Simple Truths: A Time for Prayer

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a time

for

prayer prayers to strengthen, protect and offer hope in all things

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Copyright © 2010-2011 by SimpleTruths Published by Simple Truths, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc. P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-­4410 (630) 961-­3900 Fax: (630) 961-­2168 www.sourcebooks.com All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means—except for brief quotations in printed reviews—without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Simple Truths is a registered trademark.

All Scriptures are taken from the HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®.

Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

Literary development, design, & production: Koechel Peterson & Assoc., Inc., Mpls., MN Printed and bound in China.

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I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers,

intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone—

for kings and all those in authority, that we may live

peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.

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contents

Foreword by Franklin Graham.....................................8 2010 Prayer for the Nation............................................. 11 Introduction by Shirley Dobson ................................14 Prayer for the Nation by Dr. Luis Palau........................ 16 For Such a Time as This................................................... 17 A Time for Prayer.............................................................. 22 What Is Prayer?................................................................. 30 Why We Pray...................................................................... 35 Prayer Begins with “Our Father”.................................. 38 Prayer Begins with a Clean Heart................................. 40 Prayer Begins with a Purpose......................................... 42 Prayer Begins with the Word of God............................ 44 Prayer Begins with the Holy Spirit............................... 46 Prayer Begins with Thanksgiving and Praise............. 48 Prayer Begins with Worship........................................... 50 Prayer Begins with the Kingdom of God..................... 52 Taking Back Our Communities..................................54 Standing by Faith.........................................................56 Prayer for the Nation by Billy Graham......................... 59 Prayer for Our Government........................................60 Prayer for the Nation by Dr. Lloyd Ogilvie.................... 63 Prayer for Our Military...............................................64 Prayer for the Nation by Dr. Barry Black...................... 65

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Prayer for Our Media..................................................66 Prayer for the Nation by Max Lucado........................... 67 Prayer for Our Businesses...........................................68 Prayer for the Nation by Dr. Ravi Zacharias................. 69 Prayer for Our Education System..............................70 Prayer for the Nation by Beth Moore............................. 71 Prayer for Our Churches............................................72 Prayer for the Nation by Dr. Charles R. Swindoll......... 73 Prayer for Our Families..............................................74 Prayer for the Nation by Dr. Henry Blackaby............... 75 What to Pray For 30-Day Prayer Guide.............................................76 About the Authors.....................................................108 National Day of Prayer Task Force..........................110

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O

One Nation Under God One N ation U nde r God

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I foreword

franklin graham

believe our nation is in trouble today, probably more than I’ve seen in my lifetime.

We are contending with issues that are causing the very foundation of our country to crumble. Our moral and spiritual roots are eroding, the economy is hurting, family life is disintegrating, and political forces are at unprecedented odds. There seem to be very few leaders who will take a stand for God and for His Word.

It can be tempting to believe that America has reached a point of no return. While these factors cause despair, we are reminded in Scripture that with God, nothing is impossible. No problem is too great for Him. Seasons of distress and uncertainty and hardship call for faithful, fervent prayer by God’s people and remind us of our responsibility to humble ourselves before Almighty God. We cannot expect healing to come to our nation apart from obedience to God through His Holy Word.

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God longs for His people to humble themselves and to seek forgiveness and pray for guidance. God’s Word says, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord” (Psalm 33:12). The Bible commands that we repent of our sins and turn to Almighty God. And because we are confident that we serve a God of mercy and compassion, we know that He stands ready to respond to our cries out of the abundance of His divine wisdom.

It is a crucial time for us to individually and collectively seek God’s divine intervention for the challenges facing us. We need to pray not only for our nation, but we need to pray for our leaders, for all those who govern us, that they will turn to God with humble hearts and follow Him. Our military leaders need our prayers as we have dedicated men and women serving on battlefields and sacrificing their blood to protect our nation and many innocent people around the world. God is faithful to bless those who turn to Him. Pray that as a nation we would return to God. As we call on God, let us do so by genuine faith, believing that He hears our prayers. God can heal this great land, for which our forefathers fought and died. We need a spiritual renewal, we need a revival in America, and we need each and everyone to pray.

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2010 Prayer for the Nation Franklin Graham

President & CEO, Samaritan’s Purse & the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association

Lord,

we are thankful for the abundant blessings You have bestowed

on America. Our forefathers looked to You as Protector, Provider, and the Promise of hope. But we have wandered far from that firm foundation.

May we repent for turning our backs on Your faithfulness.

We pray that this great nation will be restored by Your forgiveness.

From bondage, You grant freedom.

