Herrnhut: Restoring the Moravian Fire July 31st, 2022

1. INTRODUCTION
   1. This week many are meeting at The Jesus Haus in Herrnhut, Germany. Pam and I traveled to Herrnhut in 2018 with a group of intercessors from around the world. What a powerful time it was! I believe there is something pivotal that took place in that community that the Lord wants to speak to us today.
      
   2. As these refugees were granted safety by Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf (1700-1760) They emphasized prayer and Bible reading over dogma and they were being persecuted for it, but they found refuge in Moravia and Bohemia (modern Czechoslovakia) on the property of Zinzendorf.
      
2. RESTORING THE MORAVIAN FIRE
   
   1. What did the believers at Herrnhut have that we don’t have today? James Goll wrote this in The Lost Art of Intercession: “Long before I ever set foot in the Czech Republic (formerly part of Czechoslovakia) for the first time, I had read books and articles describing the Christian community commonly called the Moravians. Their story is intertwined with the lives and ministries of some of the most important church leaders in the Great Awakenings and revivals that transformed Western society in the eighteenth century. I learned that God gave them “three strands” around which they wove their lives, and these strands helped the Moravians become world-changers:”
      
   2. 1. They had relational unity, spiritual community, and sacrificial living. Simply said: They were family. I believe this is such an important aspect that we need to rediscover today. As a body of believers, we are family!
      
   3. 2. The power of their persistent prayer produced a divine passion and zeal for missionary outreach to the lost. Many of them even sold themselves into slavery in places like Surinam in South America just so they could carry the light of the gospel into closed societies. The Moravians were the first missionaries to the slaves of St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands; they went to strange places called Lapland and Greenland and to many places in Africa.
      
   4. 3. They lived by the motto: “No one works unless someone prays.” This took the form of a corporate commitment to sustained prayer and ministry to the Lord. This prayer went on—unbroken for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, every day of each year for over 100 years! They prayed two- by-two, around the clock.
      
3. THE MORAVIANS’ 100-YEAR PRAYER MEETING
   
   1. The 100-year prayer meeting sparked a global missionary exploit marked one of the purest moves of the Spirit in church history. It radically changed the expression of Christianity in their age. Many leaders today feel that virtually every great missionary endeavor of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—regardless of denominational affiliation—was in a very real sense part of the fruit of the Moravians’ sacrificial service and prophetic intercessory prayer.
      
   2. 120 believers tarried in the upper room in Jerusalem on Pentecost and were “baptized in fire” in the Holy Spirit of promise. In the same way, those who answer God’s call to tarry before His face will also be baptized with a holy fire.

C. The group of believers who gathered at Herrnhut to pursue their dream of religious freedom were in much the same state as most Christians are today. They came from widely diverse religious backgrounds. During the first five years of their communal existence after the community’s founding in 1722, they experienced bickering, dissension, and strife. They were no better or worse than you or I, but they made a deep commitment to Jesus Christ and to prayer, which transformed and changed them forever!

D. They began to think God-sized thoughts and feel a burning compassion for the lost. They received supernatural faith to tackle challenges that would in many cases cost them their freedom or their very lives. Yet, they did it all in faithfulness and joy. The Moravians changed the world because they allowed God to change them. God wants to change the world again and He is looking at you and me.

4. A HUNGER FOR GOD
   
   1. The fire of the Moravian believers seemed to ignite hunger for God wherever they went. That hunger could only be satisfied by an encounter with the living God they served. Can you imagine what would happen if every believer, missionary, and preacher today would walk, work, and worship with the same fire that the Moravians carried with them to countless cultures and cities?
      
   2. God is out to ignite that fire again! Only this time He wants to see His fire roar across entire continents and cultures through the means of His whole body, the Church. I believe the Spirit of God is igniting hearts around the world again. He’s out to cover the earth with the Father’s glory, but He has been commissioned to do it through the transformed lives like you and I who have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ the Lamb of God!
      
   3. God wants to put His Spirit upon you in such a measure that you will answer His summons with a resounding: “Yes, I will stand in the gap for my generation right here and now. I will put aside anything that hinders you, Jesus!
      
   4. God is restoring the ancient fire that once inspired the Moravians to launch what in their day was the greatest missionary campaign since the Book of Acts. He is restoring His fire in you and me in this generation because there is a great cause, and He wants us to reap His harvest once again. The first step begins with the restoration of the fire on God’s altar and reigniting a hunger for God!
      
5. A CHARGE FOR TODAY!
   
   1. Like the early Moravians who gathered at Herrnhut, I believe there is a commission for us today. The prophet Isaiah responded to the Lord by saying, Here I am Lord! Use me! Like Isaiah of old, will you surrender to the call of the Master? Like the word of the Lord that came to Ezekiel (Ezk. 22:30), I declare, “By grace, I will stand in the gap for such a time as this.” Like Anna and Simeon in the Temple at the time of the dedication of Jesus on his 8th day, will you say: “I am willing to wait on you, Lord. I will linger in Your presence!”
      
   2. I believe this next season will be one of the most important and powerful that we have ever experienced. I am excited about what is coming. This week has been a very powerful week with Joy Maas and Kids Camp. God is raising up the next generation. He’s going to use you and me. He’s going to use moms and dads. He’s going to use those who have previously experienced great awakenings in times past—to shepherd once again the next move of God! Are you ready?