Prayer

On behalf of the entire National Day of Prayer (NDP) Task Force, let me wish you a happy New Year! It is hard to believe that it is already 2012. Isn’t it amazing that another year is in the history books and you contributed to the greatest story of all? That’s right – every action we make has an outcome that impacts future generations. Of course, I’m not referring to my story or your story, but rather HIS story, and we are blessed that God has invited us to be a part of it! “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11). I am especially blessed to know that God directs our path and every day is purposeful and strategic. He takes our failures and our successes, our aspirations and our challenges, and each become building materials in the Architect’s hands: “A man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps” (Proverbs 16:9).

It has certainly been a year of trials and tribulations in America, and around the world. The economic and spiritual decay of our nation has impacted every home and can make it tempting to think that we’ve reached a point of no return. Yet, with this New Year, let us remember that our hope is in Almighty God, and through Him we stand boldly on the front lines expecting victory and not defeat. The NDP theme for this year is One Nation Under God and it’s based on Psalm 33:12 which reminds us that “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.” This is a powerful statement – a beacon to this lost and wavering society that we must not forget the God of our fathers. President Abraham Lincoln said it best, “I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right. But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should be on the Lord’s side.”

As we begin 2012, please take a moment and join me in the following prayer asking our Heavenly Father to prepare us for the work that lies ahead…

Almighty God,

We are grateful beyond expression for Your love. Accept our thanks for your blessings that have been poured out upon us this day and our Christian faith that binds us. Make us strong to do Your work, willing to heed and hear Your will, and write on our hearts these words: “One Nation, Under God.”

For we are given power not to advance our own purposes, nor to make a great show in the world, nor a name. There is but one just use of that which you have given us, and it is to advance your will. Help us to remember that it is not our will, but thy will be done.

The Lord our God be with us, as He was with our fathers; may He not leave us or forsake us; so that He may incline our hearts to Him, to walk in all His ways… that all peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God; there is no other.

Heavenly Father, as your servants we will go where You lead for we dare not build the house without your blessing. You are the solid rock upon which we stand, our foundation. Direct our paths, oh Lord, and make clear the way in which we should journey. Help us, Father, to unite your people and lead them in life-changing prayer. Give us courage and passion and may they be contagious. By Your grace, please give us the words to speak and the tools to equip. Prepare us for what You are about to do and refine our hearts that we may be Your instruments. We depend on You for all things and thank You for all You have provided.

In the name of Jesus, I pray,

Amen

May God bless you in this New Year… and may America remain One Nation Under God.

John Bornschein

Vice Chairman

On October 27, 1949, a Wheaton College student named Jim Elliot wrote in his journal:

I have just now prayed for God’s New Revelation – this generation’s real laying hold of the Old Revelation. The old is become so undefined, so “accepted”, so followed in blindness, that when the truth of it is brought to light, it shall be as a new revelation. I have prayed for new men, fiery, reckless men, possessed of uncontrollably youthful passion – these lit by the Spirit of God. I have prayed for new words, explosive, direct, simple words. I have prayed for new miracles.

On the next day he added a sentence that would become famous after his martyrdom in Ecuador in 1956: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”

May the inspired, eternal truth of that statement resonate within your heart.

Praise God for His compassionate mercies; repent of any ways in which you’ve been stuck in old ruts; ask for new miracles from God; to gain what you cannot lose, yield to Him by giving up something you can’t keep anyway.

Read this Puritan model of repentant, yielding prayer:

Lord, high and holy, meek and lowly,

Thou hast brought me to the valley of vision,

where I live in the depths but see thee in the heights;

hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold thy glory.

Let me learn by paradox

that the way down is the way up

that to be low is to be high,

that the broken heart is the healed heart,

that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit,

that the repenting soul is the victorious soul,

that to have nothing is to possess all.

that to bear the cross is to wear the crown,

that to give is to receive,

that the valley is the place of vision.

These simple truths form the heart of godly wisdom. Pray that they will take root in your heart today.

Praise God for being “high and holy, meek and lowly”; repent of any sins of discouragement or dispair; ask for the riches of His joy; yield to Him by throwing off gloom and taking on a rejoicing spirit.

Does God answer the prayers of a Christian who deliberately sins? When asked that question, theologian R.C. Sproul responded this way:

When we refer to Christians who deliberately sin, we’re talking about every Christian who ever lived, and we’re talking about something that Christians do every day of their lives. We can talk about sins that are committed in ignorance and so on, but I hope we recognize that the vast majority of the sins we commit are done deliberately. We sin because we want to, because we choose to.

If God refused to hear the prayers of Christians who deliberately sinned against him and then repented, God would not be listening to very many prayers. But we have the promise of God: If we truly repent, He will forgive us.

