Morning Chapel Prayer Playlist
Morning Chapel Prayer Today
Pastor Ken…
Well, good morning everyone. Happy Friday. Good to see y’all. Glad you’re here for prayer this morning. My name is Ken Olson, in case you didn’t know. I’m going to get things started by sharing a couple of things.
Charles Finney’s associate “Father Nash”
I touched on Charles Finney a little bit yesterday. Charles Finney was a key figure in the Second Great Awakening back in the early 1800s. And I had mentioned somebody by the name of Daniel Nash, who was also instrumental, not as well known, because he was really the generating force behind Finney’s ministry and that awakening at that time, at least that’s according to Charles Finney and many other Christian historians. He was the guy, Daniel Nash, also known as Father Nash, who would pray out ahead of these meetings that Finney would hold. And Finney would later attribute much of the outflow of heaven and the spontaneous conviction that brought people by the thousands to Christ. He would attribute that to Brother Nash and those that prayed with him because they had laid the groundwork for what was going on in our nation at that time and definitely through Finney’s ministry.
God is doing a new thing…
So I wanted to share this with you this morning. Because we are stepping into a Third Great Awakening. Things are shifting, things are changing, and we are stepping into revival. We see little signs of it right now at different places around our nation and the world. But it’s going to accelerate. It’s going to increase. It will spread. And so get ready! God is doing a new thing as the scripture records in Isaiah 43:19. He’s doing something new. He’s giving birth to it. And the Bible says, “Will you not be aware of it? Will you not be conscious of it?”
Synopsis of Daniel Nash a.ka. Father Nash…
And so, here’s just a little kind of synopsis of Daniel Nash. First, let me read this passage in Exodus 32:11–14. It says, “I searched for a man [or a woman] among them who would repair the wall and stand in the gap before me on behalf of the land so that I might not destroy it. But I found no one.” That’s sad to be the case at that time.
He’s found us to stand in the gap and to intercede…
But I believe He’s found someone. He’s found us this morning “to stand in the gap, to intercede,” to believe for what God has planned and wants to roll out in our nation, in the church, and around the world.
But Daniel Nash lived from 8/17/1875 to 1831. He served as Charles Finney’s personal intercessor. He was key to the revival that followed Finney’s ministry. His life was a representation of the power of prayer. When God would direct where a meeting was to be held, Daniel Nash would slip away quietly into a town and seek to get two or three other people to enter into a covenant with him to pray.
Father Nash and Abel Clary…
Sometimes he had with him a man of similar prayer ministry such as Abel Clary. Together they would begin to fervently pray to God for a move of God in the community. He is the seldom-seen partner [Nash that is] of the great evangelist Charles Finney during the Second Great Awakening. Popularly called Father Nash, he had a lackluster record as a pastor in upstate New York, but he finally decided at the age of 48 to give himself totally to prayer for Finney’s meeting.
In one town, the best he could find was a dark, damp cellar. It became his center for intercession. Not eating anything for three days. Once the public meeting began, Nash usually did not attend. He kept praying in his hideaway for conviction of the Holy Spirit to melt the crowd.
If opposition arose, as it often did in those ragged days of the 1820s, Finney would tell him about it and Father Nash would bear down even harder in prayer. Shortly before Nash died in the winter of 1831, he wrote a letter in which he said, “I am now convinced it is my duty and my privilege and the duty of every other Christian to pray for as much of the Holy Spirit as came down on the day of Pentecost and a great deal more. My body’s in pain and I’m happy in my God. I have just begun to understand what Jesus meant when He said ‘all things whatsoever you shall ask in prayer believing, you shall receive.’”
He was found dead in his room in an attitude of prayer. He died at his post. Within four months of Nash’s death, Finney left the itinerant field to become a pastor of a church in New York City. His partner in cracking the gates of hell was gone.
He goes on to say…
If you want to see his grave today, you’ll have to drive to Northern New York, almost to the Canadian border. There in a neglected cemetery along a dirty road, you will find a tombstone that says Daniel Nash, Laborer With Finney, Mighty in Prayer, November 17, 1775 to December 20, 1831.
Daniel Nash was a nobody to the elite of his time. They would’ve found him a humble man, not worthy of commendation, because he lived on a totally different plane. But you can be sure he was known all too well by both heaven and hell.
Isn’t that good? I like that.
Prayer testimony from Tony Campolo…
This is an interesting testimony that comes from Tony Campolo, a minister, in regard to intercession and prayer.
