Praying 24/7

The book I mentioned yesterday (“Red Mood Rising”) is taking up a lot of my thoughts right now. It is the story of the 24/7 prayer movement happening right now, all around the world. However, that movement is modeled after something that started a long, long time ago…with the Moravians in the 1700s. Being that my beloved John Wesley (father of Methodism) was greatly influenced by the Moravians, I am delighted to learn new things about their community. I feel like a person doing genealogy research and finding some long lost relatives; I am finding long lost spiritual relatives. For you see, my life and theology have been greatly influenced by John Wesley. Being a Methodist from birth, much of who I am and who I have become--in many ways--finds its way back to Wesley. Because of Wesley’s encounters with the Moravians, he came to know Christ in a deeper, life-changing, heart-strangely-warmed kind of way. This movement (described below) is part of that…and, in some way, I am part of that. It’s amazing to realize that what the Holy Spirit did almost 300 years ago is still affecting lives today…still affecting ME today! Scary and incredible!

So I present this story to you (below). It comes from the 24/7 prayer movement website (www.24-7prayer.com) which, when get a chance, definitely check it out! Plus, all of Operation World is on this website. Operation World is a book that tells you many ways to effectively pray for every country in the world. On the website, all you have to do is click on the map for the country you want—and the information pops up…and you can pray, right then and there, for the people of that place. It’s definitely worth your time.

"Zinzendorf"
Taken from www.24-7prayer.com/cm/resources/60

Some people look at you like you're mad when you talk about praying non-stop for a week, a month or a year. But a crazy bunch of people called Moravians, living hundreds of years ago near Dresden in Germany, did something that makes 24-7 look tame. In fact it was a visit to their village 'Herrnhutt' in August 99 that really began the whole 24-7 prayer chain.

It all began on 13th August 1727. An amazing young leader (with the catchy name: Count Ludvig Nicklaus von Zinzendorf and a very dodgy haircut) had allowed a bunch of refugees to build a village on his land. But they began to argue and back-bight and after 5 years of this, Zinzendorf got fed up. He gathered them all together in the church building to apologize to one another, to break bread and to pray. You might expect this to be an amazing meeting, but it was a lot more than that...

As they confessed their sins to one another, the Spirit of God fell with incredible power upon them. So great was this outpouring that the prayer meeting continued for a hundred years without stopping. 24 men and 24 women determined that the flame of intercession should burn at the heart of their community continually, and so they divided themselves to pray in succession around the clock. The number of intercessors actually increased as the years rolled on, especially amongst the children, generating a power centre that radiated to the ends of the earth for more than a century.

More than 3000 evangelists were sent out from that small village in the 200 years following that momentous night, taking the gospel to most countries in Europe as well as the Americas, Asia and Africa. It seems likely that some of the Moravians even sold themselves into slavery in order to reach the West Indian slaves with the gospel. John Wesley was one of their many converts and 'Mad Moravians' aflame with the gospel, keep popping up in obscure contexts and far-flung countries like a delightful motif running through 18th Century missions.

It all goes to show what can happen when we pray...