“Four or five of us students were in the room of another student, Jim Ballinger, having a prayer meeting about ten o’clock at night. I remember I was almost asleep with my head against the bedclothes where I was kneeling, when suddenly we were all swept off our feet by a visitation of the Holy Spirit. We were all filled, flooded by the Spirit. Everything that happened to the disciples on the original Pentecost happened to us. Here I am tempted to tone down what really happened, or to dress it up in garments of respectability. . . In either case it would be dishonest and perhaps worse — a betrayal of one of the most sacred and formative gifts of my life, a gift of God. . .

“For three or four days it could be said of us as was said of those at the original Pentecost: ‘They are drunk.’ I was drunk with God. I say ‘for three or four days’ for time seemed to have lost its significance. The first night I could only walk the floor and praise him. . . Sleep was out of the question. By morning the effects of this sudden and unexpected ‘outpouring’ had begun to go through the college and town. That morning there was no chapel service in the ordinary sense; people were in prayer, some prostrate in prayer. No one led it, and yet it was led — led by the Spirit. For three days there were no college classes. Every class room was a prayer meeting where students and faculty were seeking and finding and witnessing. It spread to the countryside. People flocked in, and, before they could even get into the assembly hall, would be sticken with conviction and would fall on their knees on the campus crying for God — and pardon and release.”

When I read this it did sound familiar, the description of people being “flooded by the Spirit” worship and prayer being “led by the Spirit”, it all sounded like what I had heard from people describing their experience at Asbury recently.

And yes this is indeed something that did happen at Asbury, but in 1908 not 2023.

It comes from the autobiography of the famous Methodist missionary to India E Stanley Jones, who is describing what happened to him during his time as a student at Asbury over 100 years ago. Similar things happened in the 1950s and in 1970.

I can remember being a prayer meeting at Asbury when someone prayed reflecting on these previous outpourings of the Spirit, DO IT AGAIN LORD!

AND HE DID! He’s done it again and again.

So now I am adding some prayers to the DO IT AGAIN prayer

I am adding DO IT HERE LORD! DO IT IN ME LORD!

Who will pray those prayers with me?