“The effective fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much” (James 5:16).

What is an “effective” prayer? Most of us have experienced the encouragement that comes from seeing answers to prayer, but often we don’t understand how one prayer may receive a clear answer, and another not. The Lord has begun to teach me that effective prayer is simply prayer that comes from the leading of the Holy Spirit. Romans 8:26 makes clear that “we do not know how to pray as we ought” but that the Spirit himself will join us and give a prayer burden, as well as a precision and accuracy that does not come from human effort. It is the Spirit who places prayer burdens on our hearts, and provides us with the right prayers for the moment to produce his results in the intercession we are called to.

I’ve worked with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship on the campus of Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio, for several years. It’s a liberal school, spiritually resistant to the things of God. After five years of plowing along and seeing few results, I said, “Lord, I’m spent. I have no spiritual energy left. I don’t even know how to pray. Show me what to pray for B-W.” Little did I expect such exciting answers! As I prayed, God gave me this outline for prayer from Judges 6 and the story of Gideon:

1. Reclaim the old altar.

2. Tear down the wrong altar.

3. Rebuild a new altar through reclaiming.

Reclaim the old altar

“Then Gideon built an altar there to the Lord. . . . To this day it still stands” (Judges 6:24).

An altar symbolizes a transaction with God. Baldwin-Wallace College had an “old altar.” As I went to the library, some of B-W’s “old altar” history was unearthed. John Baldwin founded B-W through a transaction he made with God in the 1840s, in gratitude to wonderful answers to his prayers. Baldwin was a devout believer, known for his zeal for evangelism and the Word. After the collapse of a Christian commune that he began, Baldwin found himself financially bankrupt. So he set apart an hour each day, after the noon meal, to seek God in prayer. I found a fascinating answer to his prayer:

“He selected a hemlock grove on his farm, quite a long distance from the ‘Old Red House.’ To this, every day for a month, he repaired, and there upon his knees, like Jacob of old, he wrestled in prayer, fully determined to never yield until deliverance should come. . . . John Baldwin, on his knees in God’s first temple, using his own language as to what took place, said, ‘I then and there covenanted with God to not spend a quarter of a dollar in any needless way, but to give all except a bare support for my family and myself toward any cause God might direct, if he would only show me the way out of my troubles. At the end of one month my answer came. . . . Something impelled me, I knew not what, to return to my home, by way of a new route and a longer way that would take me across the river on my farm. Obeying the impulse, I soon found myself across the stream, which at that time was very low, and I could pass over on exposed rocks. Suddenly I noticed a piece of rock that had but recently been broken off. I picked it up and examined its texture and quality of grit. I took from my pocket my knife and in a few moments found by trial that it would put a keen edge on steel. ‘This,’ I said to myself, ‘will make superior grindstones, this is my deliverance’ . . .” (from The Life of John Baldwin of Berea, Ohio, by Judge A. R. Webber, Caxton Press.)

Baldwin’s Berea quarry produced grindstone recognized as superior throughout the grindstone industry. After regaining his fortune through this business, Baldwin established the Baldwin Institute. “The cause of missions is on my mind. I thought I could educate missionaries; that is, establish a school of high grade, have the church take it under its patronage and educate missionaries. I [would] build suitable buildings, employ the teachers, furnish board and clothing, books and all necessary expenses. The students [would] work a stipulated number of hours each day in my quarries, factory, and mills to enable me to meet the expenses.”

On September 24, 1844, John Baldwin wrote the following letter to the North Ohio Annual Conference:

“Feeling that I am under very deep obligation to Almighty God for His mercies which have followed me through the instrumentality of the Methodist Episcopal Church from my youth; believing as I do with the venerated Wesley that it is the Christian’s duty both to get and give all he can; I have come to the conclusion to devote to the cause of religious education and missionary enterprise a certain piece of land containing fifty acres including a grindstone quarry and water privileges described (sic) as a Building to be a Brick seventy-two by thirty-six, the plan of said building to be furnished and site located, worth from Twenty-five hundred to three thousand dollars to be finished in the fall of 1845 . . .”

Letters from his grandson, John Paul Baldwin, who later attended Baldwin-Wallace described a great revival that took place in 1884: “The people are holding a great many meetings and over 400 have been converted. I was at the student meeting last Saturday evening. The room was full. And all were converted before the meeting closed. . . . The stone church is filled with people twice a day, and every day in the week but Saturday.”

These discoveries encouraged me even more to devote time to pray for a breakthrough at Baldwin Wallace. Our intercession first began on the National Day of Prayer in May 1997, with a small group of people who felt heavily burdened for the spiritual life of the college. After reading these historic letters, we felt directed by the Holy Spirit to reclaim the ground of Baldwin’s original altar. After reading his grandson’s letter about revival, we wondered if perhaps the revival meetings had taken place in the actual chapel where we met to pray. We got up and marched around the building but found no cornerstone or date. The next week, upon arrival at the chapel, someone looked up towards the steeple and saw a large grindstone with the date 1872. We concluded it was, indeed, the very site of this revival. What a heritage to reclaim! This small prayer group became fired up; the ground taken by the enemy was being pursued and reclaimed.

Our group has been blessed in seeing the hand of the Lord in response to our prayers. In the fall quarter of 1997, members of the Baldwin-Wallace weekly Bible study were invited to present a chapel service to the college community. It included testimonies, worship, Scripture and an altar call. One of our members was invited by the Chaplain to become advisor to a Christian girl’s organization on campus.

