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A Prayer for America

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This is not original, and it is a bit lengthy, but it is worth the extra time to read. I think what this nation needs more than any Republican or Democrat answers is revival and spiritual awakening in the hearts of the people of God first and foremost, followed by many of the lost in our land coming to faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior. Let your revival fall in our time and in our land, and let it begin in me.

“Let’s Pray for America:

Father, we plead the blood of Jesus over our nation, and call on the power and the presence of God to sever all cords that would cause principalities, powers, rulers of darkness of this world, and spiritual wickedness in high places to control the leaders of our nation in local, federal, and executive offices in our generations. Father, give us godly leaders who will carry on the heritage of the dedication of our nation to Jesus our Lord. Father, Your Word, the Bible, said that when godly men reign, the people rejoice. It also says that the people cry out under the rule of the ungodly, deliver us from the oppression of the ungodly, and appoint us Christ centered, bible believing, righteous, godly leaders to rule.

Have mercy on our nation, forgive the sins of our forefathers and those of our present generation. Forgive us for every law that builds strongholds in the mindsets of the present and upcoming generations through perversion and the bloodshed of the innocent. Remove from our eyes the veils and scales of welcoming false religions and idolatry into our nation. Let all leaders who promote idolatry, sexual perversion, illegal activity be delivered and exposed immediately and be delt with. Let every under-cover agenda of the enemy which promotes, satanic networks, racist spirits, witchcraft, antichrist spirit rising in political and religious offices be exposed and be delt with.

Let every agenda set to hinder, cause compromise, and calls for persecution against those who preach the gospel of Jesus Christ be judged.

Father, we pray for the people and leaders of our nation that they might live peaceable lives in goodness and honesty (1 Tim. 2:1-2). Raise up leaders in our nation who will worship and serve You (Psalm 72:11). Raise up leaders who will help the poor and needy find deliverance (Psalm 72:12-13). We declare that there is no deliverance without Jesus. Father, we pray for revival on Capitol Hill that will cause America to sing a new song of praise to Jesus our Lord. (Psalm 96:1-3). Raise up leaders in our nation who will call the people to tremble before the Lord. Give us leaders who love your Word, listen to your Word, obey your Word, who will cause ethe families of our nation to be blessed (Gal. 3:14).

Let your glory be declared among the people of our nation and let the healing waters flow in our nation (Ezekiel 47:9). We pray for repentance that will bring healing to the land, and that every leader in this nation will submit their rule to the reign of Jesus Christ. Jesus is Lord over America and the nations. In Jesus name we pray Amen” (Fady Al-Hagal).

Resist?

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Here I am, thinking out loud again. That may get me into trouble, but I think I need to air out some of my thoughts on the whole idea of resisting for a committed follower of Jesus. These views do not reflect the views of my church or my city, yada yada yada. You know the drill.

Somehow, I think the whole mentality of resisting is similar to what people have said about Christians, especially here in America. Mostly, they’re known more for what they’re against rather than what they’re for. And that’s what strikes me about resisting.

People will say that the disciples were resisting when they were arrested and went back out and went right back to preaching in the synagogue again. I think it was more a matter of an allegiance to a higher power that overrode any civil or human authority. They didn’t have the mentality of “Well, since they tried to shut us down, we’re going to go at it twice as hard to shame them.” It was more like “Even though we submit to all human authority as commanded by God, in this matter we must obey God rather than man.”

I do think that we should never submit to anything that violates our faith or commands us to engage in sin. I do think we still proclaim that Christ is Lord even when the higher powers want us to bow the knee to Caesar (or to the modern equivalent).

It’s not a prideful resisting but a humble acknowledgment that our allegiance is to God rather than man. We’re not being contrarian. We simply believe that when it comes to a choice between man-made laws and the laws of God, God’s law wins every time.

I also think that we’re still commanded to love our enemies and pray for those in authority over us, whether we like them or agree with them or not. I prayed for Biden and now I pray for Trump that both would seek God’s wisdom in governing this nation of ours.

Jesus’ mission wasn’t primarily to oppose Rome or the religious leaders of the day. His main goal was obedience to the Father rather than civil disobedience. I’m sure to the Pharisees and Scribes, what he did looked like breaking their laws just to break them, but in reality, Jesus never once broke one of the laws that God set in place through the Torah.

