Last year Prayer ’87 drew together 5,000 people to pray at the Minneapolis Auditorium. This year the Steering Committee has rented the Metrodome for the evening of November 18. We are praying for 15,000 people to come and pray around home plate!

Why?

Because the Bible and church history show that God has poured out extraordinary power on his church when the church has had extraordinary longings. And the evidence of extraordinary longing is extraordinary praying.

All these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer … and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:13; 2:4).

And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness (Acts 4:31).

So Peter was kept in prison; but earnest prayer for him was made to God by the church … many were gathered together and were praying … and behold an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell … (Acts 12:5,12).

I have in front of me a book called An Endless Life of Splendor, by Earle Cairns, published in 1986. Page after page show that this kind of united, earnest praying has been followed with outpourings of power again and again in church history.

James McQuilkin was a linen warehouse worker who raised fighting cocks in Ireland in 1857. He got converted and led three men to Christ. They began a prayer meeting and asked God for revival. The meeting grew to 50. The same thing was happening in New York. The wave of spiritual concern broke on Belfast in 1859. An open-air meeting was held on June 19 that lasted till 3:30 AM. All told, 10,000 people came to Christ in this movement of God’s power.

When the people of God see that the spread of Christ’s kingdom happens only by the power of the Holy Spirit, and when they begin to ask for that power in extraordinary prayer, churches are awakened, God is seen in majesty, sins are forsaken, witness is bold, and a whole community feels the impact of the presence of God.

This is why I am behind Prayer ’88 on November 18. This is why I want you to be behind it, too. I do not want our city to be passed over in the great awakening of these days. There is unspeakable evil—Satanic evil—in our city. But he who is in us is greater than he who is in the world (1 John 4:4).

This is a time for concerted, earnest prayer for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Either we will play in-house religious games, or we will pray for power to penetrate the prisons of Satan (2 Timothy 2:26). I vote pray, not play.

Six more years of growing unity and earnestness in prayer would, I believe, bring unprecedented revival to Minneapolis and St. Paul. Let the whole Twin Cities know that Jesus is Lord, he is God!

Pressing on in what really counts for eternity,

Pastor John