Just One
by Ed & Loretta Williamson
God is calling The Evangelical Methodist Church to a two-year Sacred Assembly of Prayer. The goal is a Pentecost that thrusts us into harvest, a Pentecost that empowers us to experience godly repentance of our sins, sins of spiritual complacency, sins of turning a deaf ear and nonconformity to the Spirit’s admonishments, sins that hinder our reaching our communities for Christ with new ministries. The Kingdom of God is expanding by millions around the globe, yet in our communities people continue to live lives of increasing wickedness and immorality. Jesus says the problem is not in the street or with the harvest, but in the church. “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest field” (Matthew 9:37-38). Every local church needs just one person who becomes desperate in his or her prayers for revival and outreach. Isaiah 59:1 states, “Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear.” The problem is not with God, the problem is us! God is ready to pierce the darkness of our communities but our satisfaction with a powerless church life makes that impossible. God is saying, “Change my circumstances so I can bless you and remove the darkness that keeps the church from spiritual health and missional focus.” Isaiah writes in the same chapter, “The Lord looked and was displeased...He saw that there was no one... to intercede....” God completed His salvation for us in and through Jesus Christ. The result is that a man can have a perfect love for God and for the people around him. He can be delivered from self-centered living. How appalling it must be to Him when there is no one in the local church willing to intercede for the people! September 23, 2007 was the 150th anniversary of the Fulton Street Revival, sometimes called the Wall Street Revival or Layman’s Noontime Prayer revival. This lay-led revival began with just one person, one man with a burden to pray. This noontime corporate prayer went from 1857-1860, and is estimated to have resulted in over one million conversions across the nation. The population of the USA was 35 million in 1860.
