Archives October 2012

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Many if not every great move of God in the world began in a prayer meeting. From the pages of church history come some amazing stories of prayer meetings that God used to change the world beginning with the 120 in the upper room that culminated in Pentecost. The people that knelt down to pray couldn’t have known what God intended to do through their simple obedience to seek Him in prayer. They simply couldn’t have known what was about to happen as they began to pray. I mention some of these prayer meetings below to illustrate.

-Moravian Prayer Meeting

Count Zinzendorf called the 300 Moravians living on his property together on the night of August 12, 1727, and they conducted an all night prayer meeting. The next day is referred to in history as “The Moravian Pentecost” (August 13, 1727) The Holy Spirit visited them in a supernatural blessing of love, unity, and power. They decided to form a 24/7/365 prayer meeting… They signed up for prayer slots around the clock, 3 praying together at a time every minute of every day… the prayer meeting lasted 110 years.

Six weeks into the prayer meeting Zinzendorf stood up and challenged their little band to go to the nations. The next day 26 of their group stepped forward and gave their lives to go to the mission field. Some of them were too poor to go so they sold themselves into slavery to get a free ship ride and to be missionaries to the slave trade.

In the first 28 years over 200 missionaries were sent out of a their little community of 600 people.

They excited a missions passion everywhere they went and inspired thousands to follow their example and go to the nations. They dramatically impacted such notables as John and Charles Wesley, William Carey, and many more. They couldn’t have known… but God…

-The Holy Club

John and Charles Wesley and later George Whitefield formed a prayer meeting when they were students at Oxford that became known on campus as the Holy Club. Later John was changed forever by his contact with the Moravians. Out of that Holy Club prayer group the Wesley’s ushered in the great awakening in England while George Whitefield along with Jonathan Edwards ushered in the great awakening in America. They couldn’t have known… but God…

-Concert of Prayer

John Erskine, a Scottish pastor in 1742 suggested a concert of prayer for Christ’s kingdom to advance to all the nations of the earth. In 1744 the Scottish leaders organized two years of concerted prayer at designated times for international revival. Word of this prayer concert reached Jonathan Edwards in America and he published a little booklet encouraging the colonies to join together in these prayer concerts. The great awakening and the American Revolution were the result. They couldn’t have known… but God…

-Union of Prayer

Following the above examples a movement of prayer began in Britain through William Carey, Andrew Fuller and John Sutcliffe—and other leaders who began what the British called “the Union of Prayer.” it was resolved to set apart an hour on the first Monday evening of every month, “for extraordinary prayer for revival of religion, and for the extending of Christ’s kingdom in the world.” Out of that prayer meeting came the Baptist Missionary Society and the beginning of modern missions.

At about the same time in America, Isaac Backus and Stephen Gano, along with twenty-three other New England ministers, distributed a circular letter in 1794, which called for a concert of prayer of believers to pray for a general awakening. Having been directly influenced by the First Great Awakening, they invoked the memory and authority of Jonathan Edwards, and agreed that, beginning in January 1795, two o’clock on the first Tuesday of the four quarters of the year would be set aside for a concert of prayer in support of the new awakening. This prayer concert would launch the Second Great Awakening… Out of the second great awakening came the modern missionary movement, the abolition of slavery, popular education, Bible societies and Sunday schools. They couldn’t have known… but God…

-The Haystack Prayer Meeting

Five Williams College students met in the summer of 1806, in a grove of trees near the Hoosack River, then known as Sloan’s Meadow, and debated the theology of missionary service. Their meeting was suddenly interrupted by a thunderstorm and the students: Samuel J. Mills, James Richards, Francis L. Robbins, Harvey Loomis, and Byram Green took shelter under a haystack until the sky cleared.

