The high and lofty one
who lives in eternity, the Holy One, says this: “I live in the high and
holy place with those whose spirits are contrite and humble. I restore
the crushed spirit of the humble and revive the courage of those with
repentant hearts.” (Isaiah 57:15 NLT)
As we look at revivals in the Bible and at historical revivals, we see
they often began with one individual, one person who decided to do
something. Jeremiah Lanphier was a businessman who began a lunchtime
prayer meeting on Fulton Street in downtown New York. A handful of
people showed up at the first meeting on September 23, 1857 at North
Dutch Church. Lanphier was persistent, however, and the group continued
to meet for prayer and continued to grow.
Then something dramatic took place: The New York stock market crashed.
Suddenly the prayer meeting began to explode. Prayer meetings quickly
popped up throughout New York City, and within six months, ten thousand
people were gathering for prayer in the Big Apple. It was unexplainable.
They were renting concert halls and Broadway theatres for daily 6:00
AM, 9:00 AM, and noon meetings, packing them out as men and women called
on the name of the Lord. And God began to work.
It was reported that 50,000 New Yorkers came to know the Lord during a
period of three months in 1858, from March to May. Ten thousand people
were added to church membership rolls weekly. The revival spread to
other cities as well, and when it was all over, an estimated one million
people had come to faith in Christ.
This revival from 1857
to 1859 became part of what is known as the Third Great Awakening in
the United States. The revival wasn’t orchestrated. It wasn’t a campaign
planned by people. It simply was a work of God in which God poured out
His Spirit. We need to see that today.
Jeremiah Lanphier was not a great preacher. He was not a famous person.
He was just an ordinary person who decided to pray. And you can do the
same.
Copyright (c) 2018 by Harvest Ministries. All rights reserved.
Today's Verse...
Today's Verse...
What shall we say, then? Shall we
go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin;
how can we live in it any longer? —Romans 6:1
Thoughts on Today's Verse...
Grace
doesn't mean that we are sloppy with sin. We have died to sin when we
surrendered our lives to the Lordship of Christ. We don't want sin, or
its power, to have control over us. We don't want to take lightly the
awful cost Jesus paid to cover our sin. The apostle Paul uses the
strongest language possible ("By no means!" is way too tame a
translation: "God forbid!" "Unthinkable!" "Abomination!" would all be
much more accurate.) As those saved by grace, we realize that sin is
more than breaking a divine command. Sin is making light of Jesus' love
for us by choosing our sin over his sacrifice. Sin is rebelling against
the Father who paid such a high price to adopt us into his family. Sin
is breaking our Father's heart because we are choosing our sin over our
love for him. Finally, sin is choosing our own will rather than God; a
choice that leads us down a path of self-destruction.
My Prayer...
Father, thank you for your incomparable generous grace lavished upon me through Jesus' death on the Cross and the salvation that I have received through him. Please make my own sin abhorrent to me. Give me a passion for holiness and a deeper appreciation of what it cost you to make me holy. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.
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