Riot of Love - Chapter 3: The Direct Line

This is a fictional story of Leo and friends, inspired by the book P3: Prayer, Power & Proclamation.

The Tuesday night prayer meeting had the energy of a dentist’s waiting room.

It was taking place in the "Upper Room"-a generous name for the dusty loft space above the main church office that smelled of photocopier toner and old carpet. The Squad sat in a loose circle on plastic chairs that scraped loudly against the floor every time someone shifted their weight, which was often.

"Okay," Mia said, tapping her iPad screen with a stylus. The blue light illuminated her face, making her look serious, efficient, and exhausted. "Item four on the agenda: The Youth Alpha launch. We need to pray for logistics, the pizza delivery being on time, the AV cables not failing like last week, and for at least fifteen non-church kids to sign up. Also, I’ve put a sub-point in for the weather because the roof leaks."

She looked up. "Leo, do you want to lead out on the logistics, and I’ll cover the weather?"

Leo sat slumped in his chair, his hands deep in his hoodie pockets. He was staring at a water stain on the ceiling that looked vaguely like the UK, minus Scotland. His thumb was tracing the edge of the index card in his pocket-the one David had made them write. Beloved Son.

"Leo?" Mia prompted.

"I can't do it, Mia," Leo said, not looking away from the ceiling.

"Can't do what? Pray for pizza? It’s pretty standard, Leo. 'Bless this pepperoni to our bodies...'"

"I can't do the Shopping List anymore," Leo said, sitting up. He looked at his friends.

Chloe was picking at a thread on her jeans, looking guilty. Jay was leaning back on two legs of his chair, tossing a stress ball up and catching it. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

"David called it the 'Wish List'," Leo said. "He said we treat prayer like we’re ordering off Amazon. We log in, select what we want-healing, money, success, working WiFi-hit 'purchase' with an 'Amen', and then wait for delivery. If it doesn't turn up in two business days, we assume the system is broken."

Jay caught the ball and held it. "He’s not wrong. My prayer life is basically just me reading a list of demands to a wall. It’s boring. I’m bored. God is probably bored."

"Jay!" Chloe gasped.

"What? If I was God, I’d be bored of me," Jay shrugged. "'Dear God, please help me pass physics. Dear God, please make my dad less annoying.' It’s repetitive data. If I wrote a code that just outputted the same string of text every day, I’d delete it."

Mia lowered her iPad, her shoulders sagging. "But we have needs, Leo. The pizza does need to arrive. The roof does leak. Jesus said to ask, right?"

"Yeah," Leo said, remembering the conversation in the Brixton flat. "He said ask. But David said something else. He said prayer isn't a transaction. It’s a relationship. It’s a Direct Line."

Leo stood up and walked to the centre of the room. He felt ridiculous, but he also felt a desperate need to break the static that had filled his spiritual life for years.

"David challenged me to try something," Leo said. "He called it Listening Prayer. He said if we’re Children of the King, we have access to the Father’s voice. But we never shut up long enough to hear it. We do all the talking. It’s a one-way monologue."

"So, what?" Mia asked, skeptical. "We just... sit here?"

"We engage in a conversation," Leo corrected. "A two-way conversation. We talk, then we listen. We download our stress, then we upload His peace. Or instructions. Or whatever He wants to say."

"And if He says nothing?" Jay asked, raising an eyebrow. "Then we’re just four teenagers sitting in silence in a dusty room looking like lemons."

"Then we waste ten minutes," Leo said. "But what if He speaks?"

The question hung in the air. The rain outside began to patter against the single skylight, a soft, rhythmic drumming.

"Okay," Chloe said quietly. "I’ll try. I’m tired of hearing my own voice anyway."

"Fine," Mia sighed, closing the cover of her iPad with a definitive snap. "But if we don't pray for the pizza and it arrives cold, that’s on you, Leo."

The Setup

Leo pulled up the notes he’d taken on his phone after Thursday night. David had given them a framework. Don't make it complicated, he’d said. Make it relational.

"Right," Leo took charge. "Step one. The Digital Detox. We can't listen to God if we’re listening to notifications."

He pulled his phone out of his pocket, switched it to Aeroplane Mode, and placed it in the centre of the floor. He looked at the others.

Mia hesitated, her thumb hovering over the screen. "I’m expecting an email from the venue hire..."

"Mia," Leo said gently. "The King is in the room. The venue hire can wait."

