A Serious Prayer for Serious Times.... (Sharing the prayer of a friend). As the week comes to an end, Im looking back on the news from the past few days and reflecting a bit. Some of the news was terrible; disturbing right in the very soul of things. Today, there are some bright spots and hopeful signs. Im so glad, but there is much yet to pray for. I wrote this prayer this morning -- sometimes, I write my prayers because it helps me organize and process things. I thought Id share it here -- its long, but this seems like a long prayer kind of week. If youre of like mind, I pray that these words are a blessing to you. Have a lovely weekend. ============= O God, Father, I call on you in Heaven today. Praised be your name. How I look forward to seeing your face, how I look forward to the coming of your Kingdom here on earth as it now is in Heaven. I thank you, God, that I belong to you. I thank you that as I review my blessings and my problems, the blessings are far greater than the problems, my problems are mainly petty, and even my most serious problems are nothing compared to those of others in the world today. Thank-you for my blessings, and thank-you that all of my problems are firmly under your control. God, this has been a tough week in the world. The news makes it seem like the world is just exploding in cruelty and chaos. I think of the Middle East, especially, and the state of my own country where corruption and moral chaos just seems to be everywhere...and, too, I think of what’s been happening right here in my own state over in St. Louis. Such violence and rage and anger everywhere. How glad I am to know that I can bring all of this to you and lay it all at your feet, confident that you are there. That you are in control. That none of this surprises you or dismays you. Here are my prayers today, God -- O God, mighty and strong, O Eloah...O Lord of hosts, Yahweh-Sabaoth, as I think about the persecuted and suffering people of Iraq and Syria today, my heart is heavy. Children are being slaughtered and beheaded for your name, families are being terrorized and driven to desperate flight into the wilderness and into unsafe, hostile places like Syria. They face poverty, suffering, and death every day while evil, wearing the face of a false god, roams about in the bodies of men, seeking helpless prey to devour. I pray on behalf of these powerless victims of terror today. I call on you from my little corner of the world, to show your hand steadily and with might in the midst of this situation. Thank-you God for the mighty interventions you have already made. Continue to deliver these believers, Mighty One, to safety and in your compassion deliver, too, these Yazidi families -- giving powerful witness of yourself as you do. Deliver the 300 young women they have kidnapped; spare them the horror currently planned for them by their captors. Cast down these ones bringing terror, throw down their rebellions. Destroy their gains, force them into retreat, smash their equipment, lay waste their resources, and scatter their allies from them. Leave them to stand alone and, in the face of that isolation, let them collapse in shame. Punish them severely for their murders and crimes. Let the whole world be reminded of your might. O God who sees all, O El Roi...I know you are everywhere. None of the world’s madness surprises you, and how glad I am to know that I can trust you to see it all. I humbly call on you God, provider and sustainer, O Yahweh-Jireh, to please provide safe harbor and sustenance and shelter to the suffering in the world today. I pray that you would bless people to be fed, to have a safe place to shelter from the elements, to lay down in deep restful sleep tonight. Really, God, this plea for provision is too big for me to capture with words. My heart is heavy for the displaced people of Iraq, but really as I remember all the nations where there is despair and famine and starvation and unjust imprisonment I am reminded that there are so many people needing you in this way right now, with life-saving urgency. My heart quickly overruns as I think of them and see their diverse faces and I cannot possibly carry all of their suffering to you on the wings of my weak little words. But thank-you that you know, you already know, and that if your eye is ever on the sparrow it is surely on all of these people. And thank-you that your mighty heart is full of tenderness toward them. Thank-you that the suffering of people touches you and moves you. I pray God that you will move today, that you will work miracles of provision and sustenance today, and that you will supernaturally bless with abundance those good organizations and missionaries and good samaritans who are working so hard in your name all over the world -- even in harm’s way -- in order to deliver relief to the suffering. In Iraq, in Syria, in Afghanistan, in Israel, in Gaza, in Africa, in North Korea, in Haiti. In every place. Bless them, God. O God Almighty, O El Shaddai, you have ultimate power over every nation, and over every king, and over every person. The world is full of nations overrunning with violence and chaos and upheaval of every kind -- social, political, economic. Persecution and oppression are on the rise, and free nations seem to be voluntarily loosing their grip on democracy. The world is full of fools who are called by mighty titles like King, Prime Minister, or President. Full of prideful fools who assemble publicly in groups called Parliament or Congress, or privately in elite gatherings, where together they drink up power and plot against the common people to bind them up and take away their freedom and liberty. These foolish drunkards and liars and schemers bring to the people of their nations so much chaos and suffering. And, too, the common people themselves bear some of the blame. They are all -- kings and commoners alike -- complicit, whether they know it or not, with