Lift Up Your Day
Lift Up Your Day with Pastor Rodney Coe — a 5-minute Christian devotional podcast for the heart that needs lifting.
Every Take 5 episode is a true story from history and Scripture about ordinary people God used to do extraordinary things. Pastor Rodney Coe — author of 5 books, devotional writer, and pastor — tells the stories warm, well-paced, and pointed at the part of your day that needs the most lifting.
You'll meet missionaries saved by angels (John Paton), a watchmaker's daughter who forgave a Nazi guard (Corrie ten Boom), a Tennessee farm boy who took a hill in the Argonne (Alvin York), a Senate chaplain who wasn't ready (Peter Marshall), a man who walked with God at 4 a.m. (George Washington Carver), and more.
Each episode ends the same way: "And that, friend, is how God lifts up your day."
Free 7-day devotional When Worry Won't Let Go at rodneycoe.com/worry-devotional. Books and blog at rodneycoe.com.
Subscribe for weekly Take 5 stories. Keep Looking Up.
Lift Up Your Day
Jonathan Edwards: The Sermon That Shook a Village
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
A preacher with a weak voice. A bored New England town. Twenty minutes of monotone reading. And heaven came down anyway.
On a warm Wednesday in July of 1741, Jonathan Edwards stepped into the pulpit at Enfield, Connecticut. He never looked up from his page. He read his sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, in a flat monotone. Twenty minutes later, grown men were gripping the pews to keep from sliding to the floor.
Here is what most people miss. Edwards did not rise to that morning cold. For years he had worn grooves in the floor of his study. He had fasted. He had wept over his people before he ever read them a single line. The fire in that meetinghouse was lit long before, in a quiet room, on a man's knees.
In this five-minute Take 5 devotional, Pastor Rodney Coe walks through the story of Jonathan Edwards and the Enfield revival of July 1741, and what it tells us about the kind of prayer heaven still answers.
Scripture: Psalm 85:6 | Acts 1:14 | Deuteronomy 32:35
📖 Read or listen on the blog: https://rodneycoe.com/jonathan-edwards-sermon-enfield-revival/
🎙 Subscribe to Lift Up Your Day: https://rodneycoe.com/lift-up-your-day/
📚 Pastor Rodney's books: https://rodneycoe.com/books/
Heaven is closer than you think. Lift up your day.
The meeting house at Enfield was quiet that morning. Not the quiet of hungry hearts, the bored kind, the half asleep kind. It was a warm Wednesday in July of 1741, and the people of Enfield, Connecticut had come the way they had come a thousand Wednesdays before, to fulfill an obligation more than to meet with God. A slender man with a weak voice walked to the pulpit. He set down a sheaf of papers. He did not look up. He lowered his eyes to the page and began to read in a flat monotone, and twenty minutes later grown men were gripping the pews to keep from sliding onto the floor. Stay with me. You're gonna want to hear the rest of the story. Welcome to Lift Up Your Day, a five-minute devotional, short stories with a biblical heartbeat. I'm Rodney Coe, and today the most famous sermon ever preached on American soil and the shy bookworm God used to shake a whole town awake. His name was Jonathan Edwards. He pastored up the river in Northampton, and that Wednesday he was only filling the pulpit for a friend. Edwards was no thunderer. He never paced the platform or waved his arms. People respected him. They did not expect to remember him. What Enfield did not know was that quiet man had already watched God do the impossible once. Seven years earlier, in his own church, a season of grace swept three hundred souls into the kingdom in a matter of months. Edwards wrote it down in a little book, and that book crossed the ocean and set hearts on fire all over again. The flames had been moving toward Enfield for a long time. That Wednesday they finally arrived. The text was Deuteronomy thirty two thirty five, their foot shall slip in due time. The title was Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. He read it in a monotone, eyes on the paper, never raising his voice, and something began to move through that room that Enfield had never felt before. Women were weeping out loud, a low moaning rose in waves until Edward stopped and asked for quiet so he could go on. He asked again, he could not be heard. All over the sanctuary people were crying out, What shall I do to be saved? He never finished the sermon. He simply stepped down. Ministers moved among the pews late into the evening, pointing broken people to the Savior, and by sundown a town that revival had once passed right over had been shaken to its foundation. Here is the part I can't get past. Edwards did not climb into the pulpit cold. For years had worn grooves in the floor of his study. He had fasted, he had wept over his people long before he had ever read them a word about an angry god. The fire in that meeting house was lit somewhere else first in a quiet room on one man's knees. There's an old Hebrew word for what happened at Enfield. The word is shove. It means to turn, to turn back, to come home. Revival is what happens when people who have drifted finally see how far they have drifted and make the long walk home. The psalmist prayed for exactly that. Will you not revive us again that your people may rejoice in you? That is Psalm 85 6. Maybe this finds you in a season where prayer feels hollow and God feels a thousand miles away. Hear me, that is exactly how Enfield felt on that morning of july eighth, seventeen forty one. God did not come down because those people were confident. He came down because a few of them were finally desperate. And the same God who met them in the meeting house is the God of this very breath you and I are breathing right now. He is not changed. The only question left on the table is whether we are willing. And that, friend, is how God lives up your day.