Ask Dwight Dickson about prayer and he can’t help but get teary-eyed.
“I don’t know why,” his voice quivers. “God’s just blessed my little life.”
He’s been married 58 years to a woman he says God “handpicked for me.” And even with only a high school education, “I’ve been involved in some special, special godly things that only the Lord could’ve orchestrated.”
“All my life it’s been like that,” Dickson said. “Just to see the Lord work here and here and here and here.”
As he got ready to walk into a prayer meeting at the First Baptist Church in Clarksville, Tennessee, he knew God was about to do something yet again.
The group of 200 or so had one goal in mind—to pray for Clarksville and surrounding cities ahead of Franklin Graham’s visit to their town, coming up on May 18.
For nearly two hours, they took time to pray for each other, people in their lives who don’t know Christ, and for the Decision America event in Clarksville.
After all, it was prayer that got them there in the first place.
>> See photos from the Clarksville, Tennessee, prayer meeting.
A Time to Pray
A little over five years ago, Dickson had an unexpected conversation during his doctor’s visit. His physician asked him about Clarksville—not as a tourist, but as someone who had a heart for reaching those around him for Christ.
“We started talking about the spiritual aspect [of Clarksville], and I told him I’d call some people to start a prayer time,” Dickson recalled. “About 20 people—everybody I called—said, ‘Yes!’”
In that group were pastors, Christian leaders, churchgoers and prayer warriors—some of them already praying for decades for Clarksville.
They agreed to meet the first and third Monday of every month and have done so, without fail.
When Franklin Graham announced his plans to hold prayer events in every state capital, they added a new request to their prayer list.
When ‘No’ Means ‘Not Yet’
“We’d been praying for spiritual transformation,” Dickson said. “Then last year, we heard Franklin Graham was coming to Nashville, and we wrote him a letter. We thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be neat if he came to Clarksville instead of Nashville?’”
By that time, the 2016 Decision America Tour dates and locations were already set. The May 2016 Nashville event drew 8,600 people.
Franklin Graham would plan to visit Tennessee again in 2017—but he was going to stop in Murfreesboro, not Clarksville.
Dickson and his group kept praying that an evangelistic event would make its way to their city. With tears in his eyes again, he recalled the moment they found out plans for Murfreesboro fell through. Franklin would be coming to Clarksville after all.
“This is an answer to our prayers,” he smiled. “It’s just been something that you folks really are here.
“Things like that just don’t happen. Only the Lord can work things like that out.”
Don’t Stop Praying
Patricia Russell has been part of the prayer group almost since it started. She’s seen the group grow to its current size of about 40 people.
“We laugh because you know about the number 40,” she said, referring to the biblical emphasis on 40—the number of waiting and testing.
Though not born in Clarksville, Russell says the town “is the only home I’ve known.”
With a heart for missions work, it’s been a joy for her to intercede on behalf of the city.
People in need of healing, local politicians, law enforcement, educators—even bikers wanting God’s intervention have come by for prayer with the group.
Her hope is that Franklin Graham’s visit next month to share the Gospel will leave even more lives changed.
“We feel like Clarksville is a light on the hill. God’s light—the fire on the hill. And we just pray for flickers of it to go out [into the world],” Russell said.
Knowing how God has moved up until now, Dickson can only imagine what May 18 at the Liberty Park Amphitheater will look like.
“[There’s] no telling what’s going to take place.”
Learn more about the Decision America Tennessee Tour.