evil. O God, I know that it may serve your purposes, which go beyond my sight, to leave these foolish leaders in place for yet a little while. But God, humbly, I ask for relief. Things are so bad for so many, in so many places, right now. Please reign these fools in. Please reign them. Please reign. O God, O Elohim, I am perpetually saddened by the extent of unbelief in the world, and by the effect that it has on humanity and indeed all Creation. You tell us in your word that the whole of Creation groans. The news today bears witness to the truth of this. Such violence, such warring and raging, such stupidities heaped upon mountains of stupidities. Such suffering and anguish. O El Shaddai, there is no worldly solution to these the problems. Not really. Please refresh me and encourage me, as I lift up my eyes from the headlines today, and look to you. Help me, and other believers like me, to look forward with hope, to the time when Peace returns and takes up reign. You are the Creator, and only you can answer the groaning of Creation. You are Light, only you can dispel the darkness. You are Life; only you can overcome death and remove it from the world. One day, Lord. One day. On that day there will be no more sorrow, no more fear, no more oppression and no more oppressors. No more of this death and suffering. I pray that you will encourage discouraged believers all over the world today; remind them of this truth. Remind them that you are indeed God Almighty, remind them that they are even now a part of your kingdom, and that while the earth may shake with violence and the march of godless armies you are -- and will remain -- unshaken on your throne. You are coming, El-Gibhor...El-Elyon. Justice is coming, peace is coming. O God, healer of both body and soul, O Yahweh-Rapha, I pray for your healing to be poured out in the world today. First, I pray for those who are sick in body. In this, I think personally of friends and family. I know you are in the midst of all of those situations, and I thank you for your steadying hand on the bodies of the infirm, the chronically ill, and the injured. I thank you for your continuing interventions that are big and obvious and for those that are small and subtle, for those that are fast and for those that will take more time. I thank-you for your strong presence around the families to bring them comfort and peace and protection and endurance as they walk alongside their loved ones through illness. May you be glorified, God, through these times of difficulty. With the news on my mind, I am also calling on you to heal _souls_ today. I especially pray for those who are in despair. Famous or not, privileged or not, they all walk through a desert of hopelessness beneath a heavy sky that seems always to be gray and yet never bring the relief of rain. Heal them, God. First, let those who need medicine be given it...let those who need life-saving intervention have it today, right now...and let those who need guidance find it, especially in wise counselors who would point them to you. But, as much as some need medicine to heal their minds, there is also an illness of the soul that must be addressed. I pray that you would heal them there, too. I pray specifically that you would heal their eyes so they can see reality and their circumstances properly...heal their ears so they can hear your voice of hope and encouragement...heal their mouths so that their lips will stop shouting and babbling and raging and getting in the way of their ears...heal their hearts so that their past or present pains do not harden them against the only One who can really take it all away...heal their minds so that their inner compass will stop spinning and spinning and spinning and they can finally find their way out of the desert to you. In this plea, I call on your mercy and compassion. I know that your Light should be obvious to those who are in the darkness -- a candle lit in a dark room should be obvious to anyone who enters it -- but this darkness in the world, this darkness that enters the soul, is more than a simple void. It is a darkness that is filled with evil intent; one that interacts with all who enter into it. It wraps itself around the soul...it steals sight from the eyes...it fills the ears with so many other voices that only confusion is heard...it devours the mind until truth no longer makes any sense. It binds and enslaves. Help these people God. Heal them, as only you can, God. Please. In this prayer for healing of souls, I include -- even though it’s hard -- the ones who are now rampaging and laying waste and bringing suffering to the innocent. From your word, I know a little about the place you have prepared for those who pass into death without you -- enough to know that even these people need others to pray for them. I set aside my own outraged reaction to these people and, in faith, I obey your command to pray for them. I pray for the terrorists, for the oppressors, for the fools who wield power with so much evil intent. Heal them also, God, so that they might find you...so that they might be convicted of their sins and repent of the sorrow and affliction they have brought...and ultimately, so that they might be delivered from an eternity of torment in Hell. Thank-you God, Yahweh-Shalom, that you are the god of of all our peace and that I can lay today’s turmoil-filled newspaper at your feet. Thank-you that I can call on your name in this way, confident that you hear, that you see, and that you care. Thank-you God, Yahweh-Rohi, that I am not a lost sheep wandering alone and without hope because you are my Shepherd. I belong to you, Yahweh-Nissi, and under your banner I can be confident of your protection from the darkness filling the news today. Thank-you God. Thank-you. In Jesus Name -- Thanks Terry
Posted on: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 18:05:12 +0000
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