It was the first documented resolution ever made by Americans to begin foreign missionary work. In its first fifty years, the group that resulted sent out over 1250 missionaries. Today it has sent out nearly 5000 missionaries to 34 different fields, and it all began with five young men praying in a haystack. They couldn’t have known… but God…

-1859 Prayer Meeting

“In September 1857, a man of prayer, Jeremiah Lanphier, started a prayer meeting in the upper room of the Dutch Reformed Church Consistory building, in Manhattan. In response to his advertisement, only six people out of the population of a million showed up. But, the following week, there were fourteen, and then twenty-three, when it was decided to meet every day for prayer. By late winter, they were filling the Dutch Reformed Church, then the Methodist Church of John Street, then Trinity Episcopal Church on Broadway at Wall Street. In February and March of 1858, every church and public hall in downtown New York was filled.

“Horace Greeley, the famous editor, sent a reporter with horse and buggy racing around the prayer meetings to see how many men were praying: in one hour, he could get to only twelve meetings, but he counted 6100 men attending. Then a landslide of prayer began, which overflowed to the churches in the evenings. People began to be converted, ten thousand a week in New York City alone.

In America more than a million people were converted to God in one year out of a population of thirty million. Then that same revival jumped the Atlantic, appeared in Ulster, Scotland and Wales, then England, parts of Europe, South Africa and South India, anywhere there was an evangelical cause. It sent mission pioneers to many countries. Effects were felt for forty years. Having begun in a movement of prayer, it was sustained by a movement of prayer. They couldn’t have known… but God…

As Mission Critical International seeks to impact the world as God has clearly and miraculously called us, we must begin with prayer.

Here at Mission Critical we set aside every Thursday of the week for our 24-hour prayer day. Eventually we believe that God will give us enough prayer warriors to have a 24/7 prayer concert for the nations.

To facilitate this we have established a prayer team page at… 24/7 Prayer

Simply click on Thursday Prayer Concert to go to the calendar and then click on the Mission Critical box on the day you wish to sign up and time slots will open for you to sign up in 15-minute increments. Initially we will start with as many slots as we can fill up and expect more as more warriors come on board.

We will cap our Thursday prayer concerts with a call in prayer meeting every Thursday night at 7:00 pm for those who can.

Conference call number is (605) 475-4000 and Participant Access Code: 507167#

Join us in asking God to make His kingdom come among the nations…

I recently wrote about how the disciples couldn’t have know all that they would see and experience by obeying the simple command of Jesus to “Follow Me.” In a subsequent post I wrote about how Hudson and Maria Taylor couldn’t have known what God would do when they obeyed the simple command of Jesus to “Go.” And I would like to share another of my favorite stories about a man named Edward Kimball and what he couldn’t have known when he obeyed the simple command of Jesus to be a “fisher of men.”

Edward Kimball was a Sunday school teacher in Chicago, Illinois. He went one day to the shoe store where one of his pupils worked because he felt impelled by the Holy Spirit to share Christ with this young man. He almost backed out because of fear but went ahead and that young man came to faith in Jesus as a result. That young shoe salesman’s name was D.L. Moody.

Shortly after Moody’s conversion he heard a man named Henry Varney say, “The world has yet to see what God will do with one man who is wholly consecrated to Him.” Moody left that meeting saying, “I will be that man.” Moody went on to be a world famous evangelist of whom it was said that he gathered two continents in his hands (North America and Europe) and brought them both closer to God. He preached to an estimated 100 million people, established colleges and schools, and left his imprint on 19th-century Evangelicalism. His was a remarkable life. Untold numbers came to Christ through Moody’s ministry. There is no way that Edward Kimball could have known that day at the shoe store what God was going to do through him and his simple obedience by faith. There is no way Henry Varney could have known what his anointed words would do.

But there is more… much more… for you see at one of Moody’s meetings one day he spoke to a young man about his assurance of salvation and greatly encouraged that young man whose name was J. Wilbur Chapman. D.L. Moody couldn’t have known that day that Chapman would go on to become a great evangelist in his own right and lead thousands to Christ or that Chapman would mentor an ex-drunkard professional baseball player named Billy Sunday who would go on to become a great evangelist and lead hundreds of thousands to Christ.

