Back to the Upper Room

Before the church became the church, there was a prayer meeting.

Eleven disciples. The women. Mary the mother of Jesus. A hundred and twenty other souls crowded into an upper room in Jerusalem. There was no agenda, no program, no order of service, no certainty about what came next. There was only this: they all joined together constantly in prayer.

The church was born here. Not at Pentecost, but before. In the waiting. In the liminality of the not-yet. 

If we want the church to experience a fresh infusion of vital power, there is only one thing to do. Get back to the upper room. Return to corporate prayer. Recover the prayer meeting as the beating heart of the church.

Jim Cymbala said something to the effect of: you can tell how famous the preacher is by who shows up on Sunday. You can tell how famous Jesus is by who shows up at the Wednesday night prayer meeting.

Notice something else. Jesus didn't tell them to stay for ten days. He said stay until. Those two words are very different. Ten days is a waiting we can control - we know when its over. Until is a waiting only God controls. It is Jacob at the Jabbok — I will not let you go until you bless me. It is Evan Roberts, who for thirteen years resolved to attend every prayer gathering so he would not miss revival when it came. It is the small group on Bonnie Brae Street in 1906, resolved to wait until they had been clothed with power from on high.

They waited. The Spirit came. The world was never the same.

A.T. Pierson observed that there has never been a spiritual awakening in any land that did not begin in united prayer. Revival never stays in the prayer room. But it always starts there.

The New England Revival Covenant builds this upper room culture into a sustainable rhythm — daily alone, weekly with your local church, monthly with believers across your city, annually in holy assembly. Not as a program. As a posture. A return to the primal DNA of the church.

The question is not whether revival is possible. The question is whether we are willing to wait in prayer…until.

Rev. Greg Johnson
Director, Revive New England