The 10 Days Vision
In 2004, I had a visionary experience with God of entire cities shutting down to pray, worship, and repent. Twenty years later, hundreds of groups of believers around the world will be hosting 10 Day gatherings of worship, prayer, and fasting in their cities from October 2-12. These extravagant gatherings are taking place in villages in India, among the underground church in the Middle East, and this year even in front of the Liberty Bell in Philadephia.
As we approach 10 Days this year, I wanted to share the original vision once again in the hopes that more and more of us will join in seeking God with utter abandon over the next month. Jesus Christ is truly worthy! And, it never fails that when we seek Him more, we find more of Him.
The following account is Chapter 3 of my book, 10 Days: The Unlikely Story of a Global Movement Mourning for the Return of Jesus. I’d encourage you to get the full book, which is available here (https://www.10days.net/book) and wherever books are sold.
The 10 Days Vision (2004)
Working for God
The Santa Fe Prayer Net was a revelation. I had heard from God, stepped out in faith, and now what God showed me in a vision was happening in the real world. Now, thirty-nine congregations in Santa Fe were praying for one another on a weekly basis.
As the Prayer Net launched, I had a realization—“I work for God.” I had finally figured out what I wanted to do when I grew up. Working for the Lord was challenging, exhilarating, terrifying, liberating, and satisfying. Why would I ever want to do anything else?
I did have a question: How does someone who works for God figure out what to do next? If I had an earthly boss, I would just ask him, “What do you want me to do?” How could I pose that same question to the Lord?
As I searched the Scriptures with this question in mind, I came across Daniel chapter ten. In this passage, Daniel eats “no pleasant food, no meat, or wine” for three weeks. After the twenty-one days of fasting are finished, Daniel has an encounter with an angel that brings him revelation about the end of the age.
“Daniel worked for God, like me.” I reasoned. So why not try what Daniel did? As I entered this season of fasting in late August 2004, I had two questions for God.
“What do you want me to do next?” and “How can I be part of seeing Jesus get the answer to his prayer in John 17?”
Most Christians I spoke to didn’t think Jesus’s prayer would ever be answered—it was this incredible secret hiding in plain sight right there in the Bible. But I knew, and I was asking my new Boss what the next step was towards its fulfillment.
“You are the Problem”
Coming off an amazing summer, I was riding high and walking closely with God almost constantly. I could sense His nearness every day, whether I was taking a long evening prayer walk, working at my restaurant job, or spending time with friends.
However, as I entered this twenty-one-day fast, it felt as though God’s hand lifted off me. Prayer became much less enjoyable, and I struggled to experience God’s presence or hear His voice.
“Is this normal?” I wondered. “I thought the fast was supposed to help me hear from God.”
In the first week of the fast, I accepted an invitation from John Robb to attend a gathering of New Mexico prayer leaders at the Glorieta retreat center in the Pecos Mountains. While there, I found myself in an unfamiliar setting. This was a gathering of “prophetic people” who were all hearing from the Lord and sharing what God was saying to them all the time. While I had grown in my respect for Charismatics over the past year, this was overwhelming and very strange. I was the youngest person there by at least twenty years.
Simply put, these old people were not cool. Their super spiritual style was incredibly off-putting. And many of these weird prophetic people were visibly arrogant and puffed up. In my heart, I knew I would much rather spend time with my unbelieving friends from college, who were interesting, intelligent, and understood me better.
After returning from the event and mulling over what I had seen, I heard the Lord speak to me. It was the first time I had heard Him clearly during the fast.
“Do you know why Jesus’s prayer in John 17 is not being answered?” He asked.
“No,” I answered truthfully.
“YOU are the problem.”
It felt as though an enormous finger landed squarely on my chest. Immediately, I knew I was guilty as charged. Here I was, fasting and praying for an answer Jesus’s prayer. Meanwhile, in the middle of that fast, I was judging my own brothers and sisters. I looked down on them because they were old, weird, immature, and worst of all, not cool. To further my guilt, I even loved my unbelieving friends more than my own family, fellow followers of Jesus. This was not what the Lord had taught us to do at all—He told us to “love one another [fellow believers] as I have loved you.”
