Written by Layton MacCabe
When the coronavirus crisis forced my unwilling return from the California mission field in mid-March, my immediate emotion was frustration. It seemed hard to put a positive spin on being pulled out of my calling as a result of a pandemic. However, God had a specific lesson He wanted to teach me in the midst of the quarantine.
I went to California to join Circuit Riders, a group affiliated with Youth With A Mission. The organization focuses on equipping Christians young adults to take the good news to university students. While there, I attended a Christian gathering at the University of Southern California run by Contend (a group dedicated to calling a generation back to the Lord through prayer and fasting). Students packed the university’s ballroom to intercede for their campus, state, country, and generation.
With a deafening roar, nearly a thousand young people cried out to the Lord to send revival as we linked arms across the room, unified against the attacks of the devil. “Every great move of God in history was preceded by a move of prayer and intercession,” exclaimed the speaker from the stage. The university students seemed to come alive with expectancy, truly believing that their prayers moved the heart of the Lord. God was listening!
A few months later, I was sequestered in my house, at a loss for what to do with myself. I knew well the words 1 John 3:18, “Little children, let us love not in word but in deed.” But now my hands seemed tied within the confines of my residence, reaching no one beyond my immediate family.
The Lord brought to mind that night in southern California. The faith exhibited in that room could not be bound by a quarantine. Was it possible that evangelism was not the only tool God uses to take ground for the Kingdom?
I began researching the subject of prayer movements and saw the correlation between intercession and revival. For example, a Welsh revival in 1904 began in the bedroom of a young man named Evan Roberts, who was awakened by the Holy Spirit every night at 1 a.m. and kept awake to pray for revival until 5 a.m. The revival that followed saw more than 100,000 people give their lives to Christ and an entire nation turn towards the Lord.
Today, prayer warriors are once again humbling themselves before the Lord as they pray and fast for revival. One intercessor named David Kim took a Nazirite vow to fast from certain things until abortion is abolished in America. Others are pioneering houses of prayer all over the world, with teams of believers offering up 24/7 prayer.
For me, joining a prayer movement looks like joyful repentance, prayer, and fasting for the lost.
These are things I have neglected far too much of my life. I’ve been so blessed that the Lord has begun to teach me in this time of quarantine what it means to truly have a secret place where I meet the Lord. I have confidence no hour spent there is wasted!
I want to extend that invitation to you as well. I believe if we humble ourselves in prayer the Lord will send a revival that will sweep up any friends, family, and neighbours who did not previously have the hope of Christ. We have a direct line to the ear of the most powerful person in the universe, and He listens when we pray!