Through Your own sacrifice, You offer salvation.

From the state of despair, You offer peace.

From the bounties of Heaven, You have blessed—not because of our goodness—but by Your grace.

You have given us freedom to worship You in spirit and in truth as Your holy Word instructs. May our lives honor You in word and deed. May our nation acknowledge that all good things come from the Father above.

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President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed that our nation should set apart a day for national prayer to confess our sins and transgressions in sorrow, “yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon…announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.

“We have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of our own hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own…we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God who made us! It behooves us then…to confess our national sins and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”

Help us to pray earnestly for our president and leaders who govern, that they will humble themselves and seek Your guidance so that every­ thing we do will shine the light of Your glory in a darkened world.

May our prayers as a people and a nation be heard and blessed for such a time as this. We make this plea in faith, believing in the mighty name of Jesus our Lord. Amen. d

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I

Shirley Dobson

God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. psal m 4 6 : 1

n today’s tumultuous times, we all have moments where we are afraid, anxious, and worried. But there’s an antidote for this anxious age. It connects us to the greatest source of peace, hope, and security that we could ever imagine. The cure is the remarkable gift from our loving and merciful God. It’s called prayer.

Though many may call the twenty-first century the Age of Anxiety, our current troubles are not new. Mankind’s future has always been uncertain.

Since the days of Noah and his family, Moses and the nation of Israel, the persecuted early Church, the Pilgrims, and America’s founding fathers, the answer for people facing adversity has always been the same: Almighty God.

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Simply put, there is no security apart from Him. When problems threaten to engulf us, we must do what believers have always done—turn to the Lord for encouragement and solace. We never need to face the fury of life’s storms on our own. He keeps His promise: “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5). He stands just to the side, ever watchful, waiting to embrace us the moment we ask His presence.

His words to Jeremiah apply to us all: “Call to me and I will answer you” (Jeremiah 33:3).

Prayer is our pathway not only to divine protection, but also to a personal, intimate relationship with God. The Lord desires a personal, twoway conversation with me and with you. You are His child. He wants you to seek Him, to love Him, and to spend time daily with Him. When you do, He hears and responds (Matthew 6:6). Your prayers never go unanswered. Sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes it is no, and sometimes it is wait. But our heavenly Father is there even in the most troubling of circumstances.

Are you ready to renew or increase your commitment to prayer? Do you want contentment in your heart and peace in your world? If your answer is yes—or even maybe—keep reading and discover God’s remarkable gift called prayer. It will change your life, the lives around you, and even the course of history.

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prayer for the NatioN |

Dr. Luis Palau

Our Father and our God,

We thank You for the many blessings You have poured out on America, and we praise You for Your mercy.

You have said: “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people.� We confess, O Lord, our national and personal sins. We repent and ask forgiveness for all actions that dishonor You. O God, bless our president and other leaders. Provide them with wisdom and move them to honor You. Deliver this great nation from all our enemies as we recommit ourselves to trust, serve, and obey Your commands.

We pray in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, Amen. d

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For Such a Time as This Go, gather together all the Jews who are in Susa, and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day.

I and my maids will fast as you do. When this is done, I will go to the king, even though it is against the law.

And if I perish, I perish.

Es th er 4 : 1 6

A

of the Persian Empire, among the Jewish families who did not return to Jerusalem after being taken into captivity by the Babylonians was a man named Mordecai and his orphan cousin, Esther. The story of her rise from total obscurity to become the queen of the world’s most powerful monarch of that time, King Xerxes, illustrates how God uses events and people as instruments to fulfill His plans in the world. t the height of the glory

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Xerxes elevated his most trusted adviser, Haman, who ordered everyone to kneel before him whenever in his company. When Mordecai repeatedly refused to kneel, the enraged and egotistical Haman discovered that Mordecai was Jewish. In a villainous moment, perhaps rivaled in history only by the Holocaust, Haman convinced Xerxes to sign a law to have all the Jews exterminated and to seize their property.

Hearing of the new law, Mordecai pleaded with Esther, urging her to go to the king and beg for mercy and plead for her people.

“And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14). After calling upon the Jews in the capital city to fast and pray, Esther risked her own life, exposed Haman’s plot and true character, and saved the entire nation. Even today, Jews celebrate their deliverance through the Feast of Purim.

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Similarly, as American troops stormed the beaches of Normandy, President Franklin Roosevelt called for our nation to unite in prayer. He also offered a prayer to prepare each citizen for the road ahead. “Let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage unto our sons wheresoever they may be. And, O Lord, give us faith. Give us faith in Thee.” The victory that followed on June 6, 1944, also known as D-day, began the march to Berlin. Eighteen months later, WWII was over, and one of the world’s greatest evils had been defeated. The prayers of a nation had been a powerful force.

