A Call to Prayer

E. M. Bounds once said, “What the Church needs today is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost can use--men of prayer, men mighty in prayer.” (Power Through Prayer, (Baker Book House), p. 3)
Most of us would agree that America needs a spiritual awakening. We lament the suppression of religious freedom, but if the truth were known it may be that we have had these rights and privileges ripped from our culture because God’s own people have fallen asleep at the wheel. We often lament that as a nation “we have forgotten God.” But what about “we as His people?” Have we not neglected our privilege to commune with Him? Have we not abandoned His throne room as the court of our petitions? Could it be that we have failed in impacting the world with the Gospel because we “could not watch for one hour”?
God always moves when His people pray. Israel was delivered from bondage because they cried out to the Lord for deliverance. The Church was born in a prayer meeting and experienced dramatic growth as a result. This nation has had two Great Awakenings that came as a direct result of God’s people joining forces and crashing the gates of heaven to pursue the blessing and favor of God. We are at a crossroads as a nation. We need another awakening, another revival. And it must begin with God’s people. It must begin with us on our faces before God in prayer.
Prayer is to the Christian what breathing is to human beings. It is an absolute necessity, for without prayer the believer cannot live. As a human being you don’t have to think about breathing; it is an involuntary reaction to the atmospheric pressure that surrounds us, exerting pressure on our lungs and forcing us to breathe. That’s why it’s harder for you to hold your breath than it is to breathe. Similarly, for the believer, prayer is the result of the spiritual atmosphere where the presence and grace of God exerts pressure, or influence, on your life. Prayer is the normal response to that spiritual pressure from above and within us. Every believer, having entered into the divine atmosphere, breathes the air of prayer. That’s the only way we can survive in the darkness of the world that surrounds us.
The purpose of this post is not to convince you of the need to pray. Every genuine believer recognizes his inability to function without prayer, and if you don’t recognize the necessity of prayer in your daily life perhaps it says more about your spiritual condition than you wish to admit. We all know that the exercising of our spiritual muscles through prayer is to be not only a daily practice, but a moment-to-moment reality. Yes, Jesus often withdrew to a quiet place to pray. But prayer was the spiritual air that our Lord breathed every moment of every day as He enjoyed uninterrupted and unending communion with His Father.
If we could get back to that constant awareness of the presence of God, perhaps our nation would once again receive God’s favor. Once we learn to commune with our Father continually we will be assured that His blessing is upon us and we will possess

A STEADFAST HOPE

We've Been Robbed

Worship was a glorious experience in Israel during the time of King Solomon. He was, undoubtedly, Israel’s richest king and one of the more glorious signs of his transcendent wealth were the two hundred large shields of hammered gold, each weighing about seven-and-a-half pounds. He also had three hundred small shields of hammered gold, each weighing about four pounds. The value of Solomon’s gold shields would amount to over $43 million. We find out later, in 1 Kings 14, that these shields were used for the express purpose of lining the way for King Solomon to go to the Temple of God.
Yet, as wise as Solomon was, according to 1 Kings 11:3-4 he was deceived by the devil when he married foreign women and was not fully devoted to the Lord. The kingdom began to crumble, eventually torn apart with ten tribes of Israel following Solomon's enemy Jeroboam, son of Nebat, in a rebellion against the king, while two tribes remained with Solomon's line, following Rehoboam who succeeded his father.
These gold shields were used to line the pathway of the king on his way to worship. In I Kings 14:25-28 we read, “In the fifth year of King Rehoboam, Shishak king of Egypt attacked Jerusalem. He carried off the treasures of the temple of the LORD and the treasures of the royal palace. He took everything, including all the gold shields Solomon had made. So King Rehoboam made bronze shields to replace them and assigned these to the commanders of the guard on duty at the entrance to the royal palace. Whenever the king went to the LORD's temple, the guards bore the shields, and afterward they returned them to the guardroom.”
We all recognize the absurdity of trying to replace gold with bronze. Cheap imitations are poor substitutes. Yet in our country there has been a gradual theft taking place. Those who have risen to power and those with an agenda completely different than the Founding Fathers have progressively robbed us of our history. They have taken the truth and eliminated it from our textbooks in public schools so children do not learn the fundamental truths that founded our nation.
For example: how many school children today know that the First Charter of Virginia explicitly states that the reason the colonist came to this continent was to fulfill a mission "in propagating of Christian Religion to such People, as yet live in Darkness and miserable Ignorance of the true Knowledge and Worship of God, and may in time bring the Infidels and Savages, living in those parts, to human Civility, and to a settled and quiet Government.” Better yet, how many school children have even read the First Charter of Virginia?
The worst form of revisionist history is omission. As we rediscover the truth about our nation and the Founding Fathers we will uncover the truth that this was a Christian nation founded upon Scripture. If believers will dig deeply and spread the truth about this great nation we may yet be able to pass on to future generations

A STEADFAST HOPE