Good Morning. I grabbed the following from the www.bible.org website. History reminds us that if revival is going to come, then it will be proceeded by fervent and consistent prayer. Have a great day.
Iain Murray in Revival and Revivalism, p 79 quotes Jesse Lee, He described the year 1787:
"There was a remarkable revival of religion in the town of Petersburgh, and many of the inhabitants were savingly converted; and the Christians greatly revived. That town never witnessed before or since such wonderful displays of the presence and love of God in salvation of immortal souls. Prayer meetings were frequently held both in the town and in the country, and souls were frequently converted at those meetings, even when there was no preacher present; for the prayers and exhortations of the members were greatly owned of the Lord.
The most remarkable work of all was in Sussex and Brunswick circuits, where the meetings would frequently continue five or six hours together, and sometimes all night.
At one quarterly meeting held at Mabry's Chapel in Brunswick circuit, on the ;25th and 26th of July, the power of God was among the people in an extraordinary manner: some hundreds were awakened; and it was supposed that above one hundred souls were converted at that meeting, which continued for two days, i.e., on Thursday and Friday. Some thousands of people attended meeting at that place on that occasion.
The next quarterly meeting was held at Jones's Chapel, in Sussex county, on Saturday and Sunday, the 27th and 28th of July. This meeting was favored with more of the divine presence than any other that had been know before . . .
The great revival of religion in 1776, which spread extensively through the south part of Virginia, exceeded any thing of the kind that had ever been known before in that part of the country. But the revival this year far exceeded it.
It was thought that in the course of that summer there were so many as sixteen hundred souls converted in Sussex circuit; in Brunswick circuit about eighteen hundred; and in Amelia circuit about eight hundred. In these three circuits we had the greatest revival of religion; but in many other circuits there was a gracious work, and hundreds were brought to God in the course of that year.
. . . the work was not confined to meetings for preaching; at prayer meetings the work prospered and many souls were born again . . . It was common to hear of souls being brought to God while at work in their houses or in their fields. It was often the case that the people in their corn-fields, white people, or black, and sometimes both together, would begin to sing, and being affected would begin to pray, and others would join with them, and they would continue their cries till some of them would find peace to their souls."
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Praying Like Elijah!
James 5.17-18 points out that "Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again, he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops."
The Old Testament prophet Elijah was just am ordinary person and yet when he prayed, there were divine results (i.e., raising up of the widow's dead son, the taking on of the false prophets of Baal). Elijah prayed that there would be no rain, and there was no rain. Then he prayed for rain, and there was rain.
The point is simple: as ordinary people, who are righteous (verse 16) in the eyes of God (because of our salvation in Jesus), we are given the right to have a powerful ministry of prayer.
Do you have examples of ordinary people who prayed and the results were clearly from heaven? Please share them with me. E-mail me at bryan@harveyoaksbaptist.org.
Have a good day and keep praying
Bryan
The Old Testament prophet Elijah was just am ordinary person and yet when he prayed, there were divine results (i.e., raising up of the widow's dead son, the taking on of the false prophets of Baal). Elijah prayed that there would be no rain, and there was no rain. Then he prayed for rain, and there was rain.
The point is simple: as ordinary people, who are righteous (verse 16) in the eyes of God (because of our salvation in Jesus), we are given the right to have a powerful ministry of prayer.
Do you have examples of ordinary people who prayed and the results were clearly from heaven? Please share them with me. E-mail me at bryan@harveyoaksbaptist.org.
Have a good day and keep praying
Bryan
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Do We Depend on the Holy Spirit?
Jim Cymbala, Pastor of the Brooklyn Tabernacle writes in his book, Fresh Power, that we depend more on our own devices and strength rather than the power of God...
“Too much of our religious life is made up of programs and human ideas, talents and strategies. While they have value, they pitifully fail to meet the need of the hour. What is messing today is something from heaven itself, something from God the Holy Spirit that fills and floods our lives”
Daily we can pray, "Come Holy Spirit Come!"
Bryan
“Too much of our religious life is made up of programs and human ideas, talents and strategies. While they have value, they pitifully fail to meet the need of the hour. What is messing today is something from heaven itself, something from God the Holy Spirit that fills and floods our lives”
Daily we can pray, "Come Holy Spirit Come!"
