03/12/2026
The 100 Year Prayer Meeting!
I recently shared this with the Global Methodist Church. It’s quite an amazing story! 
The year was 1722, Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, a devout follower of Jesus Christ opened his estate to German speaking Pietists who were fleeing persecution from the Catholic Habsburg rulers of the region.
In safety they established community of Herrnhut ("the Lord's Watch") on Zinzendorf's land in what is now eastern Germany. The group became known as Moravians, a reference to the region from which they had fled.
During its first five years of existence the Herrnhut settlement showed few signs of spiritual power. By the beginning of 1727 the community of about 300 people had infighting and division.
Zinzendorf and others, however, covenanted to prayer and labor for revival. On May 12, God answered the prayers of the people and revival broke out. Christians were aglow with new life and power, dissension vanished and unbelievers were converted.
Looking back to that day and the four glorious months that followed, Zinzendorf later recalled: "The whole place represented truly a visible habitation of God among men."
A spirit of prayer was immediately evident in the fellowship and continued throughout what they referred to as the "golden summer of 1727." On August 27 of that year twenty-four men and twenty-four women covenanted to spend one hour each day in scheduled prayer.
The prayer meeting that began on August 27 continued non-stop for the next 100 years! Yes! The Moravian Community of Herrnhut in Saxony commenced a round-the-clock "prayer watch" that held steady for a century! That prayer watch was started by a community of believers whose average age was probably about thirty. Zinzendorf himself was twenty-seven.
There is a clear connection throughout scripture and church history between fervent intercession to the LORD and evangelistic zeal. By 1791, 65 years after the start of that prayer vigil, the small Moravian community had sent 300 missionaries to the ends of the earth including Greenland and the Caribbean.
The Moravians noted an Old Testament typology as warrant for the prayer watch from Leviticus chapter 6: "The sacred fire must be kept burning on the altar continuously; it must not go out.
(Leviticus 6:13); a congregation is a temple of the Living God, where God has his altar and fire, the prayers of his saints should incessantly rise up to Him."
11 years into the 100 year prayer meeting, August 1738, a new convert visited Herrhut for a closer look. His name was John Wesley, and his Aldersgate experience had occurred just a few months before his visit. Remember, the Moravians had already faithfully brought Wesley to an understanding of salvation by grace through faith, both on dry land in England and in the middle of a terrifying storm on the Atlantic Ocean! He wanted to know more. For almost a month at the LORD's Watch' Wesley experienced an ordered, intentional Christian community with structured small groups for exhortation and confession and at the center of the community was a blazing, non-stop Prayer Furnace, powering the community and the movement.
4 months after Wesley's visit to Herrhut, the Fetter Lane Society of London gathered for a New Year's Eve, Watchnight service. This is what Wesley recorded in his journal on January 1, 1739. “About three in the morning, as we were continuing instant in prayer, the power of God came mightily upon us, insomuch that many cried out for exceeding joy, and many fell to the ground. As soon as we were recovered a little from that awe and amazement at the presence of His Majesty, we broke out with one voice, We praise Thee, O God; we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord."
We marvel at the 18t century Great Awakening in England and America which swept hundreds of thousands into God's Kingdom. It is possible that we have overlooked the place which that round-the-clock prayer watch had in reaching Wesley and, through him and the Methodists in altering the course of history?
The Moravians were not merely praying for their movement, they were praying for the fulfillment of the Greatest Commandment and the Great Commission! Are we not in need of an awakening and an out pouring of God‘s Spirit today?!
You're a part of this movement we call the Global Methodist Church because at some point in your life a fire was lit within you as you understood your story is connected to Jesus' story and you at some later point you learned about the power of the Holy Spirit working in the Wesleyan revival in England the 1700s that spilled over into the Colonies and new world. How is that sacred fire within you today?
Brothers and sisters, we must, in community, together, tend the sacred fire of God's Spirit within us!
But we cannot stop there merely seeing that it does not go out, we desire that the sacred fire spreads in our communities, congregations, throughout Virginia and to the ends of the earth!
The Gospel of Luke has been called by some, the Gospel of Prayer! The other Gospels say that Jesus was in the Jordan and the Holy Spirit descended upon him as a dove - Luke says it was while he was praying that the Holy Spirit descended on him!
The other Gospels say that Jesus chose the 12 disciples, only Luke includes that it was after Jesus spent a night in prayer that he chose the 12!
The other Gospels read Jesus died on the cross. Luke adds that even when he was dying, Jesus was praying for those persecuted him. We have record of Jesus' transfiguration in the other Gospels, but uniquely in Luke's Gospel we learn that "while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning.
There is power in prayer! E. M. Bounds famously declared, “Prayer works so well in a crisis, it’s a wonder we don’t implement it on a regular basis!”
“Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit.”
James 5:16-18 ESV
Would you do everything in your power to either join us for our Tuesday Noon Prayer or have someone from
your congregation be a part of our prayer gathering? We have a goal of having at least one person from each of our 57 churches to call on the LORD together, boldly for revival!
This kind of prayer and intercession is part of what John Wesley meant when he coined the phrase, “Watching over one another in love.”
Brothers & Sisters, let us pray
