Prayer makes a difference

One of the greatest missionary statesmen to ever live was Count Nicolaus von Zinzendorf. No one did more to promote the cause of missions in the eighteenth century than did this German-born nobleman. On August 13, 1727, revival struck the small congregation in Hernhut. As a result, twenty-four men and twenty-four women began a prayer meeting that continued around the clock, seven days a week, without interruption for more than one hundred years.

During this hundred-year period this small Moravian congregation sent out more missionaries than did the entire evangelical church in its first one thousand years of existence. They sent missionaries literally everywhere.

They went to the West Indies, to the Indians in North America, Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Central and South America, South Africa, India, and the Himalayas. One out of every eight people in this congregation in Hernhut went out to reach the unreached of the day. During the first two years, seventy missionaries flowed from this six hundred member congregation. Twenty-two of these perished in the first two years, and two more were imprisoned, but others took their places. By the time William Carey went to India, over three hundred Moravian missionaries had gone to the ends of the earth.

One of these missionaries won to Christ John Wesley, whom God used to ignite the Great Awakening that swept America and Europe. What moved these men and women to leave the comforts and security of their homes? What thrust them out into the harvest fields to reach the lost world? How did they reach their world in their day? The answer can be found in the twenty-four men and the twenty-four women who gathered together to pray. As they prayed, God sent forth labourers, who went forth preaching the gospel of the kingdom. Let us follow their example and expect their results!