Billy Sunday inspired a group of Charlotte, NC businessmen to hold a revival in 1932 and invite evangelist Mordecai Hamm. A lanky 16 year old would be saved in that revival. His name is Billy Graham. Edward Kimball couldn’t have known. D.L. Moody couldn’t have known. J. Wilbur Chapman couldn’t have known. Billy Sunday couldn’t have known. The Charlotte Christian Businessman’s Association couldn’t have known. Mordecai Hamm couldn’t have known. Good thing they trusted God and obeyed their calling.

But there is more… much more… for you see at another of Moody’s meetings one day he cried out to the crowd, “Faith Can Do Anything!” A young man present believed him and went on to become a great evangelist and D.L. Moody’s closest friend and associate. That young man was R.A. Torrey. Torrey preached to millions, brought tens of thousands to Christ, founded schools and churches and wrote over 40 books. Kimball and Moody couldn’t have known. One day a young man heard Torrey preach and gave his life to Christ.

His name was Oswald J. Smith. Oswald went on to build one of the greatest churches in the world in Toronto, Canada, The People’s Church. In later life he became a missions mobilizer and statesman and preached all over the world bringing thousands to Christ. Kimball, Moody, and Torrey couldn’t have known what their simple obedience would do and how God would use them. There are many many other stories that trace back to Edward Kimball’s winning Moody and the people that he subsequently influenced like F.B. Meyer and many others but the story of Moody and especially the link to Henry Varney and Oswald J. Smith bless me personally in three ways.

First, the night I was saved, July 21, 1982, the twenty-two year old evangelist, Jerry Johnston, (who would go on to win tens of thousands to Christ) told the story of D.L. Moody and the quote from Varney, “The world has yet to see what God will do with one man who is wholly consecrated to Him.” And then Jerry looked right at me in the crowd (or so it seemed) and said, “Will you be that man?” When the invitation was given I beat it to the altar, or as close as I could get for there were dozens of other teens already there before me, and I knelt down in the aisle and said, “God if you want me, I want you.” I left that night on fire for God and have been pursuing him for just over 30 years now.

Second, Two years later in September of 1984 I was at Baptist Bible College in Springfield, MO. My 18 year old soul was hungry for God. I had a little money that someone had sent from home and so I went to the college bookstore looking for some soul sustenance. I asked the Holy Spirit to show me what I needed and I stumbled on a book called “The Passion For Souls” by Oswald J. Smith. I had never heard of him but the title set my heart to burning so I bought it and went back to my dorm and read it through stinging tears in one sitting. It was a life altering read. It put a hunger in my soul for the power of God in my life and ministry that has never waned. The next year I became a youth evangelist and God blessed me to see hundreds of teens come to Christ many of whom are in ministry around the country today and then family discipleship and pastoring and now missions and the impact of his book is still working in my life. I haven’t shaken continents for God… at least not yet :-). Oswald J. Smith couldn’t have known how he would impact this one life. I’m holding that same book I bought so long ago in my hands right now and it is tattered and worn. I have read it so many times and used so many colors of highlighter on it that some pages look like a rainbow. I flipped through it just now and read a few lines and my heart began to burn and tears filled my eyes. My daughter Brooke came in from work just now and said, “Dad! What’s wrong? Why are you crying?” I held up the book. She smiled gave me a hug and went on.

