Lord, Teach Us to Pray
One of the darkest periods in the history of the United States occurred in the days following the Revolutionary War. Dr Edwin Orr, a scholar and preacher records that there was a moral slump that almost destroyed the Church. He writes, “Drunkenness became epidemic. Out of a population of five million, 300,000 were confirmed drunkards. Profanity was of the most shocking kind. For the first time in the history of the American settlement, women were afraid to go out at night for fear of assault. Bank robberies were a daily occurrence.”
Churches were losing more members than they were gaining. The chief Justice of the United States, John Marshall wrote to James Madison, “The church is too far gone ever to be redeemed.” Only two believers were found in the student body in Princeton. Christians were so few on campus in the 1790’s that they had to meet in secret, keeping their minutes in a secret code so that no one would know.
How did the situation chance?
A movement called the Union of Prayer swept through Great Britian. It crossed over the
Atlantic to the United States. Issac Backus, a Baptist pastor, in 1794 called for the urgent need for prayer for revival to pastors of every Christian denomination in the United States. Soon the churches were united in a network of prayer on the first Monday of each month.
The frontier of Kentucky was a lawless territory where outlaws held the upper hand. A Scotch-Irish Methodist minister, named James McGready, who was so ugly that he attracted attention, promoted a concert of prayer every first Monday of the month. He got people to pray for him from sunset on Saturday evening until sunrise on Sunday morning. Then in the summer of 1800, came the great Kentucky revival. Eleven thousand people came to a communion service.
Orr writes that, “out of that movement came the call for the abolition of slavery, Sunday schools, Bible societies, and evangelistic ferver.”
In the following two segments of Higher Ground I will share about other great prayer movements that changed the course of our history. Today, in most of our churches, fervent, heart-felt pray for conviction of sin and the call of repentance is seldom heard. Prayer is relegated to the beginning and ending of a service or class, and then only prayers for the sick or the offering of praise. These are important but intercession for the lost is not at the forefront. Corporate prayer is not a consideration.
I close with this prayer from Wesley Duewel, a great man of prayer. “Lord, teach me to pray, teach me to pray. Fill my heart with your hunger, my eyes with your tears, my soul with your hatred of sin. Fill my will with the strength to resist the devil in prayer, and fill my spirit with the mighty power of the Holy Spirit so I can pray with mighty prevailing prayer. Lord, teach me to pray.”
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Jim served as Director of the Baptist Student Union at Southwestern Oklahoma State for 37 years. After retiring he served as chaplain of the Custer County Jail for twenty years, and a local truck stop as well. He writes a religious column for two local newspapers. He currently lives in Weatherford.
