In the early 1950s, an American missionary named R. Edward Miller was working in a small city in Argentina. He had been laboring for years without results and he felt he had tried everything he knew how to do—except sustained, concerted intercession.

Without telling the people in his congregation, he began to pray eight hours a day, asking God for revival in his own life and in theirs, as well as in the wider community. All by himself, he prayed and prayed, adding fasting to his regimen because he was so determined to get results.

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After at least six months of dogged daily prayer, the Lord spoke one word to the tired missionary: “Continue!”

He kept praying for several more months. This was a one-man prayer watch.

Eventually the Lord spoke again. This time He told Miller to announce nightly prayer meetings at the church from 8:00 p.m. to midnight, starting the following Monday evening. Miller objected. “Lord, are you sure? If I hold prayer meetings, the only ones who come will be the little old ladies. And all they will do is to sit and watch me pray.”

The Lord seemed to nod and say simply, “I know.”

Miller went ahead and announced a week of nightly prayer meetings. As he predicted, the only people from his congregation who showed up were three of the little old ladies. And, yes, all they did was sit silently and watch their pastor pray for four hours. At midnight, he asked if any of them had received a word from God. One of the women raised her hand and reported having had a strange desire to come up and knock on the wood table in the front of the sanctuary. That seemed too foolish to be a real word from God. They all went home for the night.

Next night, same thing. The same three ladies arrived, sat down, and did nothing but watch Miller pray his heart out for four hours. At the end of the evening, the same woman reported having the same sense about knocking on the wooden table. This was crazy. They adjourned for the night once again. The next two nights were exactly the same. The woman did not want to make a fool of herself, so she refused to knock on the table.

Miller wondered, What if obedience to this strange instruction would turn out to be the key to something big? The missionary tried to figure out a way to get the lady to at least try it out. It was the final night of the scheduled meetings. Again, only those three little old ladies came into the sanctuary to watch Miller pray. This time, when he found out that she had had the same impulse for the fifth night in a row, he said, “Sister, we’re all going to walk around the table and knock on it.” He figured that she couldn’t refuse to follow through if the rest of them were doing it.

He went first. He walked past the table and struck it with his hand. “Thunk.” The other two women did the same. “Clunk. Thunk.” Finally the third woman stepped up to the table and knocked her knuckles on it.

Suddenly, the Holy Spirit came. The four of them were overwhelmed with the glory of the presence of God. On the spot, the three women were baptized in the Spirit, and they began to worship God in languages they had not learned.

The news spread fast, and more people began to join them in nightly prayer times. After everyone in the congregation had been touched by God, the revival spread to the capital city of Buenos Aires where eventually thousands of people gathered in an outdoor stadium in 1954. The great Argentine revival of the early 1950s had begun—all because one man watched and prayed and followed through to the best of his ability.

I have had the joy of telling this infamous intercessory story around the world and encouraging believers everywhere, “All prayers counts. Just keeping on Knocking!”

• Shared by James Goll on his website, God Encounters Ministries. Read the entire article HERE.