Today, the fourth Wednesday of September, millions of students around the country and the world will rally around the flagpoles at their schools before starting classes. This year’s theme is “wholehearted”, taken from the Scriptures in Jeremiah: “If you look for ME wholeheartedly, you will find ME.” (New Living Translation of Jeremiah 29:13)
Students from every state in the country and more than 60 foreign countries (including Canada, the Congo, Ecuador, Ghana, Hong Kong, South Korea, Scotland, and South Africa) will gather, or already have gathered, around their flagpoles to offer prayers to the Maker of the universe.
The event had an inauspicious beginning. A few students in Burleson, Texas, in September 1990 gathered together to pray informally for their friends, their school, and their country. In one year the event exploded, with more than a million students holding similar prayer meetings around the country.
The event is led by students, and often includes singing hymns and worship songs, reading passages from Scripture, and then breaking into small groups of two or three to pray more intimately. After about 15 minutes some students will go on a prayer walk around their school, praying for those who weren’t able to attend or weren’t interested in the event.
Although student-led, the event is often assisted by groups such as Campus Ministry Network (CMN), National Network of Youth Ministries, Claim Your Campus, and Youth for Christ. CMN offers an agenda:
- Pray with thanks to God;
- Pray for students all over the world;
- Pray for your teachers and professors;
- Pray for your families;
- Pray for your friends;
- Pray for those in your circle;
- And, most of all, pray that you will wholeheartedly seek God.
John Gill’s exposition on the Bible explains what happens when people seek the Lord wholeheartedly:
They always find Him; a God hearing prayer; a God in Christ; bestowing favors upon them; granting them His presence; indulging them in communion with Him; favoring them with fresh supplies of His grace and everything needful for them; and granting them every mercy, temporal and spiritual.
The potential audience is enormous. The latest poll from The Wall Street Journal and the University of Chicago’s NORC learned that a third of those polled in March between the ages of 18 and 29 consider religion as “very important” in their lives.
Freedom to gather without government interference in the United States remains firmly in place. John Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute (whose purpose “is to make the government play by the rules of the Constitution”), said:
It’s important that students, teachers, and others know about their right to participate in See You at the Pole events – a right affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court. The rallies are part of a long tradition of free and equal participation in expressive activities guaranteed by our Constitution.
There is little doubt that another Scripture verse will be quoted during the rallies, one that reflects the desperate spiritual condition of the culture and the overwhelming need for His intervention — 2 Chronicles 7:14:
If my people, who are called by My Name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My Face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
