Studying revival history has been one of the great joys and great convictions of my life.

As you read one story after another, a pattern starts to jump off the page. Revival almost never begins with a big event. It begins with a small, unglamorous, often long season of prayer by people nobody was watching — usually after a stretch of spiritual decline that everyone had gotten used to.

It rarely starts with a crowd. It starts with a handful.

And one of those handfuls started a prayer meeting that ran around the clock for more than a hundred years.

The Moravians: A Prayer Meeting That Lasted a Century

In the 1720s, a group of refugees gathered on the estate of a young German nobleman named Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf. They named their settlement Herrnhut, which means "the Lord's watch."

It didn't start well. The community was a mess — arguing over doctrine and splitting into factions. Zinzendorf began going door to door, meeting with families, calling them back to Jesus and to one another.

In the summer of 1727, the community committed to unity and began seeking God together. Then on August 13, 1727, during a communion service, the Holy Spirit fell on them in a way they never forgot. Many later spoke of it as their own Pentecost.

What they did next is what makes their story so important.

Shortly afterward, 24 men and 24 women committed to pray in one-hour shifts, around the clock, so that prayer would never stop. Others joined over time. That prayer watch continued for more than 100 years.

And out of that praying community came one of the most remarkable missionary movements in church history. Starting in 1732, Moravian missionaries went out to the Caribbean, Greenland, North America, Africa, and beyond — many of them as ordinary tradespeople, some willing to give up everything to reach people no one else was reaching.

The Moravians also shaped John Wesley. Wesley met Moravian believers on a ship to Georgia and was deeply stirred by their peace in the middle of a storm. Later, on New Year's night of 1739, Wesley, George Whitefield, and around sixty others gathered at a Moravian-connected society in Fetter Lane, London, and prayed through the night. Around three in the morning, the power of God came upon them so strongly that many fell to the ground.

Here's what stands out to me. Of all the outpourings I've studied, the Moravian revival is one of the longest sustained. And it's the one where a 24/7 prayer movement was at the center.

That matters for us. 24/7 prayer and worship aren't just about igniting the fire of revival. They're about sustaining it. The very thing that starts the fire is what keeps it burning.

The Pattern Repeats: A Praying Remnant

The Moravians aren't an isolated case. Again and again, before God moved in a big way, a small group had been praying.

Scotland's praying societies. For generations, believers in Scotland met in small prayer societies. Today we have small groups; back then, they had prayer meetings. When revival swept through places like Cambuslang in 1742, little praying societies had been meeting in that parish for years.

The Concert of Prayer. In 1747, Jonathan Edwards published a call for Christians everywhere to unite in regular prayer for revival. Decades later, in 1784, John Sutcliff and a group of pastors in England issued a similar call to pray monthly for the spread of the gospel. One of the men shaped by that movement was William Carey, who went on to India and helped launch the modern missionary movement.

The Prayer Meeting Revival of 1857–58. In September 1857, a businessman named Jeremiah Lanphier started a noon prayer meeting on Fulton Street in New York City. Only six people came to the first one. Within months, thousands of businesspeople were gathering to pray at lunch across the city, and the revival spread across the country.

Wales, 1904. The Welsh Revival is associated with a young man named Evan Roberts, but it was surrounded by prayer — people crying out for God to move in their chapels and their communities.

Different countries. Different centuries. Same shape. A few people who wouldn't stop praying.

What Revival Is (and Isn't)

It helps to define what we mean. Revival isn't a series of special meetings or an evangelistic campaign. Revival is a mass acceleration of the Kingdom of God — a season when the lost come in, the saved grow up, and the mature go out, all at an accelerated pace.

The out come in. The in come up. The up go out.

Two marks are always present: unusual, deep repentance, and the undeniable manifest presence of the Holy Spirit.

We can't manufacture that. Only God can send it. But God has shown us, over and over, the path that leads to it. As I've studied it, I haven't found one instance in biblical or church history where revival wasn't preceded by some people who fulfilled the conditions of revival: humbling themselves, praying, seeking His face, and turning from sin (2 Chronicles 7:14).

Why This Should Encourage Us

Here's the part of the history that gives us hope.

God has never once required that remnant to be large, or gifted, or well-positioned. Six people at a noon meeting. A few dozen refugees on a German estate. Sixty people in a London room.

So why would we think He wouldn't do the same for us?

That's one reason our church pursues 24/7 prayer. Often, only one person is praying in a given hour. It isn't flashy. Most of it happens quietly, in homes and cars and break rooms, in Colorado and Mexico City and Quito and beyond. But it's the same kind of faithful, hidden prayer God has always used to prepare the way for Him to move.

Lessons for 24/7 Prayer Today

1. Unity matters. Herrnhut's outpouring came after a community chose to lay down division.

2. Consistency beats intensity. An hour a week, kept faithfully, is how a watch stays unbroken for a century.

3. Small is not insignificant. God looks for faithful people who won't despise small beginnings (Zechariah 4:10).

4. Prayer leads to mission. The Moravians didn't pray instead of going. They went because they prayed.

5. Sustaining is as important as starting. Revivals can fade. A culture of continual prayer keeps the fire fed.

Add Your Hour

The Moravians called their home "the Lord's watch." You can take a watch too — one hour a week, from anywhere in the world.

Join 24/7 prayer: https://firstloverevolution.com/24-7

Go back: Part 2 — What Is 24/7 Prayer?