She grimaced, tapped the screen, and placed her phone on top of Leo’s. Chloe added hers, which was already buzzing with a Snapchat notification. Jay tossed his phone onto the pile with a cavalier flick.

"Step two," Leo said. "David called it 'The Download'. We take two minutes to just dump everything. Tell God the stuff that’s stressing us out, but don't ask for a fix. Just tell Him. Like you’re venting to a mate."

They sat in the silence for a moment. It felt heavy, awkward.

"Out loud?" Chloe whispered.

"If you want. or in your head."

Leo closed his eyes. He tried to bypass the "religious filter" in his brain-the one that tried to make his thoughts sound like a Psalm.

Father, he thought. I’m scared. I’m scared this P3 thing is just another phase. I’m scared I’m leading my friends off a cliff. I’m worried about my Maths grade. I feel like a fraud.

He heard Chloe sniffle. He heard Jay shift in his chair.

"Okay," Leo said after a few minutes. "Step three. The Upload. This is the hard bit. We’re going to be quiet. Properly quiet. For five minutes."

"Five minutes is a long time," Jay noted.

"We ask one question," Leo instructed, ignoring him. "Just one open-ended question.

'Father, what is on Your heart for me right now?' Or, 'What do You want to say?' And then... we wait. Don't force a thought. Just listen."

"How do we know if it’s God?" Mia asked, the eternal pragmatist. "What if it’s just my own subconscious? Or what if I just think about what I want for dinner?"

"David said God’s voice sounds like... flow," Leo recalled. "It aligns with the Bible. It’s usually encouraging, or clarifying, or it brings peace. If it tells you to punch someone, it’s probably not God. If it tells you you’re worthless, it’s definitely the enemy. If it tells you to get a Nando’s, it’s probably your stomach. Just... test it. Write down whatever comes."

They all pulled out notebooks or scraps of paper.

"Ready?" Leo checked.

"This is going to be excruciating," Jay muttered, closing his eyes.

"Five minutes," Leo said. "Starting... now."

The Silence

The silence wasn't peaceful. It was loud.

For the first sixty seconds, Leo’s brain was a pinball machine. Did I lock the front door? Is that chair leg going to snap? I can hear Jay breathing. Why is he breathing so loud? This is stupid. Nothing is happening.

He tried to focus. Father, speak. Your servant is listening.

It felt pretentious. He tried again. Dad. I’m here. What’s up?

Minute two. His nose started itching. He resisted the urge to scratch it. He thought about the index card. Child of the King. He imagined himself not in this dusty room, but sitting in a massive, comfortable lounge, just hanging out with his Dad. The pressure in his chest loosened slightly.

Minute three. A car alarm went off somewhere down the street. Woo-woo-woo.

Leo opened one eye. Mia was frowning, her pen hovering over her paper, looking like she was trying to solve a complex equation. Chloe looked peaceful, her head tipped back.

Jay... Jay looked disturbed.

His eyes were squeezed shut tight, his brow furrowed. His hands were gripping the edges of the plastic chair so hard his knuckles were white. He looked like he was in pain, or like he was trying to hold a heavy door shut against a gale.

Leo closed his eye again. Focus, Leo.

Minute four. The silence shifted. It stopped feeling empty and started to feel... thick. Like the air pressure dropping before a thunderstorm. It wasn't a dramatic light show; it was just a sense of presence. A quiet weight in the room.

A thought drifted into Leo’s mind. It wasn't a voice, just a sudden, clear impression. An image of an anchor. A heavy, iron anchor sitting on the seabed, holding a ship steady while the surface waves went crazy.

You don't have to stop the waves, the thought came, gentle and clear. You just have to trust the chain.

Leo felt a sudden, profound sense of relief. He wasn't the captain of the ocean. He just had to stay hooked to the anchor. He scribbled it down quickly: Trust the chain.

Minute five.

"Okay," Leo whispered. "Time’s up."

The exhale in the room was collective. It was like they had all been holding their breath under water.

Mia immediately clicked her pen. "Well. That was... interesting. My brain wouldn't shut up. I kept thinking about the rota. But..." She hesitated. "I did get one word. It just kept popping up. 'Enough'. Just that word. Over and over. 'Enough'."

She looked at it written on her page. "I think... I think maybe He was saying I am enough? Or that His grace is enough? It made me feel... less panicked about the pizza."

"That sounds like Him," Leo smiled. "Chloe?"