Third, at the height of Oswald J. Smith’s People’s Church in Toronto, Canada a young man named Dan Schiel was a follower of Smith’s who came to Conroe, Texas and started a church in Conroe, Texas called The People’s Church. He began to preach and souls were saved and the church grew and today, decades later, it is known as Christ Church of Conroe and Dan Schiel still pastors there. The personal connection for me is that Dan Schiel has a granddaughter named Misti who grew up in his church and learned to love Jesus and serve Him with all her heart. Misti is married to my oldest son Luke and they work with us at Mission Critical International. She is a wonderful wife to my son and a wonderful mother to my two sweet grandbabies, Joy and Joseph. It may be a stretch to say that Edward Kimball’s obedience to share Christ with D.L. Moody in that shoe store that day has a direct connection to my life, family, and ministry today… but I’m not so sure. All I know is that they couldn’t have known what God would do with them and for them and neither can we. So we must keep pressing on in His kingdom work and only eternity will tell all of the stories of how God used our mustard seeds of faith and obedience to change the world.

Matt Bullen

I was so blessed to speak at Spring Baptist Church today about missions. Thanks to David Attaway for making it happen. Here is the audio…

I know it may sound wrong in our “politically correct” christian circles to ask such a question. We might even hear someone comment “don’t say that you might get struck by lighting” like we are going to step on God’s toes or something for questioning Him. But in these last couple of years I have found myself asking it more and more even out of anger sometimes. I just could not shrug the feelings of guilt and obligation that I felt in my soul. I know the Sunday school answer God wants our “everything”. I am always like what does that mean everything? What does that look like because the people that are usually telling you that are the ones whom themselves are just living the typical christianized american lifestyle.  But before I run off on a rabbit trail I don’t think I have it all figured out yet but I would like to share some of what I have been learning. This morning I was reading Psalms 1-5. One part struck a nerve with me that I wanted to share. Psalms 2:10-12  ¹⁰Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth. ¹¹Serve the Lord with fear,  and rejoice with trembling. ¹² Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him. Now I am sure you are a little puzzled but bare with me for one minute. I am going to substitute a couple of words for other words that could also be used.

O ____ insert name, be wise: be warned, O people of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Pay homage to the Jesus, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.

The reason for substituting the words kings and rulers for more general words like your own and people was to show that this passage could be personalized it is not just some Psalm written long ago for a single purpose but it can hold meaning for us as well. As you can see I substituted Kiss for pay homage to. If you look up that word in the greek that word can also mean “do homage” so out of curiosity  I looked up homage and it means – a feudal ceremony by which a man acknowledges himself the vassal of a lord. I also substituted Son with Jesus because any time you see the word Son capitalized it is referring to Jesus. So when the psalmist said “Kiss the Son” what he was saying was pay homage to your lord acknowledge yourself to be his subordinate.

So to go back to my original question, what does God want? I believe what he wants from us is total surrender and to stop serving everything els in this world and to serve him with everything in us. For us to give up everything in our lives that distracts us from Him. Most Christians here in the States say that they don’t pray and read their Bibles more or at all because they are to busy. Busy doing what? Working to make money or spending that money on more or better things. So what we are really saying is that serving money and things is more important to us than spending time in the presence of the one we call our Lord and Savior. What He desires is more than our words saying thanks or singing praises with hands raised. He desires total and utter submission and obedience to His will. That is the hardest thing for us to give because we want control, we want to decide what to spend our money on and time doing. We don’t want to really believe that God is going to hold us accountable for how we have spent the time and resources that God has given us. We like to think that so long as we thank Him for all that He has given us that it is up to us how we use it. We don’t have to worry about the billions of peope that have little to nothing. I am not trying to tell you what you should or should not do but I am saying seek after your Lord pay homage to Him, surrender yourself to His will, put yourself at His mercy before you are out of time and find yourself on the day of Judgement and find that you have wasted your life seeking after the comforts this world has to offer and missed it and have to suffer His wrath.

As I wrote in my preceding blog, I love to think about how simple obedience to the call of God on our lives can bring about gigantic kingdom results that we never could have foreseen when we stepped out on faith. Jesus loved to tell us about these through parables. He talks about the tiny mustard seed that grows into a tree that the birds of the air can lodge in. He speaks of the tiny yeast that a woman puts into a lump of dough and it eventually permeates the entire lump and so on.