The Lord had showed me what was keeping Him from answering Jesus’s Prayer. It was me.
I did not like being rebuked by the Lord—it hurt! I wanted to avoid that rebuke in the future as much as possible. Coming out of this experience, I made a commitment to love and honor every brother and sister in Christ that I met, regardless of any other factors. Some of us are weird and some normal, some are old and some young, some are cool and others are anything but. We have people who are mature and kind, and others who are immature and puffed up. However, for me the words of Jesus were ringing: “love one another, as I have loved you.”
A Strong Temptation
As the fast continued, it seemed like God was keeping His distance. I persevered in times of prayer and especially in reading the Scriptures, but everything was dry and laborious.
As this spiritual dryness persisted, I began to have a very strong, recurring thought. Perhaps I had missed God’s best for my life by getting married. After all, Paul says that it’s better to remain unmarried so we can serve the Lord wholeheartedly. Could it be that God was calling me to leave my wife and become a traveling monk, going from place to place preaching the gospel and living off whatever people gave me, like a modern-day St. Francis?
The idea was upsetting—but what if it was God? I shared it with my wife, and for obvious reasons, she thought it was a bad idea. I thought it was a bad idea. But what if it was a “God idea,” something he wanted me to do, like Abraham putting Isaac on the altar? I had to be ready to do anything, to make any sacrifice. Nevertheless, the thought troubled and tormented me, while also appealing to a part of me that wanted to be free to roam around without anything or anyone holding me down.
As the end of the fast grew near, God’s presence was a distant memory. Looming on the horizon was the question of what I should do next.
“Should I jump at this wandering monk idea?” I wondered. It was the best next move I had. The “Net of Prayer” vision had worked out. Maybe this was the next step?
I was beginning to get desperate. The entire fast felt like a failure. I felt like a failure. Why was God so far away? Why wouldn’t He speak? Everything depended on His voice.
“You’re Back”
On the twentieth night of the fast, as I prayed, God’s presence returned. I said out loud, “You’re back” as I sensed His warm, peaceful presence. I sat quietly, crying with relief and listening as He began to speak.
“Put the idea of leaving your wife out of your mind.” He said. “That is not from Me.”
Although I was so terribly wrong on the matter, it was not a harsh rebuke, just gentle, warm, and matter of fact.
What a relief to hear those words! And what a lesson on what the voice of the enemy sounds and feels like. Years later, I would learn that several famous saints had done exactly what I was tempted to do—left their husbands, wives, and families to pursue a seemingly more spiritual path. It seems I was not the first person the enemy tried to pull that trick on.
I continued to hear the Lord: “I want you to pray daily for the churches [of Santa Fe] at the Cathedral downtown. There is a specific place there that I want you to pray—I will show it to you.”
My prayer time concluded, full of sweetness and beauty. God’s presence had returned and I had heard His voice. It wasn’t what I was ultimately looking for, but He was back.
A Long Walk
Anticipation was building as I entered the last night of the fast. As the sun began to set, I headed out on what would be a long and eventful walk. I found I prayed and listened better when I was walking. At the time, it was normal for me to disappear for a few hours each evening to walk and pray with the Lord. If Adam had cool twilights in the garden, I had late nights in the high desert.
As I started walking, questions dripped one-by-one into my mind:
“What if this doesn’t work?”
“What if God doesn’t talk to me?”
“Maybe I’ll just keep fasting until I find what I’m after.”
Before I could worry too much, God started speaking.
His voice resounded in me: “You are someone who goes before someone greater to prepare a way for them.”
I peppered the Lord with questions.
“Who is this greater one? Am I preparing for the Return of Jesus? Or do you mean a younger person who will be greater? Or do you mean the next generation?”
I received no response to these questions. Instead, the Lord continued speaking about what my ministry would look like, giving me four biblical examples.
“You will be like Moses before Joshua, like Jonathan before David, like Elijah before Elisha, and like John the Baptist before Jesus.”