Bryan
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Whatever Happened to Repentance
Good Morning. I thought this was a helpful article for Kairos Journal on the subject of repentance
(http://www.kairosjournal.org/Document.aspx QuadrantID=4&CategoryID=9&TopicID=40&DocumentID=5878&L=1)
I highlighted the last paragragh. Have a great day. Bryan
We’ve come to think our faith is about comfort. It’s not.
Forget what the Billboard charts say—to judge from church ads in the Yellow Pages, America’s favorite song is “I’m Mr. Lonely.” Churches are quick to spot that need and promise eagerly that they will be friendly, or be family, or just care. Apparently this is the Church’s principal product. When people need tires, they look up a tire store; when they start having those bad-sad-mad feelings, they shop for a church.
Here, for once, denominational and political divisions vanish. Churches across the spectrum compete to display their capacity for caring, though each has its own way of making the pitch. The Tabernacle, a “spirit-filled, multi-cultured church,” pleads, “Come let us love you,” while the Bible Way Temple is more formal, if not downright odd: “A church where no stranger need feel strangely.” (The only response that comes to mind is “Thank thee.”) One church sign in South Carolina announced, “Where Jesus is Lord and everybody is special,” which made it sound like second prize. And one Methodist congregation tries to get it all in: “A Christ-centered church where you can make new friends and form lasting relationships with people who care about you.”
But when Jesus preached, He did not spend a lot of time on “caring.” The first time we see Him, in the first Gospel, the first instruction He gives is “Repent” (Mark 1:15). From then on, it’s His most consistent message. Yes, He spoke words of comfort like “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden” (Matt. 11:28). But much more frequently He challenged His hearers, urging them to turn to God in humility and admit their sins. Even when told of a tragedy that caused many deaths, He repeated this difficult theme: “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:1-5).
We love the caring sayings of Jesus. We repeat them often, paste them onto felt banners, and print them on refrigerator magnets. We mostly ignore those on repentance.
We live in a time when it’s hard to talk about Christian faith at all, much less awkward topics like repentance. (No era finds repentance easy, but many have found it easier to talk about.) Paradoxically, we live in a very easy time. We are the wealthiest, healthiest, most comfortable generation in history. With less to struggle for, we become increasingly oriented toward pleasure. This all-too-natural inclination is what most unites us. America is a place of wild diversity, but we all meet at the shopping mall.
We’re confirmed in this quest for comfort by a ceaseless stream of advertising messages. These tell us who we are: special, precious people with no faults, who deserve to feel better than we do. Ads tell us, “Your wife (boss, teenager, classmate) doesn’t understand you, but we do. Here, buy this, and you’ll feel better.” Advertising invites us to be big babies—an invitation that fallen human nature has always found hard to resist.
Try telling a person who’s been discipled by advertising that he’s a sinner. A hundred years ago, a preacher would have seen heads nod in recognition at that familiar concept. But today’s consumer is likely to be shocked and baffled. How could he be a sinner? All he knows is that he’s unhappy because he does not have his fair share of stuff, and he isn’t appreciated enough by those around him. Original sin? He will readily agree that everyone else keeps letting him down. That he’s estranged from the one, holy God and needs to be reconciled? He’s likely to respond, “So who’s this God who thinks He’s better than us?” Bring up Judgment Day, and you’ll get to see someone genuinely appalled; the very idea just sounds so “judgmental.”
In trying to reach this seeker, the Church has been given a severely reduced pack of options. Since people are aware only of seeking comfort, it looks like that’s what we have to headline in any message we send. Neither this need, nor our response, is untrue. A profound sense of unease and dislocation is indeed part of the human condition, because sin has estranged us from God. And the Church has the only authentic solution to this problem, because we bear the Good News of reconciliation through Jesus Christ.
The problem comes when we never get around to talking about the hard part of the Good News. The problem can even be that we start forgetting it ourselves, and start believing that consolation is the main reason Jesus came. But what’s wrong with us required much more than a hug; it required the Cross. It doesn’t seem this way; we too, have been catechized by the world and reflexively think of ourselves as needy, wronged children. We’d rather feel as if we’re victims of a cruel world than admit we are contributors to the world’s cruelty, lost sinners who perversely love our lostness, clinging to our treasured sins like a drowning man to an anvil.
