A Prayer for America and God’s People

Lord, we pray in Jesus’ Name, His Holy Name, for America and for God’s people, that You will have mercy on us all.

We live today in a time in Your dialectic of history in which nations conspire against the Godly, when, even in our nation, our leaders conspire against You. Psalm 2 shows us how You see all this and how You loathe the arrogance of nations, as we know You loathe the arrogance of individual men. Official prayer in school has been declared unconstitutional, and now unofficial prayers and pray-ers are illegal. All across the land, murder of the unborn has been legalized, and by school policies and government policies in the name of “privacy,” parents are prevented notice and decisional control over the reproductive decisions of their children.

The United Nations bullies all nations into Godlessness and other sin and weaknesses. Our Government maliciously would join the United Nations in its manipulations and power grabs.

We cry out to you in hope for your mercy as we consider the fears generated by the pending collapse of the American Experiment: the collapse of democracy, into the coming economic crises of American’s fiscal and monetary policies, the tyranny of socialism in the mask of progressivism, creeping in drip by drip, wave by wave, causing the leveling of our society into one where freedom of assembly is challenged (Arizona and California, last week), where freedom of speech is muzzled (hate speech), where the right of self-defense is given by utopian socialists to international bullies and dictators (Hillary Clinton, Sec. of State, agrees to the UN “Small Arms Treaty”), and the government would claim dominion over our very bodies (Health Care Decisions by the Government), as well as our labor and income, and money and resources (tax policy to redistribute wealth).

This is not the time or place to go into the politics of all of this, but what is noted above are facts of our times, and facts that cause us to cry out, not just as Americans, but as Christians, and say, “Lord, have mercy on us, please, please, have mercy on us.”

We know that our people, Your people here, and all around the world, and even so much as in Israel, your chosen and beloved people into whom we are grafted by the Blood of Christ, have sinned, and do sin, and fall short of Your glory. We all are guilty of self-centeredness and all that it brings (disobedience of You and Your commands, covetousness, idolatry, pride, arrogance, the breakdown of the church as the source, instead of the government, of charity), we are all guilty of traipsing off into our wicked ways, falling into the ditches on the left and right of the narrow, and straight, highway.

Lord, today we know that many of us, many of Your people, have confessed their sins, repented and turned from their wicked ways, and that You have forgiven us and them. Yet, we know that many have not confessed their sins, repented and turned from their wicked ways. We know that many remain double-minded and tainted in their hearts, unstable in all their ways. And Lord, we know that it is that instability, that double-mindedness, has produced not only the fleshly sins of self-centeredness, like adultery and idolatry, but that same instability from double-mindedness has produced spiritual adultery. Many of our people, many of Your people, think that if they merely keep a toe-hold in the Church, if they just nod and bow at the Name of Jesus, their fire insurance for Heaven is assured, and so they can continue to consort with the great Harlot you describe in Revelation 17. This double-mindedness has had two effects on Your people: they are comfortable in their sin, and they have authorized and embraced the government of this land, and the governments of the nations, to be comfortable in national ungodliness and sin. Lord, we know that there is no greater recipe for instability than this.

So, we know that in this time of instability, this time in which tectonic plates are sliding around and causing earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis, that the governmental and spiritual foundations are also being shaken and destroyed. Here is the question: Psalm 11: 3, “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” And Psalm 11 gives us the answer: Be righteous!!!! And He will test us, but uphold us!

Okay, how do we do that? The answer is two-fold: (1) the Blood of Jesus leading to salvation (John 3:16) (Only through Jesus, by God’s Grace, can we receive the forgiveness of God that enables us to be righteous.); and (2) because we, the righteous, have His promises, God’s promises, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit – all forms of adultery, covetousness and pride – and perfect holiness in the fear of God (2 Corinthians 7:1). (We need to live in righteousness being restored by God’s Grace, and our hearts striving for purity and holiness; Hebrews 12:23, “. . . the spirits of righteous men made perfect.”)

I look around at Democrats, Republicans, Tea Partiers, Progressives, and all the subdivisions of American politics and I know that I can change nothing on a national level. So, I am not here to talk about politics, but about how we live and cope with the politics of our times.

I am reminded of Alexis de Tocqueville, who wrote, in about 1830, that America was great because it was good, that America was good because it was Christian. He also said that the American Experiment, great as it was, would probably last only a couple of hundred years or so, that it would last only as long as it took for the politicians to figure out that they could get votes by promising payment of taxpayer dollars, public money, to different interest groups and individuals. So, now we have reached a place where in the year since he took our office, our President has not been photographed setting foot in a church, not even on National Prayer Day last year. He had to have his arm twisted and to be talked into allowing a Nativity scene in the White House at “Holiday” or what we call “Christmas”, despite that the White House was full of displays of pagan religions at that time. That is our leadership. Can God use him for God’s purposes? Of course God can use Mr. Obama. God even used Pharaoh, as you remember. We have also, quite obviously reached the place where politicians, from the White House on down, use public money to buy political support in the form of votes and private campaign contributions.

