In a Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God, Jonathan Edwards told how a great awakening came to his town.  He noted that when he arrived in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1726, he faced “a time of extraordinary dullness in religion.  Licentiousness for some years greatly prevailed among the youth in the town.”  Corruptions spread, especially as many young people became indecent in their behavior in church.  Parents were ineffective in curbing their children’s bad habits.  Many church members were not born again.

In the fall of 1734, Edwards started prayer meetings.  He also began a series of sermons on justification by faith (and thus not by works).  It was “in the latter part of December, that the Spirit of God began extraordinarily to set in, and wonderfully to work among us,” Edwards exclaimed.   The conversion of a young woman whose evil ways were well known hit the young people and many others “like a flash of lightening.”

All at once “a great and earnest concern about the great things of religion and the eternal world, became universal in all parts of town, and among persons of all ages.”  Many were converted.  Edwards comments as follows about the spring and summer of 1735:

“The town seemed to be full 0f the presence of God; it never was so full of love, more so full of joy, and yet so full of distress (because some were still coming under conviction of sin), as it was then.  There were remarkable tokens of God’s presence in almost every house.  It was a time of joy in families on account of salvation’s being brought unto them; parents rejoicing over their children as new born, and husbands over their wives, and wives over their husbands.“

Public worship enlivened.  People sang with grace in their hearts in the beauty of holiness.  Christ was present and preeminent, not only on Sunday, but whenever people met together.  People who had been converted a long time were now “greatly enlivened and renewed with fresh and extraordinary incomes of the Spirit of God.”

taken from: The Power of Praying Together by Oliver W. Price