Delta Dawn When the Light Comes On: Week Twelve

"Commit your way to the Lord. Trust in Him. He shall bring forth your righteousness as the Light and your justice as the noon day." Psalm 37:5, 6. Some 200 names for Jesus exist in the Bible. For the Patriots, He was, simply, King Jesus. His Name became a battle cry in the church's Great Awakening preceding the American Revolution. The Bible was their Playbook; prayer and fasting their avenue to Divine correction, direction, protection and victory.

July 10, 1774 Elbridge Gerry, 5th U.S. Vice-President, called for fasting and prayer in Marblehead, Massachusetts. After the Boston Massacre and Tea Party, Britain closed Boston harbor. Supply lines faded, work hard to find, food scarce, and all citizens at risk. Should Marblehead open their harbor to American commerce?

When the church bell rang, the people gathered, bringing tithes, offerings and alms as instruments of covenant blessing from Jehovah, Himself. They knelt in fervent prayer, praise and worship of their Holy Master. They sought Him without shame; openly reliant on a Mighty God. They encouraged one another with words of truth. This was as natural and normal, for them, as eating and sleeping. 

"By humility and honor of the Lord are riches and favor and life." Proverbs 22:4 "The mouth of the righteous speaks wisdom and his tongue talks of justice. The law of Jehovah is in his heart. None of his steps shall slip." Psalm 37:30, 31 

King Jesus promised life, liberty and plenty in all these faithful ones set their hands unto. They realized a people out of debt created a church out of debt and a church out of debt made a nation debt free -- and slave free. Humble ardor opened their harbor and life was never the same, again, in Marblehead.

Spiritual warfare was well known by Gerry, Azor Orne and William Lee, who poured their wealth, expertise and inner strength into resisting British constraint on American enterprise. 2nd Continental Congress, May, 1774, created committees of supply for powder, goods and arms. A Committee of Correspondence, like Paul's Epistles, alerted the 13 colonies of British tactics and attack plans. These committees grounded and united what became 13 states in just over a year.

I Peter 1:3-12: "As His Divine Power has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue by which [we] have been given exceeding great and precious promises, that through them we might partake of His Divine Character, escaping corruption in the world. For this very reason, with all diligence, we add to our faith virtue, to virtue, knowledge, to knowledge, self-control, to self-control, perseverance, to perseverance, godliness, to godliness, brotherly kindness and to brotherly kindness, love. For if these things are ours and abound, we will not be barren or unfruitful in our Lord, Jesus Christ." Next Week: Wondrous Story