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Revival, Cross Country Emmaus, 1990-1997 (Part 1)

I've been trying to write this article for about two weeks. It's taken so long because I wanted to explain the Walk To Emmaus, what it was all about, and how it was uniquely conservative, evangelical, and spirit-filled in the days God used it in my life. One reason is that some will dismiss it since its roots are in the United Methodist Church. They will have a "can anything good come out of Nazareth" opinion. Another is that I have sponsored people on a couple of other Walks in the last few years in this area and found them to be more liberal and less impactful.

Well, I'm not going to worry about any of that. I'm still going to do this thing in two parts. The first is the facts about this thing in those days. The second is what I experienced, the lives I saw that were changed. I'm going to do what I said I was going to do with these articles. I'm going to tell about a several-year move of God that was an ongoing revival experience for me. God didn't save me on a Walk To Emmaus. God delivered, revived, and overwhelmed me with the reality of His sovereign love for me on a walk and through the Cross Country and, to a lesser degree, the Big Country Emmaus communities in those years.

A Walk is a long weekend retreat for either men or women. There are fifteen talks, given mainly by the laity but five by the clergy. About six men or women are grouped into tables in which they interact over the talks and other assignments. They form a small group. There are about 40 team members and about 40 pilgrims (participants). All team members have already been on a walk.

Following are the elements of those walks that I believe were instrumental in the move of God. 1) Prayer Cover - Everything was bathed in prayer from the first preparatory meeting through an around-the-clock prayer vigil during the retreat, 2) Agape Love - People in the community do hundreds of hours of sacrificial service before, during, and after a walk to demonstrate the love of God to the pilgrims, 3) God's Word - It saturates the talks, the worship services, and the table talk, 4) Sacrificial Preparation - Every talk is prepared, presented, and critiqued before the weekend and the team spends hours and hours preparing themselves to serve on the weekend, 5) Worship - The weekend is filled with worship, 6) God Glorifying - This is not a self-help weekend, but an all-out effort to move every pilgrim to surrender their life to the service of Christ, 7) Community - Those who have already been, from many different denominational backgrounds, continue to worship and work together in order to bless the pilgrims and to encourage each of them to be faithful to God and their church in the days after the event. 





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