No great thing ever happened in the history of Christendom that wasn’t preceded by humble submission to God through prayer.
Consider the Businessmen’s Revival during 1857 and 1858. Jeremiah Lanphier, a layman, was hired by the North Dutch Church in New York City and tasked with reaching people in the marketplace. Lanphier began before the Lord in humility and prayer. “Lord, what would you have me do?”
From a prayer that amounted to the widow’s mite, God gave Lanphier a simple strategy: Open the doors of the church at noon each day so businessmen could enter and pray. The first meeting was Sept. 23, just three weeks before the Bank Panic of 1857. Six attended the first week, 20 the next, then 40. [Read more…]