I believe that as the end times draw nearer, our allegiance to God will come more and more into conflict with the laws of the state. Then we will have to choose to follow God or follow man. We may have to choose between persecution up to and including death or denying our faith to save our own skin. It will look like resisting. Maybe that’s what it really is. But ultimately, it will still be obedience to the highest authority and the ultimate allegiance to the only true King.

Obedience and Trust

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Here are some words from George MacDonald on the importance of obedience and trust:

“Trust and obedience is the greatest thing that is required of any of us. The care that is filling your mind at this moment, or but waiting until you lay the book aside, to consume you, that need, which is no real need, is a demon sucking at the spring of your life. Do you object, saying, ‘But no, you do not understand. The thing I am worrying about is a reasonable anxiety, an unavoidable care.’ ?

‘Does it involve something you have to do at this very moment?’, I ask.

‘Well, no.’

‘Then you are allowing it to usurp the place of something that is required of you at this moment. The greatest thing that can ever be required of any man or woman.’

‘And what is that?’

‘To trust in the living God.’

‘What if God does not want me to have what I need at this moment?’

‘If He does not want you to have something you value, it is to give you instead something He values.’

‘And if I do not want what He has to give me?’

‘If you are not willing that God should have His way with you, then in the name of God, BE MISERABLE, until your misery drives you to the arms of the Father.’

‘Oh, but this is only about some financial concern. I do trust him with spiritual matters.’

‘Everything is an affair of the Spirit. If God has a way of dealing with you in your life, it is the only way. Everything little thing in which you would have your own way has a mission for your redemption. He will treat you as a willful child until you take your Father’s way for your own.'”

There is no area of your life that does not concern God or is outside of His purview. Every part of your story is sacred because God is using that small part to showcase His glory in a way that only you can see. What everyone else can see is your faithfulness to trust God when it doesn’t make sense or goes against what you think is best.

When you choose God’s way over your way, then people see where your allegiance really lies. They see that you are God’s and that He is yours. While it is important to speak your faith, how you live it out is just as vital to a good testimony of the goodness of God.

An Unexpected Detour

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I have my homeward trek fairly down pat by now. At least you’d think I had it down after all the times I’ve made the afternoon commute.

Today, for some reason known only to God, I took I-40 East instead of I-40 West. Immediately, I knew I’d messed up.

Still, I looked for anything familiar and found the exit for Stewarts Ferry Pike and the Tennessee School for the Blind, which I pass every morning on my morning commute to work.

It was probably a bit out of the way, but I got back to where I started (almost) and made it home from there. All it took was finding something familiar.

I think all of us get lost on our spiritual journeys. We get to where nothing looks familiar and wonder how we got to the place where we find ourselves. We wonder how to get back to what we know.

I truly believe God will give familiar signposts to those who have lost the way and seek to find their way back. He will send an old friend or a familiar Scripture or a song from the past.

Many times, we find that Jesus will show us that He Himself is the way back. For those who are lost, the best way back is to return to the trust and obedience we knew before we got off-track.

I know that for those who get lost when driving, nothing is more comforting than finding that familiar landmark. Suddenly, you know where you are and you can navigate from there.

I believe that just as much as His lost children long to return to places they know, the Father longs to get them there. The Father longs to see them running down the dirt road into His arms, just as that prodigal son did all those years ago.

If there are people in your life who have lost the way, maybe you’re the signpost that will get them finally headed in the right direction again.

PS I survived day one of my Lent fast from social media. I resisted the urge to check my Facebook page several times throughout the day. So far, so good.

Long Journey Home

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“We cannot find God without God. We cannot reach God without God. We cannot satisfy God without God- which is another way of saying that all our seeking will fall short unless God starts and finishes the search. The decisive part of our seeking is not our human ascent to God, but His descent to us. Without God’s descent there is no human ascent. The secret of the quest lies not in our brilliance but in His grace” (Os Guinness, Long Journey Home).

That’s it.

It’s not that I found Jesus. As one pastor I know always puts it, it’s not Jesus who was lost. I was. Jesus found me.

It may sound like semantics to you, but I think it’s important to know the difference.

Salvation is all God. It’s not like I was smart enough to figure it out or brave enough to seek it out. If God hadn’t sought me out first, I never would have sought Him in the first place.

