Prayer For the United States

We need God to visit this nation and turn us back to our roots. We need to know and love God above all else. We need to know and love and serve our fellow man secondly. Lord we need your mercy!

Lord would you give us governmental leadership that hears and follows your voice? Give us leaders of Christian conviction that will tear down the altars from the high places. Give us leaders that are righteous and will lead us down the path of righteousness. Give us leaders that are moral and just and right and true. Give us leaders that have a hunger and thirst for You. Give us leaders that know the God of the Bible and the Bible of God.

Lord would you give us a nation that respects life? Hear the blood of the unborn crying out. Lord have mercy and give us a culture of life.

Lord would you bring reconciliation to this nation? Reconcile blacks and whites and all races. Reconcile men and women. Reconcile old and young. Reconcile rich and poor. Reconcile educated and uneducated. Reconcile liberal and conservative. Lord have mercy!

Lord would you restrain evil in our land? Where our laws are wrong make it clear and give us the courage to change them. Interfere with the plans of the enemies of this nation and the enemies of God who have plans to invite more evil and darkness in. Lord have mercy!

Lord would you cause a massive turning to You? Would those who know You take up their cross daily and follow You? Would those who do not know You come to know You as Lord and Savior? Lord have mercy on the people of this nation!

Lord would You reconcile the denominations to each other? Reconcile protestants and catholics. Make us one people under God. Let us walk in unity and not be concerned with building our own kingdoms. Make us one body functioning together, each doing his or her respective part. Lord have mercy!

Lord would You cause all priests and pastors and other spiritual leaders to only speak true Biblical concepts. Remove man’s interpretations and watering down of the Gospel. Lord we lift Your name up. Change or remove leadership that tries to lead Your flock away with sweet and deceptive words. Lord have mercy!

Here’s a live prayer set asking for God to come visit this nation.

If you would like to joing us in praying for the nation come to the All IHOPers and Prayer Warriors on Facebook Group

The Problem With Prayer

By now you should know that our St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series. (This post first written in 2006) GO CARDS!! These boys were huge underdogs and they pulled it off. It’s a great American story. Little 5 foot nothing and a hundred and nothing pounds Eckstein wins the Series MVP. It’s what dreams are made of. It’s what lets me still cling, in the deep recesses of my brain, to that dream of Olympic glory (of course I’ve had to change my sport to archery). Did I mention GO CARDS!?

This dream, this championship has been a very long time coming. It’s been 24 years. Most of the people on MySpace were not even alive last time the Cards got the ring. It was a can’t miss moment for any St. Louis sports fan.

And that’s the problem with prayer. We don’t see it as a “can’t miss moment.” We do it so regular. It’s ordinary. We rarely see change…and when we do we usually chalk it up to something other than the prayer. We don’t expect anything from it, so we get nothing from it. It’s our duty, so we do it, check it off our list and move on through our day.

My brother has been a Cubs fan his whole life. He ruined his young, impressionable son by teaching him that in “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” the line is “root, root, root for the Cubbies.” Every April his hopes are high and by May it’s usually just another loooong summer. On the outside he still talks trash, but on the inside he is almost afraid to hope.

It’s that way with prayer. I’m afraid to dare to believe. What if I decided the Bible was really true? What if I decided I really believed prayer worked? What if I totally went for it? What if I really prayed something that I really believed God wants? What if it didn’t happen?

So I take the chicken approach. I pray that God’s will be done in a situation. Don’t get me wrong, I want God’s will. Praying for things that are not God’s will are a waste of time. But what we all tend to pray is the type of prayer that is a safety net so that whatever happens I can say my prayer was answered. Then I don’t have to wrestle with anything. I don’t have to deal with maybe missing God in how I prayed. And, I don’t have to deal with the fact that God’s answer may not be the answer I think he should have.

I watched The Game with friends last night. Brian is not what I would call a baseball fan. He’s what I would call a Cardinals in the post-season baseball fan. But he was really into it…yelling at the players, wearing his brand new Rolen jersey and throwing his cap in appropiate moments. But almost as soon as the game was over his response was “So what does this mean for us? How will this affect our lives?” And he’s right. It doesn’t. It will give us stuff to talk about. That’s really it.

And that’s the other problem with prayer. It’s too irrelevent. We would never say that out loud. We would probably never even admit that to ourselves. But if it wasn’t, wouldn’t we do it more? It’s like if I couldn’t make my house payment, but had a money tree in back yard…only I didn’t go pick the money off to make the payment and was just satisfied knowing the tree was there. Who would do that? Well….us. Have you read the Bible? Do you see what it says about prayer? Then let’s do it. Pray boldly. Pray the risky prayers. Pray to a God who loves courageous expressions of faith. Pray to a God who will not leave you hanging. Each prayer is a can’t miss moment. Just pray