It Began Small...

​ It began small...
A businessman wanted to share Jesus with his neighbors but no one seemed interested. A local church had asked him to be their city missionary. He prayed about what to do and decided that with everyone was so busy, he would invite them to a drop-in prayer meeting where business people could stop in for five minutes or their entire lunch hour. The church put a sign at the door inviting people to stop by. He passed out flyers inviting them but no one came.
He began to pray.... a half hour passed and he spoke with God. Then another man came in and began praying. Eventually five more people joined. The seven men concluded their prayer meeting. The next week there were fourteen, then twenty-three businessmen praying, a few meetings later there were over a hundred people. Then there was a financial crisis and soon people were desperately crying out to Jesus. Soon the church was overflowing and all over the city other churches were also hosting packed daily prayer meetings!  People who didn’t have a relationship with Jesus were having a deep personal relationship with him. People began sending in prayer requests.  Newspaper reporters came skeptical at first but totally blown away "I liked the prayer meeting," one article read.  It spread across New York and New England. A similar movement had started in Canada completely unrelated to the financial crisis. . In New York City ten thousand people per week were repenting and following Jesus. There were huge prayer meetings in Philadelphia, Boston, Louisville, Kentucky, St Louis and prayer meetings in San Francisco. The revival carried over to Virginia and North and South Carolina and throughout the United States, Europe, Jamaica, India and South Africa. It began small enough...one man praying alone when nobody came to the prayer meeting. Then a small group meeting together for a few minutes a week to pray. It became the Third Great Awakening. In two years, over a million people came to Jesus. Jeremiah Lanphier, a man who simply knelt down to pray for his community when no one else came was amazed by the things the Lord chose to do when his people called out together in prayer. What Jeremiah Lanphier did not know on September 23 1857 was that many churches from many different denominations had been gathering together to pray for revival.  Just as at Pentecost and as seen throughout history, once again, the LORD used a simple prayer meeting to change the world. Let’s gather together in prayer.
Lord, we love you. We confess that we often fill our time with everything but you, teach us to spend our lives in constant conversation with you. Jesus, please pour your mercy out on us and on our family. Thank you for sending the Comforter to be with us always. We desperately need your presence. Thank you for teaching us to pray sincerely and simply.

​Our Father in heaven,
Your name be honored as holy.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And do not bring us into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.
For yours is the Kingdom
and the power and the glory forever.
 Amen

For more information on the Layman's prayer revival check out the sources I used:
Joseph Lanphier's book 
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=V-4CAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA2

​Gibson's The Year of Grace
https://archive.org/details/yearofgracehisto0a0gibs

J Edwin Orr's History of Revival Series audio files
http://www.jedwinorr.com/resources/audio/COW_04.MP3
and
http://www.jedwinorr.com/resources/audio/COW_05.MP3http://qosoxug.ru/hety.pdf

Dr Katheryn Long's book
http://qosoxug.ru/hety.pdf



Please check out our multilayer map of the Layman's Prayer Revival using base maps provided by esri layering a historical map on top of a contemporary map.  click on pins for more info. Zoom in to the neighborhood level or out globally. ​
Please feel free to collaborate on finding and adding correct addresses for Prayer Meeting locations anywhere in the world. 

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