How bizarre such language seems today. We look around our neighborhood and our congregation and everyone seems so “nice.” We know what really wicked people are like—we see them in the papers every day—and we’re not like that. God must find us, in comparison, quite endearing. And of course He knows the hurts we bear deep inside, and anyone who’s been hurt can’t be bad (I call this the “victims are sinless” fallacy). With these and a thousand other sweet murmurs, we shield ourselves from our real condition and remain Christian babies all our lives: pampered, ineffective, whiney, and numb.
Jesus didn’t come just to save us from the penalty for our sins; He came to save us from our sins—now, today, if we will only respond to the challenge and let Him. A nation of grownup Christians, courageous, confident, humble, and holy, would be more compelling than any smiley-face ad campaign. The Lord does not love us for our good parts and pass over the rest. He died for the bad parts and will not rest until they are put right. We must stop thinking of God as infinitely indulgent. We must begin to grapple with the scary and exhilarating truth that He is infinitely holy, and that He wants the same for us.
Footnotes :
1 This article was originally published as a Kairos Insight. It was written by Frederica Mathewes-Green. She is an author, columnist, and commentator, who serves on a range of advisory and editorial boards. She can also be heard on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition.”
(http://www.kairosjournal.org/Document.aspx QuadrantID=4&CategoryID=9&TopicID=40&DocumentID=5878&L=1)
I highlighted the last paragragh. Have a great day. Bryan
We’ve come to think our faith is about comfort. It’s not.
Forget what the Billboard charts say—to judge from church ads in the Yellow Pages, America’s favorite song is “I’m Mr. Lonely.” Churches are quick to spot that need and promise eagerly that they will be friendly, or be family, or just care. Apparently this is the Church’s principal product. When people need tires, they look up a tire store; when they start having those bad-sad-mad feelings, they shop for a church.
Here, for once, denominational and political divisions vanish. Churches across the spectrum compete to display their capacity for caring, though each has its own way of making the pitch. The Tabernacle, a “spirit-filled, multi-cultured church,” pleads, “Come let us love you,” while the Bible Way Temple is more formal, if not downright odd: “A church where no stranger need feel strangely.” (The only response that comes to mind is “Thank thee.”) One church sign in South Carolina announced, “Where Jesus is Lord and everybody is special,” which made it sound like second prize. And one Methodist congregation tries to get it all in: “A Christ-centered church where you can make new friends and form lasting relationships with people who care about you.”
But when Jesus preached, He did not spend a lot of time on “caring.” The first time we see Him, in the first Gospel, the first instruction He gives is “Repent” (Mark 1:15). From then on, it’s His most consistent message. Yes, He spoke words of comfort like “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden” (Matt. 11:28). But much more frequently He challenged His hearers, urging them to turn to God in humility and admit their sins. Even when told of a tragedy that caused many deaths, He repeated this difficult theme: “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:1-5).
We love the caring sayings of Jesus. We repeat them often, paste them onto felt banners, and print them on refrigerator magnets. We mostly ignore those on repentance.
We live in a time when it’s hard to talk about Christian faith at all, much less awkward topics like repentance. (No era finds repentance easy, but many have found it easier to talk about.) Paradoxically, we live in a very easy time. We are the wealthiest, healthiest, most comfortable generation in history. With less to struggle for, we become increasingly oriented toward pleasure. This all-too-natural inclination is what most unites us. America is a place of wild diversity, but we all meet at the shopping mall.
We’re confirmed in this quest for comfort by a ceaseless stream of advertising messages. These tell us who we are: special, precious people with no faults, who deserve to feel better than we do. Ads tell us, “Your wife (boss, teenager, classmate) doesn’t understand you, but we do. Here, buy this, and you’ll feel better.” Advertising invites us to be big babies—an invitation that fallen human nature has always found hard to resist.