A prayer meeting was held for him just before he was to speak at a Pentecostal college chapel service. Eight men took Tony to a back room where they had him to kneel. They laid their hands on him, and they began to pray for him. That’s a very good thing, Tony wrote, except that they prayed a long time. And the longer they prayed, the more tired they got and he got. And the more they leaned on his head, Tony said, “I wanted to tell them that when the eight guys are leaning on your head, it doesn’t feel so good.” To make matters worse, one of the men was not even praying for Tony. He went and started praying for somebody by the name of name of Charlie Stoltzfus. He said, “Dear Lord, you know Charlie. He lives in the silver trailer down the road. You know the trailer, Lord, just down the road on the right-hand side.”
Tony wanted to say to this guy and inform him that it wasn’t necessary to furnish God with directional material or an address. The guy went on to say, “Lord, Charlie told me this morning, he’s going to leave his wife and three kids. Step in and do something, God. Bring the family back together.”
Tony writes that he finally got the Pentecostal preachers off his head, delivered his message, and got in his car to drive home. And as he was on the Pennsylvania turnpike, he noticed a hitchhiker. He stopped and picked up this hitchhiker. We drove a few minutes and I said, “Hi, my name’s Tony Campolo” to this guy he picked up on the side of the road. “What’s yours?” He said, “My name is Charlie Stoltzfus.” I couldn’t believe it, Tony said. I got off the turnpike at the next exit and headed back the other direction.
He got a bit uneasy with that, and after a few minutes he said, “Hey, Mr., where are you taking me?” I said, “I’m taking you home.” He narrowed his eyes and asked “Why?” I said, “Because you just left your wife and three kids, right?” That blew him away. “Yeah, that’s right.” With shock written all over his face, he plastered himself against the car door and never took his eyes off me.
Then I really did him in as I drove right to his silver trailer. Because remember when he was being prayed for, the guy who was interceding for Charlie was basically describing where this man lives. And when I pulled up, his eyes seemed to bulge as he asked, “How did you know where I live?” I said, “God told me.” I believe God did tell me, Tony said.
When he opened the trailer door, his wife exclaimed, “You’re back. You’re back!” He whispered in her ear. And the more he talked, the bigger her eyes got. Then I said with real authority, “The two of you sit down. I’m going to talk to you and you are going to listen.” Man, did they listen. That afternoon I led those two people to Jesus Christ.
The power of prayer…
So therein lies the power of intercession, the power of prayer. There’s more authority, there’s more ability and power within us to bring change to our world and change to people’s lives than we recognize or we’ll even know. But I pray that we will all grow a little bit more understanding of what God has invested in us through Christ Jesus.
Hudson Taylor quote…
As I quoted the other day, I believe it was Hudson Taylor who said, “It is possible to move men and women through God by prayer.” In other words, we have the ability to shift things in the direction of what God has planned for people’s hearts and lives. At least shift the atmosphere and create opportunities and set divine appointments on people’s agendas, so to speak, to encounter Him and have an opportunity to respond to Him and say “yes” to Him and “yes” to His plan. Amen?
1st Timothy 6:12…
Let me read a couple of scriptures here to you. The Bible says in 1st Timothy 6:12, “Fight the good fight of faith. Lay hold on eternal life to which you were also called and have confessed a good confession in the presence of many witnesses.”
Romans 16:20 says…
“And the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.”
Dutch sheets writes in today’s, “Give Him 15”
The truth that we must seize or lay hold of by faith what God has already given us is not understood by many Christians. They believe that what God wills for us to possess from that which Christ’s redemption provided us will sovereignly manifest for us. But this is not so. Of course, we see that in the Word. That’s why Jesus encouraged His disciples. And we’re encouraged through the narrative of their work, their writings to us to ask, to seek, to knock, and to not stop, to be a people who are, in fact, tenacious and determined that we’re going to bring heaven into the earth realm.
That while there are days we don’t feel like it, we can still go God’s way because we have His faith to do so. In fact, that’s what prayer is. It’s our ability to lay hold in a spiritual sense, at least initially, what Jesus has provided us through redemption. So what is promised in His Word can, once again, become reality in our lives, in our world, in our leadership, in our nation’s capital, throughout our nation, in our generation, out ahead of His return.
We have a fire within us…
So I want to stir that up in you today. There is a fire on the inside of us. There is an authority that’s been delegated to us to bind, to loose, to intercede, to ask and receive. God has equipped us to be fully capable of being an integral part of His unfolding plan in this moment, in this season, in this hour.
