Overseeing
the ministry of prayer at my church has opened my eyes to the reality of
ambitious prayer. For many years I didn’t
realize that I had a spiritual gift of faith.
All Christians have faith; that is how we become Christians. It took many decades of praying before I
realized that God had gifted me with faith from the time that I was a young
woman. When my youth minister asked me
to pray for him and his wife to have a baby, I wrote his request on a
list. It never occurred to me to take
that request off my list until seven years later when I received the news that
his wife was pregnant. No one taught me
to be consistent in prayer. No one
taught me that God wants us to keep asking;and when we don’t seem to be getting
an answer, He is calling us to increase our faith. No one taught me, except the Holy Spirit. He taught me this lesson again through the
prayer theme of this year’s National Day of Prayer.
I think
we can all agree that our country needs prayer.
We can be unified in that thought.
The Bible is clear that it is our duty as Christians to pray for our
government so that we can go about our calling to build God’s Kingdom here on
earth. I led the National Day of Prayer
in my church and though I planned for a puny 100 people to attend, we only had
35 prayer warriors at our event. Why
weren’t more people gathered on this one-day-a-year privilege of praying for
our country? No one likes to get up
super early on a Thursday morning. I
know I didn’t want to set my alarm for 4:30 a.m. after just getting back from a
mission trip, recovering from an illness and working late on Wednesday
night. I hope I would have attended even
if I weren’t in charge of the event. I
have attended in the past when it wasn’t part of my work responsibilities. Why?—because I believe God has called us to
build His Kingdom in our world through our prayers for the community in which
we live.
Decades ago our governmental
leaders decided that there ought to be a day when the whole nation gathers to
pray for our government. It seems that
each year the privilege to gather for prayer and the need to gather for prayer
over the United States is increasing. The
theme for the 2018 gathering was unity.
Unity in the United States seems an impossible request. I asked God to bless our nation with unity
along with those gathered in our church and the other prayer gatherings that
day because it was printed on the brochure.
I never would have thought to ask that request for our country of my own
volition. I had to ask God to forgive my
doubt that He would answer this request because it seems so impossible in our
current climate. We are incapable of
unity, and the division that seems to be tearing apart our country seems to be
increasing in intensity. How will God
answer our request for unity? Will we
see a people united around a common goal of having a government that keeps
order so that we Christians are free to carry out our calling to share the love
of God with all the world? Paul urged Timothy to pray like this in 1 Timothy
2:2-3:
I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers,
intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people— for
kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in
all godliness and holiness.
If Paul
could tell Timothy to pray that way in their day when the Roman government
maintained a tight hold around all nations of the world and persecuted
Christians as sport—then we should not shy away from boldly asking God for
unity in our nation. It is an ambitious
prayer. It is a needed prayer. I challenge you to join with the movement
that was started and begin to pray in unity for unity in our nation. When you see news of rallies and protests in
our nation, pray and ask God to grant us unity so that we can be free to do His
work. Let’s be ambitious in our prayers
for our nation. Let’s watch and see how
God answers in our day!
Copyright © 2018.
Deborah R Newman teatimeforyoursoul.com
All Rights Reserved.
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