Try telling a person who’s been discipled by advertising that he’s a sinner. A hundred years ago, a preacher would have seen heads nod in recognition at that familiar concept. But today’s consumer is likely to be shocked and baffled. How could he be a sinner? All he knows is that he’s unhappy because he does not have his fair share of stuff, and he isn’t appreciated enough by those around him. Original sin? He will readily agree that everyone else keeps letting him down. That he’s estranged from the one, holy God and needs to be reconciled? He’s likely to respond, “So who’s this God who thinks He’s better than us?” Bring up Judgment Day, and you’ll get to see someone genuinely appalled; the very idea just sounds so “judgmental.”
In trying to reach this seeker, the Church has been given a severely reduced pack of options. Since people are aware only of seeking comfort, it looks like that’s what we have to headline in any message we send. Neither this need, nor our response, is untrue. A profound sense of unease and dislocation is indeed part of the human condition, because sin has estranged us from God. And the Church has the only authentic solution to this problem, because we bear the Good News of reconciliation through Jesus Christ.
The problem comes when we never get around to talking about the hard part of the Good News. The problem can even be that we start forgetting it ourselves, and start believing that consolation is the main reason Jesus came. But what’s wrong with us required much more than a hug; it required the Cross. It doesn’t seem this way; we too, have been catechized by the world and reflexively think of ourselves as needy, wronged children. We’d rather feel as if we’re victims of a cruel world than admit we are contributors to the world’s cruelty, lost sinners who perversely love our lostness, clinging to our treasured sins like a drowning man to an anvil.
How bizarre such language seems today. We look around our neighborhood and our congregation and everyone seems so “nice.” We know what really wicked people are like—we see them in the papers every day—and we’re not like that. God must find us, in comparison, quite endearing. And of course He knows the hurts we bear deep inside, and anyone who’s been hurt can’t be bad (I call this the “victims are sinless” fallacy). With these and a thousand other sweet murmurs, we shield ourselves from our real condition and remain Christian babies all our lives: pampered, ineffective, whiney, and numb.
Jesus didn’t come just to save us from the penalty for our sins; He came to save us from our sins—now, today, if we will only respond to the challenge and let Him. A nation of grownup Christians, courageous, confident, humble, and holy, would be more compelling than any smiley-face ad campaign. The Lord does not love us for our good parts and pass over the rest. He died for the bad parts and will not rest until they are put right. We must stop thinking of God as infinitely indulgent. We must begin to grapple with the scary and exhilarating truth that He is infinitely holy, and that He wants the same for us.
Footnotes :
1 This article was originally published as a Kairos Insight. It was written by Frederica Mathewes-Green. She is an author, columnist, and commentator, who serves on a range of advisory and editorial boards. She can also be heard on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition.”
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Stay Close to Jesus
P.T. Forsyth wrote: "Keep close to the New Testament Christ and then ask ask for anything you desire in that contact. Ask for everything you can ask in Christ's name, i.e., everything desirable by a man who is in Christ's kingdom of God, by a man who lives for it at heart, everything in tune with the purpose and work of the kingdom in Christ" (quoted in Ben Patterson, Deepening Your Conversation with God, pgs. 148-149).
Good advice!
Bryan
Good advice!
Bryan
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
What is a Disciple?
Harvey Oaks Baptist Church is in the beginning stages of a new discipleship process. It will be based from CORE Discipleship Groups (www.coregroups.org). The training manual has an good definition of a Christian disciple...
"A disciple is a born-again believer who has decided that following Christ takes priority over everything else in life. Jesus didn't say being a disciple would be easy. He told his followers that they would have to deny themselves and take up their own crosses to follow him. He emphasized the fact that He would have to be first in their lives when he said, 'If anyone comes to me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple' (Luke 14.26). Jesus is speaking to you and me. Being a disciple and making disciples is a direct command from our Lord Jesus and the responsibility of every born-again believer" (p. 8).
Our churches needs armies of disciples who are passionate for Jesus.
Let us keep praying for revival
Bryan
"A disciple is a born-again believer who has decided that following Christ takes priority over everything else in life. Jesus didn't say being a disciple would be easy. He told his followers that they would have to deny themselves and take up their own crosses to follow him. He emphasized the fact that He would have to be first in their lives when he said, 'If anyone comes to me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple' (Luke 14.26). Jesus is speaking to you and me. Being a disciple and making disciples is a direct command from our Lord Jesus and the responsibility of every born-again believer" (p. 8).
Our churches needs armies of disciples who are passionate for Jesus.
