The Longest Lever

“Do not despise these small beginnings.”

Zechariah 4:10 NLT

On July 1, 1857, Jeremiah Lanphier was called to be a city missionary in New York City. He soon felt led to begin a daily meeting where businesspeople in New York City could gather for midday prayer. The first meeting was held in September in the upper room of the consistory building of the Dutch Reformed Church in Manhattan. Only six people showed up. The following week there were fourteen. The week after that there were twenty-three. Eventually the prayer meeting expanded into the main sanctuary of the church and then outgrew the church itself. The prayer meetings began to multiply across the city until daily gatherings for prayer took place in almost every public building in New York City.

Commenting on Jonathan Edwards’s call to “a visible union of God’s people in extraordinary prayer,” J. Edwin Orr writes, “When people are found^a getting up at six in the morning to pray, or having a half night of prayer until midnight, or giving up their lunch time to pray at a noonday prayer meeting, that is extraordinary prayer.”

Horace Greeley, founder of the most influential newspaper of its day, the New-York Tribune, sent one of his reporters to investigate the growing revival. The reporter visited twelve prayer meetings in one hour on one day and counted 6,100 men fervently seeking God in prayer. At the peak of the revival, it is estimated that nearly 10,000 people were converted every week in New York City, roughly 1 percent of the population of one million per week!

I’d like to know who those six people were at the first prayer meeting. I can’t help but wonder if they were discouraged that first week. Did they have any inkling they were starting something that would impact hundreds of thousands of lives? I have a hunch they had no clue. Very rarely does anyone know they are making history while they are making it. And that isn’t our job anyway. But if we pray like the members of the early church did, Pentecost can happen anywhere. Our prayers have the potential to write and rewrite history.

Small Beginnings

In Zechariah 4, the Jewish remnant who returned to Israel are getting ready to rebuild the temple. It is an overwhelming undertaking. But the Lord encourages them with these words:

The plumb line was an ancient measuring tape. All they had done at this point was measure! That’s it. But God was already rejoicing over them. Like a parent that celebrates a baby’s first step, our heavenly Father rejoices when we take the smallest of steps in the right direction. And those small steps become giant leaps in God’s kingdom. If we do little things, God will do the big things. But we have to do the little things like they are big things.

We cannot worry about what we cannot do; we have to simply do what we can.

Oswald Chambers once wrote, “It is inbred in us^c that we have to do exceptional things for God; but we have not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things.” And if we do the ordinary, God will add an extra to it.

Prayer is our plumb line. It’s also the true measure of a person. No one is greater than their prayer life. Our potential is directly proportional to our prayer life. It is the single greatest indicator of our success in any endeavor.

The Lever

Archimedes of Syracuse is famous for his quip, “Give me a place to stand on,^d and I will move the earth.” He was referencing the lever, one of six simple machines identified by Renaissance scientists. A lever amplifies the input force to provide a greater output force. Simply put, the longer the lever, the greater the leverage.

Let me borrow this simple statement and substitute one word: Give me a place to kneel on, and I will move the earth. In the kingdom of God, humility equals authority. Call it bold humility or humble boldness. That is our lever. If we try to exalt ourselves, God will find a way to humble us. But if we humble ourselves, God will find a way to exalt us. There is no leverage like kneeling in prayer. If we hit our knees in humble prayer, God will extend His mighty hand on our behalf. He will leverage us in ways that are humanly impossible.

One of our mantras at NCC is “stay humble, stay hungry.” Humility is how we get out of the way of what God wants to do. And if we stay out of God’s way, then there is nothing God cannot do in us and through us.

The first thing I do every day is hit my knees — a daily ritual that began the day we started our forty-day prayer challenge. At the end of those forty days, I was a totally different person. I have no idea why I wasn’t kneeling every morning before that, but when those forty days concluded, I couldn’t imagine starting my day any other way. There is nothing magical about kneeling, but there is something biblical about it. Posturing our bodies helps us posture our hearts. Bowing our hearts in reverence before God is what really matters, but I’ve found that it’s easier to do if I’m in a kneeling position.

During our forty-day prayer challenge, God revealed his favor in amazing ways. We received the kind of news coverage that money cannot buy. The Washington Post ran a remarkably positive front-page story in the weekend Metro section. A few weeks later, the Today Show filmed one of our weekend services, and the segment aired on the last day of our forty-day prayer challenge. Coincidence? I think not. It had God’s fingerprints of favor all over it.

Publicity isn’t something to be sought, but it is something we must steward. To be honest, it’s a two-edged sword. The more publicity you get, the more you get pelted with stones. So on a personal level, I am inclined to avoid it at all costs. It just complicates my life. But if God can be glorified through it, then so be it. And I do believe that the good news ought to make the news. God was glorified through the Today Show segment that aired on Easter Sunday, and many unchurched folks have visited our church as a result. So praise God!

One of the unexpected blessings was ministering to the film crew. The reporter who did the story told me that her father was an atheist, but she had a praying grandmother. I gave Maria a copy of The Circle Maker. A few weeks later, she told me it was revolutionizing her prayer life. She even bought copies for some of her friends and family members. Who knows, maybe God is raising up a remnant at NBC!

If we do the ordinary, God will add an extra to it.