That’s humbling. I can take no credit whatsoever for my being saved. It is all of grace.

That’s also good news. It means that if it’s not up to human efforts or human goodness, then anyone can find it (or better yet, anyone can be found). There’s no such thing as too lost, too far gone, too out of reach for God.

That helps when you’re praying for a son or a daughter, a brother or sister, a mother or father who seems hopelessly unreachable. It helps when you have a friend who seems bent on self-destructing and won’t let you help.

There are countless stories of those whom the world had basically given up on that God saved. The best example is the Apostle Paul. Maybe the next one will be someone you love. Maybe the next one will be you.

 

It’s Summer Solstice Again

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“It must have been the summer solstice
When I first gave my heart to You
The first day of a brand new season
In a fevered passion for Your simple truth
It was the longest I’d ever felt for anything
And it gave my soul a song to sing . . . .

And with the spring comes the thaw
Melting my heart reviving all
It comes full circle and then
It’s summer solstice again

So can You throw Your arms around me and walk me home
I’ve wandered off way too far for way too long
And standing broken in this wilderness of shame
I have found my only strength is in your name
Oh, Father please can You undo what I’ve done
And get me back to square one

Back to the summer solstice

Take me back

I wanna go back” (Wayne Kirkpatrick, recorded by Susan Ashton).

Yes, it is summer solstice again. It’s officially the longest day of the year in terms of having the most daylight.

This one was hot. As in even standing in the shade, I was still sweating like the pig that knows he’s about to be bacon.

It felt like I was standing in front of an oven, only there was no aroma of anything baking, except maybe me.

Summer always makes me nostalgic for days I can never get back. It makes me miss people I will never see again in this lifetime.

I’m thinking about all those Johnson family reunions we used to have where all the cousins would make the drive down to Christiana, Tennessee and bring buckets of fried chicken (along with a multitude of casseroles and other foods) and tell stories of yesteryear. I miss those.

It’s easy to want to look back when you can’t really see what’s ahead, to long for the past when the future seems uncertain and scary.

That’s where a lot of us are right now. We’re holding on to what we know, what we can feel with our hands and see with our eyes and make sense of with our minds. We cling to the tangible, even if it’s what’s holding us back from becoming what God destined us to become.

Maybe faith is letting go of  those things and reaching out into the unknown with only the assurance that God will be there.

I love what G. K. Chesterton said: “Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.”

So here’s to hope, which is possibly the best thing going right now.

Hope is a good thing.

 

 

 

 

Just Ask

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“Don’t bargain with God. Be direct. Ask for what you need. This is not a cat-and-mouse, hide-and-seek game we’re in. If your little boy asks for a serving of fish, do you scare him with a live snake on his plate? If your little girl asks for an egg, do you trick her with a spider? As bad as you are, you wouldn’t think of such a thing—you’re at least decent to your own children. And don’t you think the Father who conceived you in love will give the Holy Spirit when you ask him?” (Luke 11:13 MSG).

I wonder how many times I’ve used prayer as a last resort.

How many times have I obsessively worried about something and tried to figure out ways of handling it myself and it never even dawned on me to pray about it?

You’d think for as long as I’ve been a believer that I’d be quicker to prayer than I am.

I’m guessing you feel the same way.

I think it points to a lack of faith. It says that I really don’t believe that God can handle my problem. Oh sure, He can deal with everyone else’s issues but for some reason in my own mind, my circumstances are different.

I look at it this way. If God can raise Jesus from the dead, He can handle pretty much anything I’m ever going to throw at Him. He’s not going to be shocked or surprised at the needs I lay before Him.

I keep up with Ann Voskamp, a fantastic writer who also happens to put some of the best posts out there on social media. She usually ends them with the hashtag #preachingthegospeltomyself. For those who are unskilled in reading hashtag-ese, that means “preaching the gospel to myself.”

A lot of what I write is me reminding myself of what I already know. Scratch that. Nearly all of what I write is me preaching to myself and stirring memories of times before when God was faithful.

All it takes is the tiniest yielding, the most hesitant agreements, and God can show up and do what He does best– amaze.

 

Summer Nights in Franklin

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“My response is to get down on my knees before the Father, this magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth. I ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit—not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in. And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you’ll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:17-19, The Message).