Chloe wiped her eyes. "I just felt loved," she said simply. "I didn't hear words. I just felt like... you know when you come in from the cold and someone puts a warm blanket around you? Just that. Heavy, warm peace."

"That’s the Spirit," Leo nodded. "David said He’s the Comforter."

They both turned to Jay.

Jay hadn't moved. He was still gripping the chair. His eyes were open now, staring at the floor, unblinking. His face, usually pale from lack of sunlight, looked drained of all colour.

"Jay?" Leo asked, a little concern creeping into his voice. "You okay, mate? Did you fall asleep?"

Jay slowly unclenched his hands. He looked up, and Leo was shocked to see that the skeptic’s eyes were wide, glistening with something that looked terrifyingly like tears. Jay never cried. Jay famously didn't have feelings; he had opinions.

"I..." Jay’s voice cracked. He cleared his throat. "I heard something."

"Like... a thought?" Mia asked.

"No," Jay shook his head, looking bewildered. "Not a thought. My thoughts sound like me. They sound sarcastic. This didn't sound like me. It sounded... absolute. Like code that compiles without a single error."

He looked down at his notebook. He had written one sentence in his spidery, messy handwriting.

"What did it say?" Leo asked softly.

Jay swallowed hard. "You know how I’ve been struggling with the Uni applications? How I told you guys I wanted to do Computer Science, but I’ve been secretly freaking out because I don't think I’m actually smart enough? That I’m just faking the tech stuff?"

The group nodded. Jay’s arrogance usually masked a deep well of imposter syndrome.

"And you know," Jay continued, his voice barely a whisper, "how my Dad always used to say-before he left-that I was 'glitching'? That there was something wrong with my wiring because I couldn't focus?"

Leo nodded. He knew Jay’s dad had been harsh. Verbal abuse dressed up as parenting.

"I was sitting there," Jay said, "thinking this is all garbage. Thinking God is just a psychological crutch for weak people. I was mocking it in my head. I was literally thinking, 'If You’re real, debug this room, because it’s full of errors.'"

Jay took a shaky breath.

"And then, clear as a bell, right in the centre of my head, I heard: 'Your design is not a glitch. It’s a feature. I wrote the code.'"

The room went dead silent.

Chloe gasped, her hands flying to her mouth.

Jay stared at his friends, looking like he’d just seen a ghost. "He used my language, Leo. He used tech language. 'It’s a feature'. How... how could my subconscious make that up? I hate myself. My subconscious tells me I’m broken. This voice told me I was... intentional."

He looked down at his hands. "He knows I code. He knows what my Dad said."

Leo felt a shiver run down his spine-the good kind. The kind that felt like electricity. This wasn't just positive thinking. This was the Direct Line.

"He knows you, Jay," Leo said, his voice thick with emotion. "He’s not a clockmaker. He’s your Father. He wrote your code."

Jay picked up the stress ball again, but he didn't throw it. He just squeezed it, grounding himself. "That’s... terrifying," he whispered. "If He’s real... if He’s actually that personal... then everything changes."

"Yeah," Mia said, her voice soft, looking at her word Enough. "I think that’s the point."

Leo looked at the pile of phones in the middle of the room. They looked like dead plastic bricks. Useless.

"We keep the line open," Leo said, a newfound authority rising in his chest. "From now on. No more shopping lists. We listen first."

Jay nodded slowly. He picked up his pen and underlined the sentence in his notebook. I wrote the code.

"Okay," Jay said, his voice steadier, the old sarcasm creeping back in but softened by wonder. "But if the Big Man is real, and He’s talking... we probably shouldn't keep Him waiting."

"Agreed," Leo said.

"Also," Jay added, looking at Mia. "I think He wants us to order the pizza. I’m starving."

The tension broke. They laughed-a release of nervous, holy energy. But as they gathered their things and headed out of the Upper Room, the atmosphere had shifted. The dust and the damp smell were the same, but the reality had changed.

They weren't just a youth team hoping for the best anymore. They were a Squad with a radio connection to Headquarters. And for the first time, Leo realized that the battery on his spiritual phone wasn't draining. It was charging.

Later that night, Leo lay in bed. He didn't stare at the ceiling wondering if God was there. He closed his eyes and visualized the anchor.

Trust the chain, he thought.

He reached over to his bedside table, where he’d propped up the index card next to his lamp.

Identity: Child.Access: Unlimited.

He smiled in the dark.

"Goodnight, Dad," he whispered.

And for the first time in years, he slept without dreaming of work.