[Faith-talk] Daily Thought for Wednesday, June 22, 2016

[Paul Smith]

Hello and a good day once again to most of you.  Of course you in 
Australia and New Zealand are in your Thursdays as this message is 
being written.  At any rate I hope that your day is going well, by 
God's matchless grace and His providential care.

Today we give you the second in this series of four articles on the 
subject of prayer, and today we will look back in our nation's history. 
Today's contribution was written by P. Douglas Small, a national prayer 
advocate and consultant, and his article is entitled "How Prayer can 
Change a Nation," rendered as follows:

Our nation is experiencing a moral and spiritual crisis.  The good news 
is that in similar seasons of spiritual coldness, God has gloriously 
intervened out of movements of humble, unified prayer.

Before the American Revolution, to counter abysmally low attendance, 
some churches liberalized membership rules to allow participation 
without an affirmation of faith.  By the late 1700's, at least a third 
of brides were pregnant at their weddings.

In the early 1800's, Chief Justice John Marshall lamented that the 
church was so weak it could not impact the culture.  The nation's 
colleges, created to train preachers, had become spiritually 
indifferent.  Mock communion services occurred.  Christian students 
were censored.  Liberal ideas triumphed.  At the same time, an epidemic 
of drunkenness threatened the fabric of family and communities.

In every case, the crisis moved God's people into covenants of prayer.  
Revival came to the church and awakening to the culture.

In the 1700's, God used George Whitefield to impact whole cities.  
Suddenly, the nation was freshly stirred.  Church attendance soared to 
70 percent.  An estimated 20 percent of the nation was converted.  In 
the early 1800's, thousands of people at places like Cane Ridge, Ky., 
gathered to receive the Lord's Supper, examine their lives and rekindle 
the flame of family faith.  The Haystack revival ignited a youth 
renewal leading to unprecedented missionary involvement.

The Fulton Street revival in New York in 1857 rose out of lay-led, 
noontime marketplace prayer meetings that spread across the nation.  At 
its height, 50,000 were being converted weekly.  At Azusa Street in Los 
Angeles, with impetus from the Wales Revival, another renewal rocked 
the globe in 1905-1906.

In each case, holy, prayerful desperation invited God to do the 
impossible--and He did.

And there you have Brother Small's article, but I have some comments to make.

If you are at all interested in the Christian history of America and, 
by extension, the world, I would recommend you reading or listening to 
a series of three books written by the late Peter Marshall Jr., son of 
a famous U.S. Senate chaplain.  They are in order of presentation, "The 
Light and the Glory," "From Sea to Shining Sea" and "A Certain 
Trumpet." These three together will give you much more information than 
either Brother Small or the undersigned can give you in this brief 
post.  Also, did you know that a song written during the Azusa Street 
Revival in Los Angeles those many years ago is still sung even today? 
It is entitled "The Comforter Has Come."

And finally, not to leave anything out, a glimpse of what a revival of 
the type described can be experienced even today.  The National Church 
Conference of the Blind has met yearly since 1953 when the first 
gathering of its type took place in Memphis, Tennessee, and I can say 
categorically that I've both received and gave a blessing from my 
attendance at four such gatherings.  If you'd like to listen to sermons 
from recent meetings, go to
http://www.thenccb.com.
Sister Connie belongs to one of the lists receiving my posts, and she 
will undoubtedly concur with my words.

And that will do it for today.  Until tomorrow when, Lord willing the 
third in a series of prayer articles will be posted, may the God of 
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob just keep us safe, individually and 
collectively, in these last days in which we live.  Your Christian 
friend and brother, Paul