LIVING FOR A GREATER CAUSE

"I can do everything through Him who gives me strength." - Philippians 4:13

What does it mean for workplace believers to live for a cause greater
than themselves in our day and time? Jeremiah Lanphier was a
businessman
in New York City who asked God to do this in his life in 1857.
In a small, darkened room, in the back of one of New York City's lesser
churches, a man prayed alone. His request of God was simple, but
earth-shattering: "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?" [John
Woodbridge, ed., More Than Conquerors (Chicago, Illinois: Moody Press,
1992), 337]
He was a man approaching midlife without a wife or family, but he had
financial means. He made a decision to reject the "success syndrome"
that drove the city's businessmen and bankers. God used this
businessman
to turn New York City's commercial empire on its head. He began a
businessmen's prayer meeting on September 23, 1857. The meetings began
slowly, but within a few months 20 noonday meetings were convening
daily throughout the city. The New York Tribune and the New York Herald
issued articles of revival. It had become the city's biggest news. Now a
full-fledged revival, it moved outside New York. By spring of 1858,
2,000 met daily in Chicago's Metropolitan Theatre, and in Philadelphia
the meetings mushroomed into a four-month long tent meeting. Meetings
were held in Baltimore, Washington, Cincinnati, Chicago, New Orleans,
and Mobile. Thousands met to pray because one man stepped out. Annus
Mirabilis, the year of national revival, had begun.
This was an extraordinary move of God through one man. It was unique
because the movement was lead by businessmen, a group long considered
the least prone to any form of evangelical fervor, and it had started
on Wall Street, the most unlikely of all places to begin.
Could God do something extraordinary through you? Take a step. Ask God
to do mighty things through you.