An Amazing Testimony of How Jim Elliot’s College Campus Prayer Meetings Started a Missions Movement
Why must we foster the convergence of prayer and missions?
David Howard, general director of The World Evangelical Fellowship, told recently in the Evangelical Missions Quarterly about a great movement of prayer that happened at Wheaton College when he and Jim Elliot were there in 1946.
Jim Elliot—the one killed by the Aucas—organized a campus-wide, round-the-clock prayer cycle so that a student was praying for a missions movement during every 15-minute slot. One of the students named Art Wiens was moved during that week to pray systematically through the college directory, praying for 10 students by name every day. He followed this faithfully through his college years.
David Howard says that he did not see Art Wiens again until 1974, about 25 years later, at the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelism in Switzerland. As they renewed their friendship, Art asked David Howard if he recalled the great times of prayer they used to have. Then he said, “You know, Dave, I am still praying for 500 of our college contemporaries who are now on the mission field.” David asked him how he knew that many are overseas. He said, “I kept in touch with the alumni office and found out who was going as a missionary and I still pray for them.”
Dave was so astounded he asked if he could see the prayer list. The next day he brought it to him—a battered old notebook he had started in their college days with the names of hundreds of their classmates and fellow students.
(from Desiring God - source)
My Driving Convictions Concerning Frontier Missions P2 // The Indissoluble Union of Prayer and Missions
[read the intro] [read part 1]
For the last 8 years I have been a part of a number of communities and ministries that have been centered around daily corporate prayer and worship led by singers and musicians. In 2006 a few dozen of us began meeting every morning at 8am for 4-8 hours of adoration and intercession. Those meetings continue to this day. Our community is not unique. In Jakarta, Seoul, Kansas City, Egypt, Atlanta, Kona, and dozens of other cities around the world, multitudes (mostly young adults) are gathering 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, to “gaze upon the beauty of the Lord” and to “remind” God of His promises in intercession (Ps. 27:4; Is. 62:6-7).
My convictions about frontier missions have been indelibly shaped by this experience. A 24/7 model messes with all our ecclesiological structures and forms. Instead of meeting for an hour on Sunday for Church, and a weeknight for Bible study, the new ‘normal’ is gathering daily to pray and worship. It’s unfortunate that we have to call this “new” considering that this was the face of the early Church:
And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. (Acts 2:42 ESV)
We center our discipleship, our training, our equipping, and our sending around a Prayer Room. It’s not about the room. It’s about prayer. And it’s about the infinite worth of Jesus. It’s about Read more >>
Did Jesus Discourage Corporate Public Prayer in Matthew 6?
I labor in the midst of a stream that desires to establish corporate prayer and worship from the rising of the sun to its going down. I love it. I am gripped with it. I’m sowing the majority of my time, my energy, and my resources in the prime of my life to this end: that the Church in our generation would be a praying Church with a high vision for the glory of God in the face of Christ and committed to serving the nations through intercession and a bold witness to the Gospel.
CRITICS OF CORPORATE PUBLIC PRAYER
Often critics of our stream point us to Matthew 6 saying that Jesus never asked this of His people. They argue that in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus openly discouraged corporate public prayer. Having been ‘swimming’ in this particular stream for almost a decade, Matthew 6 has been the passage I’ve heard cited the most as evidence against the prayer movement that is currently emerging in the nations. And so I wanted to give a brief response. Read more >>
Living to Be Memorialized
Ever heard of a guy named Cornelius? If you haven’t, you need to learn about him.
He and a young Jewish woman named Mary from a village called Bethany were the only two people in the New Testament whose lives the Lord sought to memorialize (“to preserve the memory of”). That is, because of how they caught the attention of heaven the Lord exalted them that others might emulate them.
So the question is, “Why were these two memorialized?”
