The Beginning of the Unceasing Prayer
When the Moravians began their mission work, the prayer time focused on their missionary work. Imagine the astonishment of those prayer warriors had they known that their prayer meeting, under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, would continue a day, every day, 365 days a year for the next one hundred years! What a marvelous, wonderful thing this was an unceasing commitment to prayer: “Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18). This is the closest manifestation of that Scripture that I have ever heard of! I am blessed when I think of the nations and people who were changed forever by one hundred years of prayer for world missions.
Some sources believe that it may have gone on for closer to one hundred twenty years, but in our research, we have never discovered exactly when or why this supernatural prayer time stopped. There are ministries today that are picking up some degree of that mantle. We admire them and bless them for their commitment to unceasing prayer in our day.
The Losung and the Daily Watchword
That same summer, Zinzendorf began to share a specific Scripture to encourage or exhort the Herrnhut congregation; he and the elders shared it from house to house among themselves. Soon after, Ludwig and the leaders gathered a collection of Bible passages that were suited for doctrine, reproof, and instruction in righteousness” (see 2 Timothy 3:16) and placed them in a wooden box.
They chose one by “the lot each night to share with the settlers the following morning This became known as the Losung, or “Watchword”.
Printing the Scriptures for the Common People
Three years later, the Moravians set up a printing press in the village of Ebersdorf to publish inexpensive copies of the Bible. Christian tracts, and hymnals in the German language for the common people to read. They also published their first annual devotional book, containing the Losung for each day of the entire year.
Today, nearly three hundred years later, that devotional, The Moravian Daily Texts, is still published annually in more than fifty languages by the thriving Moravian Church.
The Hidden Seed Confirmed
Shortly after this, while visiting his uncle in the nearby region of Silesia, Ludwig discovered some of the earliest writings of Jan Comenius, the last bishop of the United Brethren. He found among Comenius’s writings the Ratio Discipline (“Account of Discipline”), a small book of the guiding principles for the early Unias Fratum.
Zinzendorf was amazed at the similarity between Comenius’s writings and his own recently written “Brotherly Union and Compact.” Without a doubt, God had placed these humble refugees, this “hidden seed,” into Zinzendorf’s path as a part of His plan for restoration!
To be continued…
Tale Tuesday 109
Date: 24th December, 2024
Title: : COUNT NIKOLAUS LUDWIG VON ZINZENDORF (The Founder of The Moravian Community) (Part 6)
Source: God’s generals- The Missionaries
Author: Roberts Liardon
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