They Couldn’t Have Known IV
[lightbox full=”https://missioncriticalintl.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/praying_handssm.jpg” thumb=”https://missioncriticalintl.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/praying_handssm.jpg” title=”Praying Hands” /]
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…