Aflame For God 28 – Mercy Miracles March On
“Whenever the Holy Spirit sees an opportunity to glorify Jesus through you, He will take your entire being and set you ablaze with glowing devotion to Jesus Christ.” – Oswald Chambers
Read the beginning of the series HERE
When our precious Lord dropped that little African girl on our doorstep July 3, 2008 we sensed He was up to something big but never in a million lightyears could we have envisioned all that He has done this far.
Over the years Mercy Kandakai has changed our lives in more ways than we can count. She is a very big-hearted girl and we all have grown to love her more than can be expressed in words.
Stunning spiritual warfare that could fill its own book has surrounded her since she arrived in America but she has fiercely fought through it all and has arisen as a bright and shining light for Jesus.
A few Father’s Days ago she wrote me, “To the Best Dad. I Love you with all my Heart!! Words are inadequate to express my gratitude for you. Every so often I wonder what did I do to have such an amazing man for a Dad? You are such an inspiration to me, through you I’ve come to learn a lot about God’s Love. For that, I’m grateful. Thanks for always having my back. – Mercy”
Like every father of a daughter, I have prayed and prayed for the right man to come along to be a husband to my girl, but even I couldn’t have chosen a man as perfect as Bobby Peabody. Only Jesus… Mercy and Bobby knew each other as children in Liberia, Africa and then met up again a few years ago at college in Arlington, Texas. Bobby came to our big family Christmas gathering in 2016 and Lisa, all the adult children and spouses, and I fell in love with him. As we sat around the Christmas dinner table we all told Mercy, “Well Mercy, either you can have Bobby as a husband or a brother because we are keeping him!” We all laughed and rejoiced that God had answered another miracle prayer regarding our beloved daughter/sister, Mercy Kandakai Bullen.
Over the last 3 years Bobby has become like a son to me in every way. We have enjoyed so much together. Last spring we were blessed to serve together at a men’s three-day Christian retreat in Oklahoma and the Holy Spirit showed up in a mighty way. At one point, the MC announced, “If you have a father in the room and would like to show him a gesture of love, feel free to do that now.” Bobby jumped up and came to me and took my arm. “Come on Dad,” he said, and led me to the front of the room where he proceeded to take off my shoes and socks and he washed my feet. Rarely in my life have I felt so loved. Someday Bobby will have to tell his whole story and especially what God did for him that weekend. It was sweetly supernatural.
To say the least, I was crazy blessed and humbled to walk my beautiful Mercy down the aisle on July 27, 2019 and give her hand to Bobby in marriage. I know heaven rejoiced and did the Bullen family on this blessed day. With Lisa as the mother of the bride, Rebekah as maid of honor, Beverly as bridesmaid, Brooke as Bridesmaid, Misti, grandkids, Joy, Joseph, and Jacob assisting with the reception, Luke, Travis, and Oscar as ushers, our granddaughter Lily as the flower-girl and our grandson Maurice as the ring-bearer, and many many of our dearest friends present and serving selflessly, we could not have scripted a more beautiful or fulfilling wedding day if we tried. Only Jesus…
After a fabulous honeymoon in Hawaii, Mercy and Bobby came home and began preparing and this fall will be working with Rebekah and I doing three-day Christian retreats building servant leaders for the local church.
The Mercy miracles march on…
Thank You Prayer Warriors!
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2 Corinthians 1:11 you also joining in helping us through your prayers, so that thanks may be given by many persons on our behalf for the favor bestowed on us through the prayers of many.
The Bullen family and Mission Critical International is in awe of all that God has done in the last 10 years among the nations and we know that our prayer warriors have played a gigantic role in that and as we seek to impact the world for Jesus in the next 10 years we want first to say “Thank you!” and secondly to ask the Lord for many many more prayer warriors who will join us in asking Him to make His kingdom come among the nations through this ministry…
Click the button below to join our prayer team on Facebook and get immediate updates and prayer requests…
And to build your faith and stir a fresh thirst for prayer in all of us, here are some encouragements from church history to pray…
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. I mention some of these prayer meetings below to illustrate.
-Moravian Prayer Meeting
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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.
-The Holy Club
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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.
-Concert of Prayer
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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.
-Union of Prayer
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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.
-The Haystack Prayer Meeting
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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.
