I became a part of Awaken during my sophomore year of college: the infamous year of 2020. It was first introduced to me as a single app: a prayer app that was supposed to act as a sort of social media between believers so that they could communicate and keep in touch intentionally through prayer.

"What a great idea!" I thought when I heard of it. I immediately downloaded it and was pleasantly surprised by the user-friendliness of the app so early on in its development. As I pondered the idea more and more, I started getting excited about its potential, especially since it came at such a relevant time in my own life.

The COVID-19 Pandemic

Entering that year of college, I was excited to get back in touch with college friends and be on campus again, after a long break due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I anticipated the semester to be challenging and different, but I was really passionate about growing community, reaching out, and making connections. I was focusing on the positives, on the ways I could grow myself as a follower in Christ as well as reach out within my communities here at Michigan.

Fall 2020 was my first semester co-leading the student prayer team at Michigan Cru. That was an exciting prospect, though I will admit that I felt rather unqualified for the position. As someone who struggles greatly with praying regularly and deeply, I accepted this new role having a deep understanding of the need for consistent, fruitful prayer but simultaneously struggling with feelings of inadequacy and guilt about my own prayer life. Part of my motivation for taking this responsibility was that I knew many other believers had struggles similar to mine when it came to prayer. I wanted to help us join together as a community in prayer, knowing that if so many of us struggled with prayer individually, we could likely encourage and motivate each other if we prayed communally. Yet in a semester when in-person gatherings were so limited and prayer group only took place every-other week, how were we to keep in touch and motivate each other in between meetings?

Enter Awaken prayer. I knew how valuable of an idea it was from the moment I first heard of it. And after several weeks of really wrestling with and meditating on the role of prayer in my life and faith and in the lives of people in general, I knew that God had brought this concept into my life at this time for a very specific reason. God was growing within me a deep passion for prayer. So I met with Brandon, excited to hear more about what Awaken was doing and how I could be involved.

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“God was growing within me a deep passion for prayer”

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The Vision that Struck Me

I was amazed, surprised, and inspired by the ambitious yet intentional vision that Brandon painted for me of what Awaken could become. For the first time, I was introduced to a vision that extended far beyond prayer. This was an intentional, ground-breaking vision of developing and connecting Christians in all walks of their Christian life, from studying their Bible to ministering overseas to developing programming within churches. The fact of the matter is that in a world full of advanced technology, with so many people needing a virtual place to plan, share, record, and develop, it can be extremely difficult to find software for the many different areas of spiritual life. Here was a way to do it all in one place with excellent technology! What fascinated me the most was the idea of having a platform that was user friendly for individuals as well as useful for larger corporations, like churches. But it all came back to prayer for me: that foundation of our faith that the Lord had set on my heart. I was eager to be a part of this exciting vision.

Problem-Driven, Biblically-Focused

Awaken wasn't just founded to try to make a name for itself or as some sort of undergraduate business project. It was created specifically to solve problems that we observed to be present in the lives of many Christians. As our mission says, we seek to empower Christians in every aspect of the faith. This is particularly unique and relevant in a world that tends to focus on strengths and weaknesses. I feel like we are often told to focus on our strengths and ignore our weaknesses. In reality, as believers we need to focus on all aspects of our spiritual life, even the aspects we aren't particularly good at. We will still have strengths and weaknesses, but we should be constantly striving to become more Christ-like in all ways.

Inspired and empowered by this vision, I started using the prayer groups feature for the prayer group I was leading. It was a great way to share prayer requests and updates with people, challenge them to be praying often, and just generally keep in touch with others. We found this unique feature to be practical and helpful!

I cannot wait to see what God can do with and through Awaken. Throughout my time with Awaken, I have been consistently reminded how everything circles back to prayer: Awaken needs prayer to grow and achieve our goals, the very same prayer upon which it was founded.

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“Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” - Galatians 6:2

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