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IT ALL STARTED BY ONE MAN WANTING TO PRAY
In 1857 there was a 46 year old man named Jeremiah Lamphere who lived in New York City. Jeremiah loved the Lord tremendously, but he didn’t feel that he could do much for the Lord until he began to feel a burden for the lost and accepted an invitation from his church to be an inner city missionary.
So in July of 1857 he started walking up and down the streets of New York passing out tracts and talking to people about Jesus, but he wasn’t having any success. Then God put it on his heart to try prayer. So he printed up a bunch of tracts, and he passed them out to anyone and everyone met. He invited anyone who wanted to come to the 3rd floor of the Old North Dutch Reform Church on Fulton St. in New York City from 12 to 1 on Wednesday to pray. He passed out hundreds and hundreds of fliers and put up posters everywhere he could.
Wednesday came and at noon nobody showed up. So Jeremiah got on his knees and started praying. For 30 minutes he prayed by himself when finally five other people walked in. The next week 20 people came. The next week between 30 and 40 people came. They then decided to meet every day from 12:00 to 1:00 to pray for the city.
Before long a few ministers started coming and they said, "We need to start this at our churches." Within six months there were over 5000 prayer groups meeting everyday in N.Y. Soon the word spread all over the country. Prayer meetings were started in Philadelphia, Detroit, and Washington D.C. In fact President Franklin Pierce started going almost every day to a noonday prayer meeting. By 1859 some 15,000 cities in America were having downtown prayer meetings everyday at noon, and thousands were brought to Christ.
The great thing about this revival is that there is not a famous preacher associated with it. It was all started by one man wanting to pray. People have been seeking God, and seeking a relationship with God through Jesus Christ for centuries.
(From a sermon by Rich Anderson, Seeking The Face Of Jesus Christ 2/18/2011)
"HE LEAKS!"
A country church was having their annual revival meeting. On the first night the preacher preached a message about repentance and the need to return to the Lord. At the altar call, a man came down the aisle saying "Fill me Lord, fill me".
The next night the preacher challenged the congregation with the need to totally surrender their lives to Christ in complete obedience. Again the altar call was extended; like the night before the same man came down the aisle saying "Fill me Lord, fill me".
The third night of the revival preacher warned his congregation of the evils of sin and urged the congregation to live lives of holiness. Again at the invitation was made to give one's life to Christ, the same man came up the aisle saying "Fill me Lord, fill me".
To which someone in the back of the church yelled; "Don't do it Lord, He leaks!"
The truth of the matter is we all leak from time to time. We all lose our way, we tend to lose our first love or we wade in the pool of the lukewarm.
(From a sermon by Alan Tison, Remember What We Are To Do, 8/7/2010)
Revival came to north China in 1932 in answer to several years of prayer. At one point, Norwegian missionary Maria Monsen wondered what good her praying could do. She longed to see God’s river of life flood spiritually dry China. Then she realized that the mighty Yangtze River began when the tiny drops of rain came together in the top of the mountains. Maria sought a prayer partner who would join her in claiming the promise "that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven" (Mt. 18:19). When she finally found someone she exclaimed, "The awakening has begun Two of us have agreed" The rain drops of revival prayer were coming together. In November of 1930 Maria announced, "A great revival is coming soon and it will begin in the North China Mission." She was convinced that the missionaries had fulfilled the conditions for revival found in 2 Chron 7:14. In 1932 about forty Christians were meeting in a town in North China for prayer four times a day beginning at 5:00 a.m. Believers were convicted of sin. Two men repented of hating each other. Love was strong and deep. Joy abounded. When revival came more people were born again than in any previous year in North China. One missionary estimated that 3,000 people came to Christ in his town. Pastors, missionaries, and Bible women experienced a deeper Christian life than they had ever known before. A spirit of prayer was poured out on the church. People loved to pray. Many times prayer meetings lasted two or three hours. The prayers were short, fervent, and sometimes tearful. Children’s prayers led to the salvation of their parents and teachers.
When David Brainerd took the message of redemption to the North American Indians from 1743 to his death at age 29 just four years later, a revival broke out that impacted the Native American community. Baugh writes, "The revival had greatest impact when Brainerd emphasized the compassion of the Savior, the provisions of the gospel, and the free offer of divine grace. Idolatry was abandoned, marriages repaired, drunkenness practically disappeared, honesty and repayments of debts prevailed. Money once wasted on excessive drinking was used for family and communal needs. Their communities were filled with love."
In 1857, four young Irishmen began a weekly prayer meeting in a village school. The next year, more prayer meetings started and revival was the common theme of the preachers. The next year, 100,000 people were converted into the churches of Ireland in what is marked as the beginning of the Ulster revival of 1859. By 1860, crime was reduced and the judges had no cases to try. One county in Ireland reported no crime and the no prisoners were held in the jail. It was the greatest thing to hit Ireland since the ministry of Saint Patrick. Services were packed with people, there was an abundance of prayer meetings, family prayers increased, Scripture reading was unmatched, Sunday Schools prospered, people stood firm, giving increased, vice abated, and crime was reduced significantly.