Mary Read more >>
The Culture of Prayer in the Early Church – A Survey of the Role of Prayer in Acts 1-13
DOWNLOAD: NOTES | MP3 (AVAILABLE SOON)
——-
I. INTRODUCTION
A. Currently we are witnessing the emergence of the greatest expression of prayer in all of Church history. And it will not plateau or wane before the return of the Lord. Before Jesus splits the sky the Church in the nations will be a praying Church (Rev. 5:8; 8:1-5; 22:17). The prayers of the saints will rise from every tribe and tongue, from the rising of the sun to its going down (Malachi 1:11).
B. With that said, it’s important that we understand that this is not a new idea or foreign to the pages of Church history. Far from being an exclusively modern phenomenon the call to corporate prayer was intended by the Lord to be foundational to the ethos of the people of the covenant from the Garden of Eden.
C. In this session I want to give an overview of the role of prayer in the book of Acts to demonstrate the fact that the Lord has always desired the Church to be a praying Church. Read more >>
The Ministry of Night and Day Intercession Before the Coming of the Lord
DOWNLOAD:
NOTES | MP3 (AVAILABLE SOON)
__________________
The Ministry of Night and Day Intercession Before the Coming of the Lord
I. HEARING ONE OF JESUS’ STRONGEST APPEALS IN SCRIPTURE
A. In the Gospels and in the book of Revelation we find Jesus’ repetitious use of a particular phrase:
He who has ears to hear, let him hear. (Matthew 11:15)
He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches… (Rev. 2:7; 11; 17; 29; 3:6; 13; 22)
B. The central truths of the Gospel never change. But specific word of the Lord from generation to generation changes quite dramatically. We never graduate from the main and plain truths of the Gospel nor do we cease laboring to emphasize them as such. But it must be understood that there are transitional moments of history in which the Holy Spirit emphasizes unique and particular messages specific to that hour.
C. For example, in Matthew 11:15 Jesus beckoned that generation to hear what the Spirit was emphasizing through Jesus and John the Baptist. Matthew chapter 11 addresses a generation that by and large failed to discern and heed that message. Read more >>
1 – Introduction to John the Baptist’s Ministry as a Forerunner
DOWNLOAD
NOTES | MP3 (soon to be added)
______________________________
I. THE FORERUNNER MINISTRY
A. Human history is a succession of transitional generations. Throughout the centuries–from the creation of the cosmos to the exile from the Garden, from the calling of Abraham to the exaltation of Joseph, from the flood to the Exodus, from the drought in the days of Elijah to the deportation of the days of Jeremiah, and from the days of Anna, Simeon, and John the Baptist to the days of Peter, Philip, and Paul–we see that transitional generations are like hinges upon which the door of redemption and judgment swings.
B. And in every generation that witnesses such monumental transitions as those mentioned above we observe what we refer to as the forerunner ministry. The forerunner ministry is a prophetic and pastoral ministry that is intended by God to prepare people for the unique dynamics of the transition specific to a particular generation. Read more >>
A Rarely Wielded Weapon in Our War Against Sin
Lately I’ve been pondering a statement that J. C. Ryle (d. 1900) made about prayer:
“Praying and sinning will never live together in the same heart. Prayer will consume sin, or sin will choke prayer.”
(From A Call to Prayer)
In my estimation–judging by Scripture, history, and personal experience–prayer has not been given the attention that it deserves with respect to our war with sin.
“Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Matthew 26:41)
Paul’s Teaching on the End-Times in 2 Thessalonians 2 – Ten Foundational Truths
DOWNLOAD
NOTES | MP3
The Full Length Trailer for My Book
I’m stoked to announce the release of the Full Length Trailer for my book “The Controversy of Zion and the Time of Jacob’s Trouble: The Final Suffering and Salvation of the Jewish People.”
If you’d like to help stir up awareness about these critical issues and help us promote the book we’d be delighted if you’d repost it.
A big “Thank You” to the talented Nathan Buchanan for creating such a beautiful video.
* If you’re receiving this blog by email, click on the link to watch the video.