Let us keep praying for revival
Bryan
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Why Pray?
Pastor Mark Dever, in his book, "The Deliberate Church" reminds us why fervent, earth-changing prayers are needed in the church...
"Praying shows our dependence on God. It honors him as the source of all blessing, and it reminds us that converting individuals and growing churches are His words, not ours (1 Corinthians 2.14-16; 3.6-7)" (p. 35).
Brothers and sisters, let wear out our knees in prayer!
Bryan
"Praying shows our dependence on God. It honors him as the source of all blessing, and it reminds us that converting individuals and growing churches are His words, not ours (1 Corinthians 2.14-16; 3.6-7)" (p. 35).
Brothers and sisters, let wear out our knees in prayer!
Bryan
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
The Fulton Street Revival
Sometimes, we need to remind ourselves that prayer is a foundation for revival. Thus, it is good to throw a few logs into a prayer fire by looking to past examples. Below is from Glimpses bulletin (http://chi.gospelcom.net/GLIMPSEF/Glimpses/glmps168.shtml)
"Another kind of prayer meeting made a difference half a century later in New York City. It was not a good time for churches in downtown Manhattan, and the North Dutch Reformed Church on Fulton Street resorted to creative measures, hiring a businessman named Jeremiah Lanphier as a sort of outreach minister. He knocked on doors in the neighborhood and distributed pamphlets and Bibles, but response generally was dismal.
"One day as I was walking along the streets," Lanphier wrote in his journal, "the idea was suggested to my mind that an hour of prayer, from twelve to one o'clock, would be beneficial to businessmen." The idea blossomed: a weekly prayer time, open to anyone, bankers to broom-pushers. Come when you can, leave when you must. Handbills advertised the first meeting--at noon on September 23, 1857.
Lanphier waited for the first attenders. No one showed up for the first ten minutes, twenty, thirty. Then one man straggled in, then another. The hour ended with six men present, praying. The following week there were twenty, the next week forty. Soon a hundred. Some of them wanted to meet every day. Rooms were packed. The church had to ask another church to handle the overflow. When churches ran out of room, the prayer meetings moved to theaters. By March, 1858, the New York Times could report that Burton's Theater on Chambers Street was packed as famous preacher Henry Ward Beecher led a crowd of 3,000 in prayer. Some estimated that up to a million people became Christians in the 1857-58 revival.
What caused such immense interest in prayer? A stock market crash might have had something to do with it. Business leaders enslaved by money were suddenly seeking a more reliable master. When he started his humble prayer time, Jeremiah Lanphier had no way of knowing about the impending financial collapse. He just knew people needed to pray."
"Another kind of prayer meeting made a difference half a century later in New York City. It was not a good time for churches in downtown Manhattan, and the North Dutch Reformed Church on Fulton Street resorted to creative measures, hiring a businessman named Jeremiah Lanphier as a sort of outreach minister. He knocked on doors in the neighborhood and distributed pamphlets and Bibles, but response generally was dismal.
"One day as I was walking along the streets," Lanphier wrote in his journal, "the idea was suggested to my mind that an hour of prayer, from twelve to one o'clock, would be beneficial to businessmen." The idea blossomed: a weekly prayer time, open to anyone, bankers to broom-pushers. Come when you can, leave when you must. Handbills advertised the first meeting--at noon on September 23, 1857.
Lanphier waited for the first attenders. No one showed up for the first ten minutes, twenty, thirty. Then one man straggled in, then another. The hour ended with six men present, praying. The following week there were twenty, the next week forty. Soon a hundred. Some of them wanted to meet every day. Rooms were packed. The church had to ask another church to handle the overflow. When churches ran out of room, the prayer meetings moved to theaters. By March, 1858, the New York Times could report that Burton's Theater on Chambers Street was packed as famous preacher Henry Ward Beecher led a crowd of 3,000 in prayer. Some estimated that up to a million people became Christians in the 1857-58 revival.
What caused such immense interest in prayer? A stock market crash might have had something to do with it. Business leaders enslaved by money were suddenly seeking a more reliable master. When he started his humble prayer time, Jeremiah Lanphier had no way of knowing about the impending financial collapse. He just knew people needed to pray."
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