-1859 Prayer Meeting
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“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.
You can see why we are so grateful for your prayers and desperate for you to continue praying for this ministry.
God has bigger things for us and for you in store!
Mercy’s House 2019
“Whoever welcomes one of these children in my name,
welcomes me.” – Jesus
Mercy’s House is Mission Critical’s outreach to orphans and children in need of education and homes on the continent of Africa. Our first project is a school in Monrovia, Liberia, the hometown of our beloved adopted Liberian daughter, Mercy.
We began in late 2015 with Mercy and Matt going to Liberia to see what God would have us do there. Then in early 2016 Mercy and Rebekah visited the land and we began building our school. Early 2017 Matt’s terrible accident brought a halt to Mercy’s House but then in early 2019 Matt and Rebekah visited Liberia and were reignited with a passion for this project. Since returning from Africa on January 10, 2019 we have been able to put in the dirt subfloor, concrete floors, and we have just finished the plaster and are ready to paint. We are praying for the next installment of funding ($5,000) to install the doors and windows but so much has already happened this year. Praise God!
Aflame For God 27 – Four Continents
“The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.”
– Ferdinand Foch
Read the beginning of the series HERE
When I awoke in that hospital bed in the ICU on May 4th, 2017 and began to understand how broken my body was and that I was nearly blind, one of the first things that came to my mind was, “Well Lord, I may not be able to preach ever again or go to the nations like I’m used to but I can still pray.” I lifted my right hand to my forehead in a salute and said out loud, “Yes Sir, Captain.” There was a great contentment in me at that moment but I couldn’t have known about the grand smile that must have spread across His Fatherly face at that moment because He knew that in 2018 I would set a personal record and preach on 4 continents in one year. How GOOD our God is and how unsearchable His adventures for us.
Of course, North America was the first continent in 2018 and my family and I were crazy blessed to speak at 8 different 3-day retreats with 6 different 3-day communities. Only heaven will be able to tell all of the God moments and life changes that happened at each and the life-long friends we have made but this may illustrate just two of the many stories sent to us of how God used these retreats to radically change lives. I was speaking at another 3-day retreat this month and a lady came up to me and showed me a beautiful tattoo on her otherwise clear forearm with the name and colors of her 3-day retreat last spring as she said, “This may give you a little idea of how your messages impacted my life on that weekend.” Wow! Only Jesus… Another young woman from that same spring retreat sat down with me last week and shared how she is going to graduate from university in May and found her own non-profit ministry and begin to go to the nations. Wow! Only Jesus… I am beyond humbled and blessed as I look forward to many more retreats in 2019. “Yes Sir, Captain.”
As I wrote in the last post, Asia was the second continent. Heaven only knows all that is coming in 2019 through those relationships.
Another thought that came to my mind that morning in the ICU was, “Well, I guess Project Shield, our safehouse initiative in Colombia for street girls, will never be finished because I’ll no longer be physically or financially able to lead the charge.” But God! Once again He must have smiled because the third continent I preached on last year was South America with my Pastor Frankie Mazzapica of Celebration Church of The Woodlands and God put a great desire on Frankie’s heart to take the lead in establishing the safehouse in Colombia! Praise God! Every two weeks he, other Celebration leaders, my dear Colombian friend Pastor Jordan, and our daughter, Ginary video conference together and plans are moving forward! Only Jesus…
Again as I lay in the ICU that morning I thought, “Well, I guess Mercy’s House, our partially built school project in Liberia named in honor of our Liberian daughter, Mercy Kandakai, will never be finished because once again I’ll no longer be physically or financially able to lead the charge.” But God! The fourth continent I was blessed to preach on in 2018 was Africa and I was able with my daughter Rebekah, friend and partner in Mercy’s House, Bruce Marshall, and director Pastor Martin Paye to visit the village where we were building Mercy’s House and meet with the chief and elders who assured me that Jesus raised me up from my deathbed just for their village because they need Mercy’s House to educate and disciple the next generation of their tribe. Wow! Only Jesus… Bruce came up with a brilliant plan where if we raise just $75 per student we can finish our school for 360 kids and change a generation and we are making progress! Only Jesus… You can keep up with all that is happening at Mercy’s House at www.mercyshouse.org
Look out 2019! “Yes Sir, Captain”
