends, families, teachers, school, and nation to God. SYATP is a student-initiated, student-organized, and student-led event.
The See You at the Pole theme this year is "Awaken" and the Scripture is Ephesians 3:14–21, which reads:
"For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father… I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts…And I pray that you… grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and…that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine…"
SYATP organizer Doug Clark told CP this year's event is critically important.
"Our nation, with all the division that we have right now, really needs a moral and spiritual awakening. Part of See You at the Pole is a call to the Body of Christ, including parents to be involved in an extraordinary commitment to pray," Clark said.
He urges parents, teachers, and other Christian leader to continue encouraging students to consider and pray about how they can reach their campus and be missionaries at their school.
"Any place that God puts a believer is a mission field. The fact that students are spending so many hours a week at their school it should be self-evident to them that God has put them in that place to minister," Clark said.
See You at the Pole provides an opportunity for students to enter into a whole year of ministry, he said.
"It's a launching pad for them to begin by praying together which is the most important first thing to do, but then to consider what God might be saying to them about how they would reach their friends," Clark explained. "They can do that through on-campus groups. It might be a club they start. It could be outreach things they do at their school. It could be finding ways to pray for the needs of others at the school in a regular ongoing way. Also, it could be enlisting adults in the churches around their schools as another layer of support and encouragement in the same way that we would support a missionary that goes overseas."
Lobo, who is a junior at Fulton High School, said she likes to help organize the event with her friends on campus.
"I want others to know the correct truth and not something false that they believe or were told was true," she said.
"Whether a single student standing alone, two or three huddled together in unity, or hundreds gathered in front of the school, See You at the Pole is about students praying for awakening on campuses all over the world," organizers stated.
On the Web: http://syatp.com/.