My mind flooded with thoughts that I’ll try to untangle and relate as best I can.
I felt relieved and excited—God was speaking after a long silence. The Daniel 10 fast was working. And who knew what He was about to say next? Everything could change in an instant.
“What He is saying makes sense of so many other things in my life.” I thought.
Jeremiah chapter 1 speaks of how God called the prophet before he was even born. I was beginning to understand that word in a new light. The circumstances of my birth, things spoken by my parents, desires and questions that had always been inside of me—it felt as though everything finally made sense in light of this word from the Lord.
With this new understanding of what God had called me to do was an understanding of why I often felt like I didn’t fit in.
I realized, “I don’t fit in because God has made and called me to do something different, something I didn’t even know existed. And now I understand more clearly what that is.”
A final thread of thought was more forward looking.
“God, this is amazing, but it still doesn’t answer my bigger question at all—‘What do you want me to do?’”
After this initial experience, which lasted about twenty minutes, I heard nothing from the Lord for several hours.
The fact is, I was holding out for God to speak to me through an angelic encounter, just as He had spoken to Daniel. Part of the motivation without a doubt was to see something amazing that would convince both me and others that I had heard from God. Undoubtably, there were deeper insecurities and unbelief, mixed with a genuine desire to hear from God that contributed to this demand. In hindsight, I had no idea what I was asking, considering the angel was so terrifying Daniel couldn’t move without help.
I was so insistent on this with the Lord that I vowed to keep walking and praying until I had an angelic encounter. So, I did. For three hours. By that point, I was wiped out and decided to head home in defeat. I clearly didn’t have the staying power to follow through on my overzealous commitments. A bit of walking around and I was ready to throw in the towel. Often, our zeal that seems “spiritual” is counterproductive to what God wants to do by grace.
The Vision
Finally, in desperation I removed this requirement of the Lord.
“Lord, I don’t care how you speak to me. I don’t need to see an angel, just tell me what to do.”
As had happened on my long trek across the country, what began in a powerful encounter had dried up, and God seemed distant. However, He was simply waiting for me to get over myself so He could speak words and release vision that would change my life and impact people around the globe.
As I walked home, now open to even the crumbs from God’s table, I felt somewhat dejected. This hadn’t worked out as I had hoped. I was admitting defeat, walking back.
Santa Fe is in the high desert, a small city of 60,000 people surrounded by empty wilderness. The clear night air was refreshingly cool and dry as I walked. The sky was full of stars and you could see the Milky Way clearly above. In an open lot to my left, sat a couple of concrete handball courts. I sometimes liked to stop there and sing my prayers at night, but this night I was tired and prayed out. As I passed by the courts, I suddenly felt the presence of God and heard a phrase in my spirit:
“Babylon refuses to mourn.”
In hindsight, I would ponder how strange and mysterious the phrase was. In the moment, I was struck by the suddenness of God speaking to me. It was like hearing someone talk to you out of the blue when you think you’re alone. I felt the nearness of God, but I was also afraid. I was suddenly in the presence of someone very great and powerful. I stopped walking and turned around as if a physical person were speaking to me, even though I knew I was hearing the words internally. As I stopped, I felt a response well up within me.
I answered: “But Your people will mourn before You return.”
As I pondered this exchange, I understood it immediately. If Babylon, the kingdom that opposes God is characterized in Revelation chapter 18 by a refusal to mourn, resulting in ultimate judgment when Jesus returns, it made sense that God’s people would move in the opposite spirit, that they would mourn while the world rejoiced, and then rejoice when Babylon was mourning.
Also, I knew inside that THIS was the moment I had been seeking. After twenty-one days, I had my audience with the Boss.
It began to be very simple to speak and hear the Lord. I was able to ask him questions and hear clearly, much like a normal conversation.
“Lord, what is it that you want me to do?”
In response, I heard, “Call my people to 10 Days of fasting, mourning, and repentance from Rosh HaShannah to Yom Kippur.”
