Recently, a friend gave me the biography of one of the great intercessors of history, Daniel Nash. It is only 25 pages long but packs a big wallop. It mowed me down! I was "blown away" as we say here in the States by the way the Lord transformed a rejected, broken-hearted small church pastor into one of the mightiest prayer warriors in history, using his pain, brokenness and a physical affliction to do so. The booklet which you can read for yourself on the link below recounts this powerful story. Father Nash, as he came to be called, would go into towns weeks or days before the much more famous preacher, Charles Finney, would arrive as part of a deliberate strategy to prepare the ground for revival. Nash would gather with one or two other intercessors, and they would give themselves to prayer, sometimes for days, laying on their faces in the spirit of travail until the assurance came that God would pour out His Spirit upon those communities. Finney relied on these selfless prayer warriors for the convicting outpouring of the Spirit that brought thousands upon thousands to Christ (over 100,000 in Rochester, New York alone), including blasphemous haters of the Gospel. Massive transformations of individual lives and families along with major social reforms that brought about the abolition of slavery and other marvelous results were the direct result of this revival now called the Second Great Awakening. Nash only spent the last seven years of his life as Finney's partner in revival, but his quiet, behind the scenes, persistent heart-cries to God for the lost changed American history in profound ways. I was also encouraged by his obvious implementation of Jesus' powerful promise that even two or three can agree with prayers of unity and authority that will move both heaven and earth (Matthew 18:18-20). Of special relevance to those of us who work with children and youth, are these words concerning the Fulton Street Revival of the 1850's that arose in the generation after Nash and went around the world: "The youth of Nash's day were the leaders of perhaps the greatest revival of prayer in history." Please click on the link below and be stirred and challenged as I was.

John Robb

Click to Daniel Nash's biography