I love those summer nights, partly because of that song from the movie Grease and partly because that’s when the humidity becomes slightly more bearable. Plus, there’s something about the nocturnal breezes that stirs up a multitude of memories for me.

I visited all my usual Franklin places– McCreary’s Irish Pub, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, and the Frothy Monkey. I walked up and down Main Street and noted that there were three houses for sale, though one has a contract pending.

It was about being in the moment, not anxiously obsessing over an unknown future and possible scenarios that may or may not come to pass. I remembered that God’s love, while it is omnipresent, can only be experienced in the present. I can’t plumb its depths or rise to its heights if I am dwelling on the past or focused on the future. Especially not if my head is buried nonstop in my smart phone.

God knows the future, because He’s already there. It’s not like anything that happens to me is going to take Him by surprise. Jeremiah 29:11 says that God knows the plans He has for me, and that they are good plans. I can trust not only those plans but also the Planner with full confidence.

I still prefer autumn. With the way I sweat in all this humidity, I’m sure everybody around me prefers it, too.

 

Joni Mitchell and Another Wednesday Evening

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jm

It was a perfect Wednesday evening. Here in the glorious state of Tennessee, we’re in that wonderful time of spring, just before it starts to get sticky hot and humid, where the temperature is just right.

I love driving home when the weather’s like that. There’s something about temps in the low 70s and a cool spring breeze that awakens all my happy memories from childhood and makes me hopeful for the future. What is it in the springtime air that makes me feel a little less anxious and a little more assured of God’s plan for me?

Also, I had Ms. Joni Mitchell playing in the car, which always makes everything better, especially her albums like Clouds and Blue. Those are currently my top two favorites of hers.

We all need days like these when hope seems like a precious and rare commodity. We need little God-winks to remind us that God still cares and still watches and still provides.

I’ve seen too many times where God came though at just the right time to doubt, yet somehow I still do. I think somehow this time will be different than the other 99, that maybe God will be caught napping or away from His desk. Or maybe that He’s decided that I’m not worth the effort anymore.

I remember those thoughts and feelings. I know where they come from. Not from the Father but from the father of lies. I let these thoughts pass right on through without heeding them at all. I remember the promises of God that are always YES and AMEN in Jesus and then I have hope again.

I have to remind myself that every moment is grace, even the lonely moment or the anxious moment or the doubful moment. Every moment that I’m alive to see what God will do next in my life is grace.

Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.

 

Followship

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“Walking along the beach of Lake Galilee, Jesus saw two brothers: Simon (later called Peter) and Andrew. They were fishing, throwing their nets into the lake. It was their regular work. Jesus said to them, ‘Come with me. I’ll make a new kind of fisherman out of you. I’ll show you how to catch men and women instead of perch and bass.’ They didn’t ask questions, but simply dropped their nets and followed” (Matthew 4:18-20).

Today at The Church at Avenue South, Aaron Bryant spoke on Matthew 4:18-22 where Jesus told Peter and Andrew, “Come follow me and I will make you fishers of men.”

I understand what they gained by following Jesus, but I don’t think I had ever really thought about all that they gave up.

Think about it. They walked away from the only livelihood they had ever known. They even walked away from their own father who was in the same fishing boat. There is no mention of any goodbyes or see you laters. They simply dropped their nets and followed Jesus, leaving everything else behind with no questions asked.

Aaron asked the question: what would you give up that might hinder you from fully following Jesus to wherever He wanted you to go?

He talked about David and Hannah, a couple who sold every bit of their furniture and moved into some friends’ apartment in view of a calling to missions in Northern Italy. They gave up good careers, extended family, and the comforts of the American middle class lifestyle because they felt Jesus calling them to go to a place where less than .1% of the population claims to be evangelical Christians.

I’ve asked myself if I could do that. I hope so. I do love my stuff. I love my family. I love where I live. Above all, I love the familiarity and comfort of where I live.

Still, I hope that I could give it all up if Jesus asked me to. Thankfully, I’m not given strength for the what-ifs and the could-bes. I believe that if the situation arose, Jesus would give me the courage and strength to lay it all down. That’s part what it means when people say that Jesus doesn’t call the equipped but equips the called. Part of that equipping means the ability to press forward and not look back to what you’re leaving behind.

In the end, though, we really never give up anything for the cause of Christ. I remember the words of one of my heroes, Jim Elliott, who said, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”