Every Christian knows the importance of a daily quiet time with the Lord.

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leading to aimlessly skimming a couple of Bible verses or praying the same prayer over and over.

In Be Thou My Vision, Jonathan Gibson has created a 30-day liturgical guide designed to provide structure to the daily worship of individuals and families.

Pick up a copy of Be Thou My Vision wherever books are sold or visit crossway.org slash plus to find out how you can get 30% off with your crossway plus account.

That's crossway.org slash plus.

Welcome to the Gospel Coalition Podcast, equipping the next generation of believers, pastors, and church leaders to shape life and ministry around the Gospel.

On today's episode, you'll hear a message from John Yates. This message was originally given at TGC's 2021 National Conference.

Glad you are here today, whether you're here watching, you know, through the internet somewhere or listening on a car radio or wherever you are.

I'm glad we can be together here today. Thank you for joining me today to talk about something important.

I wish I had the time to talk to you about the whole idea of spiritual awakening and how these have taken place over the centuries by God's work.

I don't really have time to do that today though. I also wish that I had time to tell you in detail just how bad life was in England 300 years ago just before the Great English Awakening began.

I don't have time to do that either. All I can say is around 1700 in England, life was just awful for about 98% of the people.

It was a time of great immorality. A time where alcoholism was spread throughout the country. Working conditions were very, very difficult. They had a very poorly developed legal system, no police.

People could be hung on the gallows for things as simple as stealing somebody's sheep. And Thomas Carlisle, the great literary giant of 18th century, wrote about England in the early 18th century.

He described it as England was stomach well fed, soul extinct. And England was a land whose soul was extinct. The church was pretty dead and it was not a happy time for people who lived there unless you were in the top 1% of society.

I want to tell you what God did and the impact of what God did on English society because I think it's really encouraging for us in our day.

I'm John Yates. I'm not a historical expert. I'm just really interested in how God works and I've been giving thought to this topic for some time.

In the very first years of the 1700s, a truly extraordinary group of men and women who became the first of the Awakeners were born.

John Wesley, Charles Wesley, George Whitfield, Salina Hastings, the Countess of Huntington, William Grimshaw, William Romaine and a small handful of others. They were all born within just a few years of one another.

And almost all of them were unusually converted to Christ in separate circumstances but within just a few months of one another.

From various parts of the country, they were drawn together and used by the Holy Spirit to bring the fire of revival down on England. How did it begin?

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