06/02/2026
Here is a remarkable story & testimony that Pete Greig shares from his book Dirty Glory of a whole community being radically transformed by the gospel.
Aimee was chatting to her friend John at university when she realized that her slot in a prayer room was looming. ‘Oh, I’ve got to go,’ she said. ‘I’ve got an appointment with God!’
Noticing John’s understandable surprise, she plucked up the courage to ask if he would like to join her. And so, a little later that day, John found himself stepping into a place of continual prayer.
He was blown away completely and unexpectedly by the presence of God. ‘During that hour,’ he wrote, ‘I accepted Christ and cannot tell you how life-changing the experience has been for me.’ John began to return regularly to the prayer room, and the Holy Spirit started to work deeply in his life.
One day John noticed a simple card stuck to the prayer room wall requesting prayer for ‘THE LOST’. His mind turned immediately to the thirty-three ‘frat brothers’ with whom he lived.
John began to pray diligently for his friends by name, asking that each one of them might encounter the love of the Father. Almost immediately, he began to be given opportunities to share his new-found faith with members of the fraternity. One of them heard the gospel and gave an immediate response that, yes, he wanted to become a Christian. Overjoyed, and using the simple prayer he’d learned from Aimee, John welcomed his friend into the kingdom of heaven. Just two days later, someone else announced that he too would like to do the same.
Those two conversations triggered a domino effect. Another member of the fraternity gave his life to Jesus just a few days later, and then another and another. ‘It was a bit crazy’, recalls John, laughing. ‘Every couple of days one of the guys would come and ask me to pray with him or tell me that he had already surrendered his life to Jesus on his own. I can’t tell you how exciting it was to watch salvation spreading like a contagious virus through our house.’
By the time everyone had departed for Christmas, just less than six months after John’s first encounter with God in the prayer room across the state line, he’d led thirty-two of his thirty-three frat brothers to Jesus. Almost two per week for half a year. Every single member of that fraternity had now encountered Jesus, except for one particularly stubborn housemate called Tim. During the Christmas holiday, however, Aimee, whose invitation for John to join her in the prayer room had sparked this mini-revival in the first place – invited Tim over for dinner. He really never stood a chance. By the end of that night, Tim had also surrendered his life to Jesus.
This story would be remarkable if it ended there. But Tim began to pray for his parents to come to know Jesus too. There was an unusual urgency and passion to the way he prayed for their salvation. ‘Little did we know how perfect God’s timing was in all of this,’ recalls John. Just twenty-seven days after Tim placed his faith in Christ, he was involved in a fatal automobile accident.
The fraternity was thrown into a state of deep shock. His parent’s grief was beyond articulation. They looked ashen on the cold January day of their son’s funeral. Songs were sung, and then the pastor tried to describe Tim’s short life. Tim had been a Christian for less than a month, the pastor said, but he would now spend all eternity with the Lord Jesus Christ.
The earnest prayers that Tim had prayed for his parents were to be answered at his own funeral. Following their son’s recent footsteps, they surrendered their lives to Jesus. So too did fifteen of Tim’s high-school football team-mates. In total, over the six months up to and including that tragic day, fifty people had come to Christ.
Thanks to Aimee’s witness and the persevering prayers of her church, an entire fraternity turned to Christ in six months, their house was totally transformed, and Tim will spend all eternity with Jesus, as will his parents and fifteen of his high school friends.
Make it personal...
Father, help me to live this day to the full, being true to you in every way. Jesus, help me to give myself away to others, being kind to everyone I meet. Spirit, help me to love the lost, proclaiming Christ in all I do and say. Amen.
Lectio365