In the Welsh revival that occured around the turn of the 20th century, 100,000 outsiders were added to the churches. Again from Baugh: "Drunkenness was immediately cut in half, and many taverns went bankrupt. Crime was so diminished th...
Our behavior should be an outward growth of our love of God. It is the soil in which our spiritual fruits are planted. The Holy Spirit is the fertilizer that makes our fruits grow and prosper. (Pastor Carl K.Benge
"They pray at a level Americans would not believe," says Chad Hammond, Busan Franklin Graham Festival director, who witnessed more than 325,000 Koreans fill Busan Asiad Stadium during the 10/07 evangelistic event. Throughout the weeks ahead of the event, more than 1,000 people gathered daily at sunrise, praying that God would bring revival to the people like He did a century ago and even a few decades ago when Billy Graham held his largest crusade ever. (Christian Post 10/2/07)
BRAND NEW START
An angry newspaper subscriber stormed into the reporter’s office and demanded an apology because he had been mistakenly put in the obituaries. The reporter said, "I never write retractions, but what I will do tomorrow is list you in the birth column and give you a brand new start."
I've got good news. Today, you can start over with the Lord God. He will never leave you nor forsake you.
(From a sermon by Ed Sasnett, Reasons to Stay, 6/23/2010)
Finney noted this about obedience and sacrifice, “Revival is nothing more or less t...
FRANK BOYD ON REVIVAL
Frank M. Boyd, an early Pentecostal instructor, said, "He expected all the students to be more filled with fire and love and zeal and more filled with the Spirit when they left than when they came. He said that when men had the Word without the Spirit they were often dead and dull and dry; and when men had the Spirit with out the Word there is a tendency towards fanaticism. But where men had the Word and the Spirit, they would be equipped as the Master wants His ministers equipped."
THE CANE RIDGE REVIVAL
One of those great revivals of the American past took place in the late spring and early summer of 1801 at Cane Ridge in central Kentucky. A pastor named Barton Stone, who had been called to serve this little Methodist church by Daniel Boone, decided to call a four-day meeting for personal renewal and revival.
The members of the Cane Ridge church and most of the people around them were farmers and since the crops had been planted and they were waiting on the harvest at the end of the summer willingly laid down their plows for this meeting. At that May meeting there were many in that local church that begin to experience what was called "the fullness of the Spirit" or as later Methodist and holiness preachers would call it "perfect love." We can read accounts of what took place and understand it as they were receiving the Holy Ghost evidenced by speaking with tongues.
Since the May meeting had gone so well, Barton Stone and his small church decided that they would host another meeting in August that would be just before the harvesting of their crops. The only difference this time was that this little church had now spent about 2 ½ months in revival and the word begin to leak out about what was taking place. As the word spread in the surrounding communities, people came from everywhere. So many came that the United States Army had to come in to help with managing the crowds. The U.S. Army did their own count and said there were 20,000 who came to this Cane Ridge revival meeting.
The little church could seat at its maximum capacity only about 250 people and so the overflow spilled out into several pastures and pulpits were put up so that people could hear the Word and then respond in the old-fashioned altars.
James Finley, who was converted and would later become a circuit-riding Methodist preacher, described the scene in his personal journal:
The noise was like the roar of Niagara. The vast sea of human beings seemed to be agitated as if by a storm. I counted seven ministers, all preaching at one time, some on stumps, some on wagons, and one was standing on a tree which had, in falling, lodged against another. . . Some of the people were singing, others praying, some crying for mercy in the most piteous accents, while others were shouting most vociferously. While witnessing these scenes, a peculiarly-strange sensation, such as I had never felt before, came over me. My heart beat tumultuously, my knees trembled, my lips quivered, and I felt as though I must fall to the ground. A strange supernatural power seemed to pervade the entire mass of mind collected there. . . I stepped up on to the log, where I could have a better view of the surging sea of humanity. At one time I saw at least five hundred swept down in a moment, as if a battery of a thousand guns had been opened upon them, and then immediately followed shrieks and shouts that rent the very heavens. (From James Boles, The Great Revival, 1787-1805.)
It was not too long after this that the entire American frontier blazed with revival. Peter Cartwright, another Methodist circuit-rider, came to the fore-front of the revival scene and God was pouring out His Spirit on those 'shoutin' Methodist and holiness preachers and people. It was during this time that the camp meetings began their ascent in the history of the American churches.
-All revivals have a price tag on them. They are not cheap nor do they come easy. They require great devotion and personal sacrifice.
* Revivals bring the Church back to prayer.
* Revivals return the Church to a hunger for the Word of God.
* Revivals jolt the Church from spiritual stagnation and deadness of heart.
* Revivals stimulate the Church to heart-felt, sincere worship.
* Revivals bring the Church to place of intercessory agony that is marked by tears and travail.
* Revivals cause commitment to holiness and separation from the world.
* Revivals fill the Church with passion and godly desire.
* Revivals fill the Church with a reformation of mind and heart.
(From a sermon by Philip Harrelson, The Battlefield of Prayer, 8/6/2010)
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