Will you finally pray for your country?
In yet another moment of crisis, is it time to pray for America, or whichever country where God has placed you?
What is to be done in this latest in a long string of fearful circumstances? This author feeling gifted in and called by God to politics, sort of a governmental ministry, believes that I can find a practical solution if one is to be found. But the conclusion is clear:
There are no answers. There are no solutions. Our problems can only be solved, our wounds only healed, by the presence of God and the healing power of the Holy Spirit made available to us by the voluntary sacrifice of Jesus Christ. This is not a statement of dogma, but one of exhaustion having searched for every other option, finding none.
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Jeremiah 29: "13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart." If we have not personally, actively, felt the immediate, urgent need to cry out to God for our nation and our world, something is wrong. God is waiting for our heartfelt desire and for our hunger. Imagine if God were watching you, wondering "What is it going to take?" God will allow us to keep enduring one problem after another, until we finally turn to God.
We must have faith despite troubles. But our faith cannot be in ourselves. We have peace only after we have assertively placed our troubles in God's hands, when we have confessed our sins and pled Jesus' blood over ourselves and our sins and our problems. We do not have faith in our faith. We cannot have peace from ourselves. We are confident only when we know we have trusted fully in Jesus Christ, our King.
So is it finally time for us to do what God commanded?
2 Chronicles 14 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 I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.
But as fond as American Christians are of mouthing this immensely powerful passage – but not actually implementing it – we forget the verses just before it:
"13 When I shut up heaven and there is no rain, or command the locusts to devour the land, or send pestilence among My people,"
The passage we love but do not do is specifically about how we should respond when our nation is enduring crises and problems. When adversity comes, God wants us to turn to Him for healing and relief: Haggai 2: " 17 I struck you with blight and mildew and hail in all the labors of your hands; yet you did not turn to Me,’ says the Lord. " Isaiah 9: "Therefore the Lord raises against them adversaries from Rezin And spurs their enemies on, 12 The Arameans on the east and the Philistines on the west; And they devour Israel with gaping jaws. In spite of all this, His anger does not turn away And His hand is still stretched out. 13 Yet the people do not turn back to Him who struck them, Nor do they seek the Lord of hosts."
Is God cursing America? No. I don't think so. But we are. It is we who have drifted away from God. In God's presence – the source of all life – we partake of His blessing. As we drift away we lose God's blessing and healing and thereby enter into the curses which are merely the absence of God. America on the whole having consciously rejected God has cursed itself.
My father is fond of quoting that darkness does not exist. Darkness is only the absence of light. Imagine standing on a stage in an empty auditorium, with one spotlight on the man at the podium. Then the man drifts slowly away from that spot, away from the light. He gradually fades into the enveloping darkness.
As we drift away from God's light, our minds retreat into the madness we see all around us today. We lose wisdom, common sense, and truth. We become vulnerable to decay, illness, and evil. We experience lack, poverty, struggle, emotional distress, and fear.
On April 28-30, 1980, as "Washington for Jesus," over half a million Christians gathered on the public "mall" in Washington, D.C. to repent and pray. The organizers estimated attendance at 700,000 (official estimates are notoriously much smaller than reality).
"Washington for Jesus" was not a protest. Christians did not come to send a message. They came to repent before God, to plead the blood of Jesus over our nation and our individual and society's sins, and to beg for God's forgiveness and mercy. As some prophetically minded have pointed out, shortly after Mt. St. Helens volcano, previously smoldering, violently exploded, covering the entire United States with ash blown by the prevailing winds. So from the vantage point of God above, the country was veiled in the ash of repentance.
In April 1988, a million Christians including this author knelt in the mud – it had been raining – on the mall in Washington, D.C., to repent and plead for God's forgiveness and blessing. Note that Washington for Jesus did not focus on other people's sins, but on "our" sins, first and foremost repenting of our own sins before God, and of our nation. It was not to point the finger but to kneel face down before Jesus Christ. I distinctly recall the muddy ground and the decision to abandon pride by kneeling in the wet grass.
In 1996, half a million Christians again returned to repent, worship, and pray. By 2004, Christians had lost interest. Only about 25,000 Christians heeded the call to pray for our nation's sins, one of them your author. While God is not constrained to save by many or by few and one plus God is a majority, I feared that the lack of concern of God's people for the state of the nation suggested a continuing drift away from God.
Some time ago, as I cried out to God for help, God quickened in my spirit the scripture: "Draw near to God and He will draw near to you." James 4:8. I felt the strong understanding that this is an iron law of the universe. Not a reassuring thought. Not a Hallmark greeting card. A law. If we draw near to God, God shall draw near to us. Always, without exception.
Jonathon Moseley is a frequent writer of news analysis and political commentator, who is a leading member of the Northern Virginia Tea Party, and Executive Director of American Border Control. He has worked with dozens of election campaigns, including serving as campaign manager and treasurer for Christine O’Donnell’s 2008 nomination contest for the United States Senate from Delaware. He has a law degree from George Mason University.