Praise God for knowing everything about you; repent by acknowledging how often you want to sin and choose to sin; ask Him to help you better understand the ways you deceive yourself about your sin; yield to Him by claiming and enjoying His forgiveness.

- Shirley Dobson

In John 15:5, Jesus said, “Apart from me you can do nothing.” When he was a young man, John Wesley wrote to his mother:

My desire is to know and feel that I am nothing, that I have nothing, and that I can do nothing. For whenever I am empty of myself, then know I of a surety that neither friends nor foes, nor any creature, can hinder me from being “filled with all the fullness of God.”

The nothingness Wesley talks about may be the most elusive of all attributes. It defies the very essence of self on which so many of us base our identities. Yet when we give ourselves wholly to God, He takes from our meager reserves and gives back from infinity. What a marvelous exchange!

Praise God for His fullness; repent of your own fullness of self; ask Him to fill you with His fullness; yield to Him by emptying your mind and spirit of every aspect of self.

- Shirley Dobson

In The Divine Conquest: God’s Pursuit of Man, A.W. Tozer writes:

We might well pray for God to invade and conquer us, for until He does, we remain in peril from a thousand foes…The strength of our flesh is an ever present danger to our souls. Deliverance can come to us only by the defeat of our old life. Safety and peace come only after we have been forced to our knees. God rescues us by breaking us, by shattering our strength and wiping out our resistance. Then He invades our natures with that ancient and eternal life which is from the beginning. So He conquers us and by that benign conquest saves us for Himself.

God conquers only what we yield to Him – yet when He does, and when our surrender is complete, He fills us with a new strength that we could never have known by ourselves. His conquest is our victory!

Praise God for conquering your soul; repent of any reliance on the strength of your own flesh; ask Him to shatter your self-reliance; yield to Him by casting it off.

- Shirley Dobson

Hear the words of Jesus to all who would follow Him: “I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44).

For the German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the enemy was obvious – he was imprisoned and finally murdered by the Nazis. Facing this persecution, he had these comments on Christ’s directive to love our enemies:

This is the supreme demand. Through the medium of prayer we go to our enemy, stand by his side, and plead for him to God. Jesus does not promise that when we bless our enemies and do good to them they will not despitefully use and persecute us. They certainly will. But not even that can hurt or overcome us, so long as we pray for them.

God does amazing works through prayers that seek to extend His grace to others. Truly, God’s grace knows no bounds!

Praise God for loving us even when we were His enemies; repent of any bitterness you’ve held toward others; ask for God’s blessings on your enemies; yield to Him by seeking to do good to these people.

In The Practice of Godliness, Jerry Bridges defines godliness as both “God-centeredness, or devotion to God; and Godlikeness, or Christian character.” Both aspects will flourish through our prayers.

As we concentrate on growing in our reverence and awe for God and in our understanding of His love for us, we will find that our desire for Him will grow. As we gaze upon His beauty we will desire to seek Him even more. And as we become progressively more aware of His redeeming love, we will want to know Him in a progressively deeper way. But we can also pray that God will deepen our desire for Him.

God lovingly provides the means for us to continually expand our reverence for Him. The secret to tapping into that source, as always, is prayer.

Praise God for being infinitely glorious, and for implanting within you a deep desire to know Him; repent of the times when your desire to know Him has seemed weak; ask Him to strengthen your desire to know Him; yield to Him by reading in His Word and waiting quietly for His presence to be made known to you.

In his Confessions, Augustine addressed the entire text to God – making it, in essence, a book-length prayer. Here, Augustine prays for his partaking of God’s Word:

Yours is the day, yours the night. No moment of time passes except by your will. Grant me some part of it for my meditations on the secrets of your law. Do not close your door to those who knock: do not close the book of your law to me…O Lord, perfect your work in me. Open to me the pages of your book…Let me acknowledge as yours whatever I find in your books. Let me listen to the sound of your praises. Let me drink you in and contemplate the wonders of your law.

May each of us pray the same prayer, that God by His own grace would open each of our hearts, in a personal way, to the wonders of Himself.

Praise God for His wonderful Word; repent of any failure to listen to Him in His Word; ask for Him to open up His Word to your heart; yield to Him by spending concentrated time in His Word today.

When Jesus cursed a fig tree and it withered, He used the occasion to teach His disciples first about faith, and then about prayer.

“Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. “I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” (Mark 11:22-24)

As Andrew Murray notes in With Christ in the School of Prayer, “The power to believe a promise depends entirely, but only, on faith in the promiser. Trust in the person begets trust in his word.”

Just as our faith strengthens our prayer life, so do our prayers deepen our faith. Let us pray often, starting today, for a deeper, more powerful faith.

Praise God for His ability to move mountains; repent of any mountain of sin or distrust in your life; ask God to remove that mountain; yield to Him by doing your part to remove it.