Our prayers were affecting the nation

Amid the fun of this year’s Limitless Festival, powerful prayer was changing lives on and beyond the campsite. As the tents came down, a sleep-deprived Tim Alford explained

Prayer practices for life
In keeping with our theme for the whole year, this year’s Limitless Festival was around prayer and equipping young people for a life of prayer.

We taught various practices: using the Lord’s Prayer; listening; prophesying over one another; silent prayer; intercession; praying in tongues and praying for healing. Whatever we did the young people were so up for it; so receptive and responsive. We had long periods of silent prayer. There were times where the roof was lifted off with loud shouts and cries of intercession. Other times they sang out new songs and prayed in or received the gift of tongues.

Impacting Britain from the campsite
The Festival took place as riots were wreaking havoc around the country. We dedicated a morning session to praying about that and invited teens up on stage from all the different towns affected. We asked each one to intercede on behalf of their community while the rest of the young people – and you’ve got to imagine there were 5,800 of us there – turned to face the youth groups from those particular communities.

A young person from Southport prayed and that night, for the first time since they kicked off, there weren’t any riots, just a peaceful protest.

What’s more, other riots planned for that night didn’t happen either. Things we did at the Festival were affecting the nation, and that’s really what we wanted our young people to see. The fact they could experience that power of prayer is amazing.

Stories of healing
I’ve just read a testimony from a girl who had scars on her back. She was prayed for at the Festival and they disappeared. We had a huge queue of people coming up to give healing testimonies at the event too. This wasn’t young people coming to the front and our ministry team praying for them; this was them praying for each another and seeing the people they were laying hands on being healed.

New faith at the festival
We obviously pray that people will come to know Jesus during the week, but we were still amazed to see 745 young people respond to the gospel.

One of my highlights was on the last night when two girls – a young youth leader and a teen around 16 to 18 – came up with tears running down their faces.

The youth leader had been praying all week that the girl would give her life to Jesus, but whenever there was an altar call she hadn’t responded.

On the last night she’d arrived at the meeting late after packing down and told the girl, “Come on, tonight’s your night,” but for some reason we’d given the altar call before the message. Although 200 people had responded, this girl wasn’t one of them.

The youth leader prayed, “Would you put it in their minds to do another altar call.” And sure enough, we decided to give another opportunity to respond to the gospel. This girl came forward at the eleventh hour and gave her life to Jesus.

It’s those sorts of beautiful stories that make it all worth it.

This article first appeared in Direction Magazine. For further details, please click here.

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