In the winter quarter, 1998, Tony Campolo, a nationally recognized evangelical professor, was invited to be the featured speaker at an annual lecture series sponsored by the religion department, with enthusiastic response. The Bible study later hosted a local Messianic Rabbi as a guest speaker, and the entire campus community was invited to attend. During this quarter also, a prominent, dynamic Christian staff member presented a chapel service with a clear call to a personal commitment to Jesus.

Tear down the wrong altar

“That night the Lord said to him, ‘Take your Father’s bull, the second bull seven years old and pull down the altar of Baal which your father has and cut down the Asherah that is beside it’” (Judges 6:25).

Just as Gideon tore down pagan altars built by his father to false gods, we began to label and confess the “false gods” that had been accumulated by a college that turned away from John 14:6—”I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me.” We hadn’t committed these sins ourselves, but they needed to be recognized and confessed by those of us praying for the College. We confessed the sin of false tolerance and diversity—the philosophy that there are many ways to God and that God has many forms. There were the sins of immoral behavior and the sin of a religious image, void of Christ. One professor profoundly confessed the sins of intellectual pride of a faculty who placed their reasoning above God’s word. As we prayed we felt the tremendous grieving of God’s heart. The years and years of worship of false gods at wrong altars unfolded before our praying eyes. It was a sobering prayer time.

Rebuild a new altar through reclaiming

“And build an altar to the Lord your God on the top of the stronghold here, with stones laid in due order” (Judges 6:26).

Through our prayers, we are now in the process of reclaiming the land and rebuilding new visions of what God desires to do in this place. We had hoped God would sweep the campus with another great revival. He still may, but when God gave Israel the Promised Land, he did not just hand it to them. It was occupied! And the territory had to be claimed battle by battle.

As we continued to pray for the campus, a breakthrough came in 2000–01. An InterVarsity group was started by a few students who had gone to Urbana. The large group meetings began with attendance of 25–30, and the leadership team functioned as if they had been working together for years. The atmosphere of the meetings was spiritually charged, and there was a sense that the spiritual tone of the whole campus was different. Other Christian groups on campus were motivated and growing. The Christians on campus were more aware of each other and more united in kingdom purposes.

At the end of spring quarter, the Christian groups on campus worked together to establish a week called “Killing the Giants Week.” An article in the student paper read, “United under a common purpose (Jesus Christ) we have stepped out and dedicated this week to trusting God for God–sized things.” The events included individual and collaborative efforts from Alpha Kappa Omega Christian Brotherhood, Campus Crusade for Christ, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Newman Student Organization and the Voices of Praise Gospel Choir.

On Thursday of that week I was asked to speak to fill in for a cancelled speaker. I felt compelled by the Spirit to tell the spiritual history of B-W and especially the history of revival that had happened in the chapel on campus.  The combined meetings continued and ended on the following Wednesday night with the gospel choir singing in the campus chapel where a pocket of revival broke out. The chapel was full, and after a time of praise and worship the choir director started preaching from the book of Joshua and declared that sometimes God does not always ask us to attack an adversarial giant like the city of Jericho, but simply to march around it as the Bible states in Joshua 6. The student newspaper describes what followed. “In the same fashion, a pile of prayer concerns was placed in the center of the chapel floor and a prayerful march was led around them to symbolize God’s power over them and his ability to defeat these troubles. At the same time, a group of five males led a similar march around the perimeter of the chapel, in order to rededicate the chapel to God and his service. Prayer and celebration continued even after the service officially ended.”  People who were there described what had happened “as if a bomb went off.”  The Spirit of God fell, and again revival came to B-W.  Students spontaneously went to the altar to rededicate their lives to Christ, three students were saved, others were delivered from controlling habits in their lives, and others cried and prayed for themselves and over others.

The quarter ended soon after this and the students went home for the summer and the spiritual life on campus seemed to lay quiet for the time and into the following school year. Spiritual ground was not lost but no “revival-like” events continued. The InterVarsity group continued to grow, with students being added to the leadership team and small groups being established in the dorms on campus.  As my prayer partner and I continued to pray weekly in the chapel, we didn’t have the same intense burden, but began to claim the college as being back in it’s rightful Owner’s hands. In spring 2002, an article came out in the student newspaper reporting a proposed constitutional amendment submitted by the Student Senate.

Senator Henry submitted a resolution which read as follows:

“Article 1.  Reaffirming our institutions heritage as a private Christian institution protected under federal law, The Student Body of Baldwin Wallace College hereby recognizes the existence of a Divine Creator, the Lord God, who gave his only son Jesus Christ as the redeemer of our sins. The Student Government founded in tandem with this college on these beliefs, recognizes the Christian tradition of this College and establishes it as a necessary model for student life.

Article 2. While recognizing the college administration’s errant desire to secularize our beloved institution, we hereby reaffirm our position as a Christian institution, founded for the glory of God.

Article 3. The students of this college hereby reject the secularization of this institution by the faculty and administration.

Article 4. As to keep in accord with contemporary thought, all diversity of faith shall be honored by the Student Government with a right to exist, but shall reaffirm that the traditional faith of the students of this College shall not be denied on the basis of multiculturalism.  Any organization that seeks religious protection under this clause shall be honored by the Student Government without prejudice.”

While this resolution didn’t receive enough support to reach the voting stage, the statement itself was an awesome affirmation of the original purpose of the college and its founder. It was a huge topic of discussion.

Again the Lord moved in a persistent and amazing way, making us realize this is an open-ended revival for this campus.  The prayers that were begun and directed by the Holy Spirit hit their mark and produced transactions in the heavenlies that we are seeing worked out on the earth, specifically on B-W soil.