Draw the Circle: The 40 Day Prayer Challenge

by Mark Batterson

Jonathan Edwards is famous for his sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” which helped spark the first Great Awakening. Along with his pastorate in North Hampton, Massachusetts, he served as the president of Princeton University. Of his known descendants, there are more than 300 ministers or missionaries, 120 university professors, 60 authors, 30 judges, 14 college presidents, 3 members of Congress, and 1 vice president. That’s an impressive family lineage! And that legacy, like every spiritual genealogy, traces back to a moment of consecration. On January 12, 1723, Jonathan Edwards made a solemn dedication of himself to God. He consecrated himself, all of himself, to God. I made a solemn dedication7 of myself to God, and wrote it down; giving up myself, and all that I had to God; to be for the future, in no respect, my own; to act as one that had no right to himself, in any respect. And solemnly vowed, to take God for my whole portion and felicity; looking on nothing else, as any part of my happiness, nor acting as if it were.