It was just one little act of obedience. Jeremiah could not have known the far-reaching implications of his choice to follow God. Afterall, he is not the first person in history who called people to gather for a prayer meeting. His God ordained idea was to call businessmen to a noon come and go prayer meeting.
On September 23, 1857, he held his first prayer meeting. He passed out hand bills advertising the meeting all over New York City. He met on the third floor of the North Dutch Reformed Church and prayed alone for the first 30 minutes. After half an hour, he heard footsteps climbing the stairs. When all was said after the first meeting, half a dozen people showed up. Not a great beginning in such a large city as New York.
The prayer meetings were scheduled for once a week. The next week 20 gathered. The week after that 40 made their way to the third story prayer meeting. The meeting was so blessed of God that the attendees decided to make it a daily prayer meeting as opposed to weekly. The next time they gathered 100 people showed up. Among that 100 were several unsaved men who were convicted of their sins.
God was just beginning to work. Jeremiah Lamphier could not have possibly known what his one little act of obedience would mean for the city of New York and for the country. Pastors who had attended the noon prayer meetings soon started morning prayer meetings with their congregations. Soon the places they met were overcrowded with intercessors. Within three months similar prayer meetings sprang up all over the country. These meetings became so popular even newspapers began reporting on them.
By March a theater opened its doors for the noon prayer meetings with Jeremiah Lamphier. By 11:30 the place was packed and nobody else could get in, even though the prayer meeting did not officially begin until noon. Hundreds waited and prayed outside. By the end of March over 6.000 people were gathering daily for prayer in New York alone. God answered those prayers mightily. It's estimated that during that time over 150 prayer additional prayer meetings started all over the city.
During that span the Methodist reported they saw 8,000 conversions. In Louisville, KY the Baptist churches testified of 17,000 people getting saved in the month of March. By the time June arrived just a few short months later, the number of conversions jumped all the way up to 96,216. This great move of God is called the Second Great Awakening.
God used one man, with a burden for his city, in one simple act of obedience to start a prayer meeting. How could Lamphier fully know what his one act of obedience would mean for the salvation of thousands of souls.
Acts 1:13-14 (NASB)
13 When
they had entered the city, they went up to the upper room where they were
staying; that is, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas,
Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot,
and Judas the son of James.
14
These all with one mind were continually devoting themselves to
prayer, along with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His
brothers.
Just like Jeremiah Lamphier did not know the full implications of what God would do on September 23, 1857, neither did those early believers know what God would do in the days following their upper room prayer meeting. In Acts 2:31 we read that God gloriously saved 3,000 people and started the first New Testament church in these verses that followed. The gospel spread all over the world in answer to that one prayer meeting and other prayer meetings that followed.
What could God do if His people got a burden and started gathering to pray for their communities? It started with one in New York City. It started with a group in an upper room in Acts. Who will be the one to answer the call of God to lead the followers of Jesus to pray? Perhaps what God did in the past He will come and do again.
- Is God calling you to start a prayer meeting?
- If so, when and where will it be held? Whom will you invite?
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