Of course there are hundreds and probably thousands of such kingdom stories that have played out in the ensuing two thousand years of church history since Jesus’s illustrations but one of the most stunning examples from history that I often think about and am encouraged by is the life of J. Hudson Taylor, legendary missionary to China. I recently read the old book, Hudson Taylor, the man who believed God by Marshal Broomhall, a descendent of Taylor. I thrilled at the story of the very humble beginnings of the ministry of Hudson Taylor, The China Inland Mission and the incredible kingdom advance that resulted.

Taylor was the son of a third generation methodist preacher who dreamed of going to China but never made it. He passed on his passion and vision to his son, Hudson but neither of them could have known what God was going to do. In 1853 Hudson sailed for China. He was 21 years old. He had to return to England in 1861 due to poor health. He sought the Lord mightily and made plans to return to China in 1866 with his family and 16 other missionaries they had recruited. But he was wracked with doubt and in 1865 he wrote in his diary, “For two or three months, intense conflict … Thought I should lose my mind.” A little while later while walking on the beach at Brighton his gloom lifted and he wrote, “There the Lord conquered my unbelief, and I surrendered myself to God for this service. I told him that all responsibility as to the issues and consequences must rest with him; that as his servant it was mine to obey and to follow him.”

That day marked the founding of the China Inland Mission and when his little party landed in China there were only about 400 known Christians in the entire country. After much hardship, struggle, loss, and an amazing amount of prayer, faith, and work, J. Hudson Taylor died in 1905 and it was estimated that at the time of his death there were approximately 18,000 Christians in China.

The number of other missionaries who were inspired by him only heaven knows but some notable names are Amy Carmichael, Henry Martyn, Gladys Alyward, William Borden, and many others. And like Hudson Taylor, they couldn’t have known what God would do with their mustard seed of faith. Their stories are the stuff of legend as well. But even at his death, there is no way that Hudson Taylor could have known what God would continue to do through his obedience. 45 years after his death when the communists expelled his China Inland Mission from China it is estimated that there were 1 million Christians in China. But even that couldn’t stop the mustard seed from growing.

Today, missiologists estimate that there are 100 million Christians in China and that 10,000 per day are coming to Christ! There is no way that James and Amelia Taylor could have known when they prayed over their infant son Hudson for God to send him to China what God would do with that prayer. There is no way that Hudson and Maria Taylor could have known when they set sail in 1866 for China what God would do. And friends there is no way that you and I can know what God, even now, is planning and doing with our little mustard seed of faith that we have planted and that we are watering and praying and working on to advance His kingdom. There is no way. So keep looking up and moving forward.

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I have been meditating on the Revelation 19:7, Let us be glad and rejoice, and let us give honor to him. For the time has come for the wedding feast of the Lamb, and his bride has prepared herself. In many places in the Bible we as the Church are called the Bride of Christ. That means every one of us who believe in Christ and are part of His church is His bride. Now when I look brides on their wedding day I can see their love for their bridegrooms just radiating off of them. I want that kind of love for my Bridegroom! A vibrant and passionate love. A kind of love that when I not in His presents my heart burns for the next time I can spend with Him. The cry of my heart is, Psalm 27:8, “My heart has heard you say, “Come and talk with me.” And my heart responds, “LORD, I am coming.” I want to have an intimate enough relationship with my Love to say, Psalm 42:1, “As the deer longs for streams of water, so I long for you, O God. I thirst for God, the living God.” So times when I am worshiping at church I get such a longing for my Love I say in my heart “please Beloved just let me come up to you, I can wait any longer for You.” I know He has so much for me to do on this earth that I can go yet but my heart can wait for the day I finally see my Love face to face. I can truly say with David Psalm 16:11, “You will show me the way of life, granting me the joy of your presence and the pleasures of living with you forever.” I will stay with my Love for only in Him do I find true joy. My goal is to every day fall harder and more passionately in love with my Savior and Bridegroom.