Once again, this out of the blue direction made perfect sense to me. I had studied the biblical feasts described in Leviticus 23 and I knew that the fall feasts had special prophetic significance related to the Lord’s second coming. In Jesus’ first coming, He fulfilled the feasts of Passover and Pentecost on the exact days. His sacrificial death was a fulfillment of Passover and the outpouring of the Spirit was a fulfillment of Pentecost. Could it be that something similar would happen with the fall feasts as well? I knew that there was a ten-day period between the Day of Trumpets, also called Rosh HaShannah and the Day of Atonement or Yom Kippur. Could it be that as we approached the Lord’s return, there would be a renewed emphasis in the Church on these fall feasts?
“Who is this for?” I asked. “Is it for Santa Fe?”
Instantly, I heard, “It’s bigger.”
And in my mind’s eye I saw a map of New Mexico.
“Is it for New Mexico?”
“It’s bigger,” came the response, and the map zoomed out.
“Is it for the Southwest?”
“It’s bigger.”
And the map zoomed out. As it got bigger and bigger, I became more and more afraid. Eventually, the map was the size of the United States, and I yelled out loud “Stop.” And so that part of the vision stopped.
“What have I gotten myself into?” I said to myself. I just wanted to know what God wanted me to do next, and somehow God was showing me something with national and even global implications.
Wondering how I could possibly do something on this scale, I asked,
“How am I supposed to do this?”
Immediately, in my mind’s eye, I saw myself driving around the country, meeting people one by one, and sharing face-to-face.
This image was comforting. I realized that what seemed enormous and beyond my control was as simple as having conversations, one by one, with other believers as I had done in setting up the Santa Fe Prayer Net.
Next, the vision shifted to a truly remarkable scene, a city completely covered by the glory of God.
I knew that this city had stopped everything. Normal life had been suspended for 10 Days of worship, prayer, fasting, and repentance. Businesses were closed, schools were closed, and shopping centers were empty as people gathered to humble themselves before God in one accord.
It was as though a city on earth had become a perfect representation of the throne room in Heaven, described in Revelation chapters four and five. This city was completely covered in what seemed to be a thick, golden cloud that surrounded it like a liquid surrounding a snow-globe. The presence of God was so thick it was difficult to see through. I knew this city would never be the same.
As I saw this, two questions bubbled up from within me.
“God, how would you respond if a city sought you in this way?”
“Is this how you want to answer Jesus’ prayer in John 17?”
By now, I had returned home. Although Cassi and I lived in a community house with other residents, it was late, no one was awake, and the lights were all off. Although God had seemed distant for weeks and I hadn’t heard anything from Him, now I found I couldn’t turn the faucet off. God kept speaking as I sat down on the couch in the dark. We continued our conversation.
“You’re also going to pray for 10 Days leading up to Pentecost this year,” He said.
These words activated my sense of the absurd.
“Lord, I don’t think anyone is going to believe me or listen to me as it is. I don’t think anyone will ‘stop everything’ for 10 Days once a year, much less two times a year. God, this is too much 10 Days!”
Of course, this isn’t what the Lord said. He had given me a specific instruction for the next year, 2005.
By this point, I was feeling every emotion at once—fear and fright, excitement, joy, fear again, wonder, joy again, all swimming in an ongoing and powerful sense of God’s presence.
As we continued our conversation that night, God spoke to me about several other things. At the time, the experience was so intense I thought I would never forget a single detail. I didn’t even write it down that night, although I would do a lot of writing about it over the next months. I had never been trained on how to steward God’s words, so I didn’t know I needed to write it down. Some of the further details of what happened I can no longer remember in detail. Thankfully, the points I’ve shared here are just as strong, largely because I’ve shared them thousands of times since.
As I went to bed, I was elated. Before falling asleep, I shared briefly with Cassi that I had heard from the Lord.
One way or another, I understood that what had just happened would change everything about my life going forward.
As I fell asleep, questions lingered in my mind:
“What will life be like tomorrow?”
“What kind of person am I becoming?”
And most pressingly, “What have I gotten myself into?”