National Day of Prayer

    Last year, we joined the noon prayer service at the county court house. This year, I’m just not feeling it. For a while now, it has felt rather hypocritical to pray, “God Bless America,” but at least last year we could lay aside our pride and beg for mercy. Since the 2014 elections last fall, there has been a hardening of the leadership that has changed the spiritual texture of the nation to the point that even cries for mercy aren’t heart-felt.

    The theme verse for the National Day of Prayer, 2015, is found in 1 Kings 8:28. “Yet have regard to the prayer of your servant and to his plea, O LORD my God, listening to the cry and to the prayer that your servant prays before you this day.”  Fine, Well & Good, but it doesn’t define what the servants are pleading for. And quite frankly, if you’re praying for the wrong stuff, you are wasting your time. My proof: James 4:3, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, to spend it on your passions.”

    Perhaps a timelier theme verse was scribed by Isaiah. “Woe to those who enact evil statutes and to those who constantly record unjust decisions, so as to deprive the needy of justice and rob My people of their rights.” 10:1-2.

    It takes some boldness to pray an imprecatory prayer, but I am there. Imprecatory prayers are the kind where one is calling down fire from heaven. It is spiritually playing with fire, so there is a corresponding chance of getting burned. It is asking God to switch from Grace-giver mode to His Avenger mode; the catch is that He passes through you on the way to the target, so it takes both wisdom and cleanliness in Christ to survive it intact.  King David wrote several imprecatory psalms, and he was able to pull that off because his motives were right with the Lord.

    Wars. Terrorism. Increasing earthquakes. Blood moons occurring in a tetrad on Jewish feast days. Avian flu that has already claimed 5 million turkeys that could have been in line for the Thanksgiving Day table. The boding of the Shemitah year. Leadership that has no fear of God. — We will never outgrow or lose the need for the “God bless Blinky, my goldfish” prayers that we said as kids, but we do need to add to the faith and courage of our prayer arsenal for the times ahead.

    If you pray for our country on this National Day of Prayer, make it count.