Revival Sweeps Baylor: 3,000 Students in 72-Hour Prayer
Baylor University is the latest college campus to experience revival. Thousands of students recently joined to pray for revival for 72 straight hours.
“It’s a week given to prayer,” Charles Ramsey, Ph.D., associate chaplain and director for Chapel and Campus Ministries at Baylor, wrote in a social media post. “Prayer is powerful. Things happen when we pray.”
Students prayed from March 30 through April 2. Around 3,000 students gathered on the first night to worship, pray and listen to speaker Lisa Koons from the 24-7 Prayer movement. “Your primary calling isn’t 100 things — it is one thing,” she said. “And if you get that one thing right, you will have a fuller measure of resources to live out the other things more rightly.”
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By the end of the three-day event, 35 students gave their lives to God, and many of those students took part in water baptisms. “He transformed my life, and I want to live every day for him,” one student said before being baptized.
Baylor has a long history of seeking revival. Students prayed for 90 straight days for revival in 1945, organizers said. “The movement that God brought was felt throughout Texas, the South and even as far as Hawaii and helped develop ministries like the Journeyman mission program and the Passion Conference,” according to their website.
Ramsey said the desire for revival and spiritual awakening is still present decades later and serves as the inspiration for students.
“The 1945 generation experienced revival, a spiritual awakening that brought a searing clarity about what is truly important,” he said. “They understood that faith was not simply a good thing but rather it was the vital element of a good life.”
What some have referred to as a potential new Great Awakening in the United States started on the campus of Asbury University in Wilmore, Ky. where thousands of Christians gathered for two weeks of Spirit-led worship, prayer and repentance. Since then, the outpouring has spread around the country, especially among young people, with similar movements appearing across America.
A similar response by students occurred at Baylor in 2023.
–Dwight Widaman