Lord, we and our country are in mess today, and we cry out for your mercy. Please, uphold us, Your righteous all over the world, and please uphold this country, America, in spite of itself, that you given to Your righteous who live here.

We don’t know where our country, our nation, is going, but it doesn’t look good from here. We don’t know the outcome of the political promises of public money leading up to the votes on Mr. Obama’s health care plan today, and we don’t know the outcome of giving away – just printing paper – all this money to businesses that are said to be too big to fail (which started while George W. Bush was President), while small businesses that normally supply about 90% of the jobs in America have been left floundering. We don’t know the outcome of the Government taking control of our bodies through healthcare decision-making, such as cutting Medicare for seniors by half a trillion dollars, and taking even more control over our income (remember 50% of Americans pay no income tax; 40% of Americans pay 10% of the income tax, and 10% of Americans pay 90% of the income tax) and therefore over our labor (again, in effect, over our bodies).

What has really gotten lost in the shuffle of American politics, government and economics, is this: Lord, You are Creator. Not only did you create the earth and the heavens and life itself, but in creating all that, in creating life, you gave people certain inalienable – non-transferable – rights. Lord, forgive our nation, please, forgive America, our nation, that our government, following in the footsteps of Rome, and Russia and China and North Korea, and many other nations, proclaims that rights come from the government, not from You, God, and that therefore our nation, America, has denied You before men; has dishonored and rejected You, the Creator; has corporately, like is said of individuals in 2 Tim. 3:2-5, become a lover of itself, of Big Government, a lover of money (because it buys power), a boaster (of what it can do for us that God has not or cannot do), proud, a blasphemer of the Holy Spirit, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, a slanderer of the Truth, with no self-control, brutal, a despiser of Christian goodness, a traitor to You, and the foundations You had established, haughty, a lover of pleasure rather than of You — Yes, our government claiming its own form of godliness, as the source of rights that You gave. But Lord, we know that that our government denies the power of Your Godliness. Still, Lord, we cry out for Your mercy and forgiveness of this nation and its people.

But Lord we know that this American government – just like Rome did to the Jews in Israel and to much of the rest of the then-known world – can actually take control over our bodies and our labor and our money and resources. But Lord we know that the government can only take control of our minds and hearts if we let them do it, and if we do, Lord, then we know we are fully given over to sin, that our double-mindedness will give way to single-minded secularism and sin. And we pray and stand against this slavery of heart and mind with all that we are and have in You.

So, Lord we, Your righteous through the Blood of Christ, know that we are being tested, and so we repent on behalf of America today, we humble ourselves and seek your face, and we, at least, turn from our personal wicked ways and strive to be the fullness of the stature of Christ, living in us, and pray that our fellow Americans and our government will do so, and that you will forgive us, individually and nationally, and heal us and our land.

Lord, we understand that America has been lost to the enemy one family, one heart, one soul, at a time, and it can be rescued only in the same way, one family, one heart, one soul, at a time. So, meanwhile, we ask you to withhold Your wrath promised in Psalm 2, withhold it from America. And we ask you to so fill our hearts, even in these circumstances, with the excitement, the hope, the joy, and the peace, of knowing You, of receiving Your Grace, of living in and with the power of the Holy Spirit, that we continue to spread the Gospel of the Good News of Jesus, preaching it in season and out of season, all across this land, like Jesus did (Luke 8), going to “every city and village” to share Your Truth, Jesus. Lord, please forgive us that we haven’t done it yet, but show us how to do it. Show us, Lord, how to be Your hands and feet and mouths, but most especially how to have the mind and heart of Christ, without double-mindedness and instability, as we stand against the forces of darkness in the earth and its nations, including our own.

God, please show us what all we are to do, other than to go on just eating, and drinking, and marrying and giving in marriage (like before the Flood). And, then, Father God, when we have done all we can do, we pray for your strength that we can, and will, and do, stand in faith, still crying out to You. It is You who laughs at the raging conspiracies against you by the nations of the earth, You who hold them in derision, You who shall speak to them in Your wrath, You who shall break them with Your rod of iron, You who shall dash them to pieces like a potter’s vessel. It is You Who says, Haggai 2: 6-9, “For thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘Once more (it is a little while) I will shake heaven and earth, the sea and the dry land; and I will shake all nations and they shall come to the Desire of All Nations, and I will fill this temple with glory,’ says the Lord of hosts. (And by the way) The silver is Mine, and the gold is Mine, says the Lord of hosts.”

So, God, today, we seek Your instruction, Your wisdom, Your prophecy, Your blessings, as we seek to trust You and to serve You with fear, even as we rejoice with trembling, knowing that the shaking of all nations and of the desires of all the nations, is coming in Your divine power and in Your divine timing and in Your divine perfection.

This is our Prayer today, in Jesus’ Name, a prayer for our nation and for us, a part of Your chosen people. Amen.