DAVID ADAMS speaks to Robin Johnson, founder of the Million Praying Men initiative, about his dream to see men everywhere be the men “He destined us to be”…
Robin Johnson has been involved in prayer movements both in Australia and Asia for years and during that time has seen God move among people in amazing ways. But when God last year gave him a vision for a million men praying, it still came as something of a surprise.
The New Zealand-born, Melbourne-based missionary says his initial reaction was that God had “dialed the wrong number”. But then God told him he wasn’t worried about who he was – He was interested only in who he was going to be. “And that was even more scary.”
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“It was just a sense of ‘God, there is so much more, we’ve only barely scratched the surface’. How do we find that place where we can change whole communities; where we can actually change a nation, the direction of nations, and not in the sense…(of) political power or things like that. It’s got nothing to do with that – it’s about people’s lives being changed…”– Robin Johnson |
Last month Johnson’s vision began to unfold as a group of about 60 men gathered at Stairway Church in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs to hold the first event being run under the banner of the Million Praying Men initiative.
“It was one of the most outstanding nights of ministry that I have seen in months and months and months,” says Johnson, who hopes it will be the first of many events to be held in the coming months.
The Million Praying Men initiative is calling on Christian men all around the world to join with others in praying for everything from their families and churches to governments and those who don’t yet know Christ.
Men are encouraged to join the initiative by signing up on the Million Praying Men website (www.millionprayingmen.com) and, by doing so, adopt an eight point pledge in which they say they’ll pray, read the Bible and seek the Holy Spirit every day, live a holy life, witness to unsaved, pursue justice for the poor, be generous, and encourage others to join the prayer movement.
Johnson says the pledge is to encourage men rather than to be taken as a “legal document”. “The last thing I want is men waking up a month after signing up and being condemned because they haven’t achieved the goal.”
But he says it touches on the fact that prayer is linked to other aspects of a Christian walk.
“It’s all very well to say let’s pray but there’s a certain life we need to live…We’re living in a day where it’s easy grace – I think the term that’s being bandied around is ‘hyper-grace’ – (and there’s) almost an overemphasis in that you can decide to live as you want and be a mate of Jesus at the same time,” he says.
“(With) true Biblical Christianity…yes, He wants to be our mate but there’s a huge responsibility with being that mate and it comes down to the way that we live and the lifestyle we live. We need men to rise, we need men to be the men of God that God planned that they would be; that God dreams that we can be; that He destined us to be.”
Johnson, who along with wife Janette has been ministering into Asia for the past 25 years and attend the Australia for Christ Church in the Melbourne suburb of Rowville, says God first began sowing the vision of encouraging more men to pray last year when he was prompted reread a book called Rees Howells’ Intercessor by missionary, writer and theologian Norman Grubb. It tells of how Howells’ prayers “literally changed world events” including during the course of World War II.
As he read it, Johnson says he felt a new passion for prayer develop. “Really that became the cry of my heart – ‘Jesus, I really need to learn to pray again’.”
Johnson says that while he’s seen “some wonderful things happen” during the time he’s spent ministering in Asia – “we’ve seen moves of God, we’ve seen outpourings in our ministry, we’ve seen things change (and) we know God is a God who answers prayer” – he began to feel that there was still “so much more”.
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Robin Johnson |
“It was just a sense of ‘God, there is so much more, we’ve only barely scratched the surface’,” he recalls. “How do we find that place where we can change whole communities; where we can actually change a nation, the direction of nations.
“(N)ot in the sense…(of) political power or things like that. It’s got nothing to do with that – it’s about people’s lives being changed…That’s always been our bottom line and it always will be. A…God who redeems humanity. That’s the beginning and the end – everything else is servant to that one fact – that we’re here to redeem humanity in Jesus’ name.”
God subsequently took Johnson to a passage in I Timothy in which Paul urges people to pray and in particular to 2:8 – “Therefore I want the men everywhere to pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or disputing.”
“The words, they just leapt off the page,” Johnson says. “I almost felt embarrassed sittiong there with the Lord saying, ‘I’ve taught on these verses before, I’ve preached on this stuff.’ Not that I got it wrong, it was just so fresh.”
The Scripture stayed with him and while Johnson initially thought maybe God had given him the message to present it at a conference he was attending in Asia last year, God had other plans. On 11th September last year, while Johnson was spending some time in prayer, the Holy Spirit “just visited” for about six hours and God began to “impregnate into my heart the vision for a million praying men”.
It was four days before Johnson plucked up the courage to tell his wife and when he did, she confirmed what God had shown him. Further confirmations – some from complete strangers – followed and “it’s just gone on from there,” says Johnson. This culminated in the launching of his vision at the National Day of Prayer and Fasting in Canberra earlier this year.
Johnson is not someone who buys into the idea that church doesn’t suit men – after all, he says, he’s a man – and says that while he knows lots of men who pray, the initiative is aimed at encouraging more to do so. He says that it’s interesting that when-ever women hear him talking about the initiative, they’ve been grateful for it.
“(T)hey’re saying, ‘We want the men to stand up; we want them to take their place’…” he says. “Women are saying to me (that) ‘We can fulfil our destiny if the men stand up with us’.”
Both Johnson and his wife feel that sowing into the younger generations is an important part of what the initiative is all about.
“Forty odd years ago men put trust in me as a young man – they saw something in my life…and they invested their life into me,” he says. “We’re probably on the latter side of life in the sense that we’re both in our early 60s…and with the years that we’ve got left, what we need to do is do what was done to us – just invest the deposit of God that we have that they may take it and do greater and more marvelous things than we ever did.”
