Are Your Prayers Big Enough?

On June 24 along with several of the pastoral team of FBC Covington, I intend to be in Lafayette, Louisiana, praying for awakening in Louisiana and in our nation.

We will be at First Baptist Church in Lafayette at the invitation of their pastor, Dr. Steve Horn. Steve currently serves as president of the Louisiana Baptist Convention. He has asked the pastors of the state to come together to pray that God might heal our broken land.

I hope for–and expect–a large group of pastors to meet together for prayer–a big, bold prayer for a mighty movement of God that will change the direction of our state and nation.

Several years ago, a historian reminded me that our state has never really seen a religious awakening.

As we look at the state of our nation and of my beloved Louisiana, we must be praying big, bold, believing prayers.

One of the greatest prayer meetings in American Christianity occurred 80 years ago on a farm in North Carolina. In 1934 a group of men from Charlotte met to pray at various locations around their city. They met outdoors to pray for revival in their city, revival across their state, and revival to the ends of the earth.

On this particular occasion, they met on a dairy farm owned by W. Frank Graham. Vernon Patterson, a paper salesman, asked that they pray for something else that day. He suggested that they add a bold prayer–a prayer that God would raise up someone from Charlotte who would take the Gospel to the ends of the earth.

At the same time these men prayed that bold prayer, Frank Graham’s son was doing his after school chores in the barn, pitching hay to the mules. No one thought that young Billy Graham, only 15 years old and not yet a believer, would be that special person.

That’s the way it is with bold prayers. God works beyond our thoughts or imaginations. He is able to do “exceedingly abundantly more than we could ever think or imagine” (Ephesians 3:21).

Billy Graham said this about prayer: “A mystery and wonder of prayer is that God often waits until someone asks.” I intend to ask God for awakening. I want to ask Him to spare this land and to turn our hearts toward Him.

Would you join me in praying for something that has not happened before? Would you pray for a spiritual awakening in Louisiana and across the nation? Would you pray for the same for where you live?

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7 Responses

  1. Dr. Bailey, yes I will join you in this pray for a spiritual awakening in Louisiana and Mississippi and to save our nation. Bonnie

  2. In the Fall of ’73 I spoke to the Pastors Prayer Meeting of the Sandy Creek Baptist Association on the subject, A Great Awakening. At that time I began to pray for such a visitation. I would later speak to that meeting on its 5th and 10th anniversaries on the subject, A Third Great Awakening. By that time I had begun to pray for such awakening for the whole earth. As my knowledge of God’s written word increased and my views on eschatology changed, I began to pray for an Awakening that would reach every soul on earth in one generation and continue for a thousand generations (anywhere from 20,000-900,000 years, depending on how many years on allows for a generation) and for quadrillions of planets throughout the starry heavens. This latter is due to the fact that we seem to be on the verge of going to the stars. IN ’94 a physicist at the Univ. of Mexico came up with a theory of faster than light travel, but he might have been a mite late as Ben Rich, the head of the Skunk Works of Lockheed which developed the stealth fighters stated to the graduating class of UCLA that “we already have the means to go to the stars. Having done research in church history, I was dumbfounded to discover that the theology that seems the most repulsive to our present day is really the theology that is so intensely evangelistic, serving like shock therapy and therapeutic paradoxes to bring about a change in the thinking (this is all done by persuasion, “we persuade men.”) of sinners in order to bring them to another perspective from which to view their situation. All of this, of course, is for the purposes of having enough redeemed souls in Heaven in order to fulfill God’s bit of cheering humor in Rev.7:9 for His discouraged followers. Also consider I Chronicles 16:15 and remember that God does not waste His words.

  3. I’ll join you Pastor Waylon. I have been praying for an awakening across the United States and around the world. I’m going to be BOLD! – Kim

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