Awaken the DawnSample

Fresh Breath of Wind

Sing to the LORD, all you godly ones! Praise his holy name. For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime! Weeping may last through the night, but joy comes with the morning—Psalm 30:5, NLT

Our church community developed a bit of a pattern. We would pray and sing 24-7 for several weeks, and annually at the end of one of those series of weeks we would invite as many young people as possible to a larger event. Each year the event was larger than the previous, and it became clear to us that God was up to something, as word of what was happening was beginning to spread. We called these annual gatherings “Awaken the Dawn” from Psalm 108:1–3: “My heart, O God, is steadfast; I will sing and make music with all my soul. Awake, harp and lyre! I will awaken the dawn. I will praise you, Lord, among the nations; I will sing of you among the peoples.”

We dared to believe that being steadfast of heart and focusing on the one thing—intimacy with Jesus—would lead to an awakening. And that is exactly what we began to see. On the final day of this particular three weeks of prayer, a teenage girl visited from Alabama. She had only one complete lung instead of two, and she was used to getting winded with any extended activity and definitely with any kind of exercise.

That night she began to dance in wild worship with the throngs of people. Suddenly, she noticed that she could breathe in a way she had not been able to previously. She wasn’t winded. She began to worship God more exuberantly than ever because she knew she had been healed. Upon returning home, an X-ray revealed that God had indeed recreated her second lung. As she worshipped Jesus with her whole heart, God did something utterly impossible that she was not even asking for—He gave her a new lung. This riveted all of our imaginations. What else would God do if we would seek Him like this? Was it truly even possible to make this a lifestyle?

Worship and prayer in the presence of the Lord always ushers in revival