Our Day Of Prayer

Posted by Larry Miller on May 5, 2010 under How | Be the First to Comment

Sure this is the National Day of Prayer, and we have all kinds of things going wrong in our country, not to mention the individual trials and troubles most everyone of us is struggling with. We have our list of needs and wants to bring to the almighty that we expect Him to take care of. We will lay them out and expect Him to get on with it.

There is only one word to describe this way of thinking… WRONG! We have been unfaithful servants in caring for this free country that we have been blessed with.

He have…

permitted the slaughter of innocent children in their mother’s womb

turned a blind eye… even encouraged at times… a secular government to be the source of security

followed politicians instead of the God of the Bible

adapted to “contemporary” values

become convinced that tolerance is more important and standing for right over wrong

allowed our public schools to indoctrinate our children in the ways of political correctness and secular humanism

permitted so many churches to become little more than social clubs

forgotten our daily walk with our creator and savior

There is a one word right answer to our predicament. II Chronicles 7:14 tells us,

“if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

There is our answer… that word is “Repent”. We cannot go on living the way we have been, self absorbed, uninvolved in the world around us, complaining about the the splinters in the eyes of our leaders while each of us has our own log in our own eye.

The answer is not in Washington, but with the people who sit around our own dinner table. The verse doesn’t say, when the government gets itself together… it says, when God’s people get themselves together… when they start acting like God’s people… that is when the land will be healed.

Many wonder if we have gone too far, that it may no longer be possible to restore our land. I would remind them of the many stories of people rising off their death beds after the faithful prayed for them. Is our God so puny that He can only save people, and not nations? No, if we do our part, we open the door to miraculous interventions like we saw at Brooklyn Heights. We also have to recognize that sometimes the answer to righteous prayer is “no”, but that is not our responsibility or call. We are called to be faithful and stand for what is right… then we can confidently put the results in the hands of our god.

So when we get together for the National Day of Prayer, our prayers will go a lot further if we are shorter on the asking and longer on seeking forgiveness from the Father for the many times we have failed to live up to the things we say we believe. Then, follow up, day after day considering – and mending – our own ways… before we can expect the same from our leaders. After all, we are the ones who know the Father… they do not. It is we who are the ones responsible for restoring our fallen nation.