Wednesday, October 7, 2020

7 Ways to Pray for America

 

Someone asked me today what I've been praying for our nation. These are certainly troubling days with seismic shifts in culture. No doubt, we desperately need the intervention of Almighty God. 



Here are 7 ways to pray for our country:


(1) God's mercy on us.

Billy Graham said years ago that if the Lord doesn't judge the United States of America for her sin, he will need to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah. 

When the biblical prophet Amos saw a revelation of God's pending judgment on Israel, he immediately began interceding before the Lord:

"Oh Lord God, please forgive! How can Jacob stand? He is so small!"

And the Bible records, "The LORD relented concerning this: 'It shall not be,' said the LORD' " (Amos 7:2-3).

Christians need to plead with God to give us mercy, spare us what we deserve, and grant more time for repentance.


(2) for deception to be exposed

We live in a day of many deceptions. Entire social engineering movements understand how to create cultural narratives that thrive off of fake news and untruths. 

Unfortunately, much of the mainstream media perpetuates these cultural narratives. Remember the habitual fibbing of Bill and Hillary Clinton? The phony Russian scandal? The hyped-up impeachment? The slanders against Justice Kavanaugh? The full video footage of George Floyd's arrest hidden for months?

The Left's social engineering thrives off of deception.


(3) for truth and repentance to rise

The Bible says that the rise of lawlessness and Satan's rule is accompanied by all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved (2 Thess. 2:10 ESV).

The prophet Isaiah warned, Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands far away; for truth has stumbled in the public squares, and uprightness cannot enter. (Isaiah 59:14 ESV)

Dennis Prager writes, "In the hierarchy of leftists (as opposed to traditional liberalism) values, truth is below other values. . . . Leftist denial of what is true is so widespread that we have a term for it, political correctness. There is no comparable right-wing political correctness, i.e., denying truths so as not to offend right-wing values or certain groups. . . . So deep is the left's hostility to truth regarding the sexes that a president of Harvard University was forced from office after suggesting that men's and women's brains process math and some science differently. . . . Few liberal activist groups tell the truth. Not because their members are liars - but because whatever the left advocates it deems more important than truth." See Does the Left Value Truth?



A healthy society cannot function long without truth. The Left continues to push the needle further and further so that we reject things that are true. 

Here is just one example. 

Dr. Albert Mohler writes, "We are witnessing a revolution in morality that is nothing less than a revolt against human nature. The LGBTQ revolution is like a tsunami, reshaping the entire society. Marriage has been redefined, morality has been revolutionized and the ordering of human relations has been turned upside down. The most radical front of this revolution—the transgender movement—has now demanded the rejection of the “gender binary” and the embrace of a totally fluid concept of human gender and personal identity. We are becoming a society of total confusion about what it means to be human, male and female. 

The movement to deny biology and human nature is progressing with unbelievable speed. A society that, for example, allows biological males claiming to be female to compete in athletics against biological women is a society that is embracing a confusion that would be fatal to any human society. We all know that the revolutionaries are demanding much more than boys competing in girls’ athletics. One side in our political divide is enthusiastic about pushing this revolution and using the coercive power of government to advance it. The other side will resist it. This divide is at stake in this election." 

We need for truth to become normal again - and we need to repent for believing things that are not true.


(4) for wisdom and courage for our leaders to make the right, though not always popular, decisions

Politicians who play to public opinion polls rarely make wise choices for the people. We are living in a day when many times the right decision brings the wrath of the mainstream media and the Leftist mob. Dennis Prager argues that the most powerful force in America today is fear of the Left - what they will say and do to punish you if you do not submit to their agenda.

Pray for wisdom and courage for leaders to make the right decisions.


(5) for discernment for the people - to see above the media's rhetoric and see what is actually happening,

Discernment is the ability to see between differing options, voices, and paths, and choose correctly. It's the ability to differentiate between fool's gold and the real thing. To see through the fog to what is actually there.

We live in a day where discernment is often greatly lacking. 


(6) for love, compassion, kindness, and forgiveness

The Judeo-Christian ethic is marked by the need for common decency - practicing The Golden Rule. Problems in our society will not be solved by adding hate to hate.

The apostle Paul wrote, Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive (Colossians 3:12-13 ESV).

Sometimes we need to stop focusing on what other people owe us - and instead treat others the way we want to be treated.


(7) and for God to remember the covenant of America's settlers and Founders.

I believe the United States of America is a covenantal nation. No, that does not mean that she is the second Israel or that her covenant is on the same level as ones in the Bible.

It does, however, mean that the overwhelming majority of her settlers and Founders shared a bias toward biblical Christianity and "their thinking and lives were influenced by a Christian worldview" (The American Patriot's Bible).

When you read the original writings and correspondence of these Framers, you see a common understanding that they were dedicating this place and this nation to the God of the Bible, asking Him to preserve them. This understanding dominated our nation's self-understanding for more than 100 years. 

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story wrote, “One of the beau­tiful boasts of our municipal jurispru­dence is that Christianity is a part of the Common Law. There never has been a period in which the Common Law did not recognize Christianity as lying at its foundations.” 


Though revisionists and Leftists have worked for years to dismiss these facts, we can ask the Lord to remember. In the Bible, when God's people were in great distress, they often prayed for the Lord to remember the covenant He had with them.

Anne Graham Lotz recently prayed at the Prayer March 2020 in Washington, D.C., “Hear all the prayers that have been prayed on the Mall today. O God, would You hear? Would You forgive? Would You heal? We ask this, please, for the glory of the Name of Jesus, the Son of God, the Son of Man, the Lion of Judah, the Lamb of God, the Redeemer, the Savior, Jesus. We pray in His Name, Yeshua.”


Pictures used by permission from Pixabay or taken by the author.

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