Prayer has always been used in this country for guidance, protection, and strength, even before we were a nation or a handful of colonies. The Pilgrims at Plymouth relied on prayer during their first and darkest winter. Our founding fathers also called for prayer during the Constitutional Congress. In their eyes, our recently created nation and freedoms were a direct gift from God. And being a gift from God, there was only one way to ensure protection— through prayer.

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We must ask the Lord to bless our leaders

with wisdom and protection,

and that we will have the fortitude

to overcome the challenges at hand.

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President Abraham Lincoln knew this well. It was his belief that, “It is the duty of nations as well as men, to owe their dependence upon the overruling power of God.” When it came to the fate of the nation, he practiced what he preached. Before the battle of Gettysburg, he turned to God in prayer. “I went to my room one day, and I locked the door and got down on my knees before Almighty God and prayed to Him mightily for victory at Gettysburg.” Won by the Union, Gettysburg was one of the turning points in the war that ended slavery and kept the states united.

Today, the need for prayer is as great as ever. Our nation again faces battlefields, along with an epidemic of broken homes, violence, sexual immorality, and social strife. As the heroes of our nation did in the past, we must again bow our heads in prayer. We must ask the Lord to bless our leaders with wisdom and protection, and that we will have the fortitude to overcome the challenges at hand. If Esther, Mordecai, Roosevelt, the Pilgrims, and Lincoln never underestimated the power of prayer, neither should we.

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A Time to Pray ‌if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

2 Chronicles 7:14

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Second

Chronicles 7:14 contains a remarkable promise from the Almighty God that speaks of forgiveness and healing for nations and for believers. But as awesome a prophetic promise as it is for America, many believers forget that it is a conditional promise. When believers meet His conditions, God will honor His promise.

As we look at this country, we see a nation that is morally bankrupt and in spiritual decline. Vulgarity, indecency, obscenities, lies, and corruption are today’s norm. Economic struggles, terrorist threats, sexual immorality, and the breakdown of families are just a few problems our country faces. We are a fractured people and nation, and we need healing through God’s divine intervention.

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If My People, Who Are Called by My Name

The solutions

to the nation’s problems lie not with politicians, reformers, educators, or business leaders, but with God’s people. Today, God’s people are those who worship Him, who accept and follow the Lord Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior—men and women who are His, not just in name, but in every aspect of their lives. In the darkest of situations, the Church can call out to God, and He will hear. This promise has not expired, but remains the key that makes it possible for all His people to take full responsibility for our condition and turn back the spiritual decline.

In fact, God has given the Church four conditions to seeing His healing come to our nation and our lives, and they are all centered in changes that take place in our hearts.

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Will Humble Themselves

Humility means

“to bend the knee, to bow down, to be in subjection to.” Humility is when we truly understand how poor and needy we are before God. Those who are humble know what it means to grieve over their sins and the sins of others. Simply put, humility means we are utterly dependent on God, which is the opposite of pride. James 4:6 tells us that “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

Being humble is a difficult position, because we all tend to depend on any number of other factors than God only, whether it is our education, our career, our accomplishments and works, or our spiritual résumé. Both individually and as a Church there is a need to set aside our pride and humble ourselves. We must be willing to get on our faces before God, come to the cross of Christ with nothing but ourselves, and cry out to Him for a fresh outpouring of His Holy Spirit on our lives and out to the world.

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And Pray

To pray means

to “ask� when you want God to do something for you and for others. The sovereign God has ordained prayer as the tool to get His work done, and He works in accord with the praying of His people and His own sovereign will. Prayer not only prepares us to do His work, but it is the work that must be done before any other work for the Lord is done. However, we in the Church tend to do almost anything but pray and often treat prayer as though it is a last resort rather than the first thing we should do. We as individuals and the Church must pray. All the major revivals have come because of believers who were serious enough to cry out to God in prayer.

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And Seek My Face

God hassaid,

“You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart� (Jeremiah 29:13). God is personal, and we must deal with Him as a person. Too often, we seek the hand of God, which represents His works, instead of the face of God, which represents His nature and who He really is. When we seek His face, we see His holiness and love, which exposes our sin and depravity and selfishness. When we seek His face, we come with adoration and praise and worship, and we are changed and want to love Him more dearly and walk with Him more intimately. When we seek His face, we begin to hear His voice and discover His love and mercy that pardon us of all of our sins.

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And Turn From Their Wicked Ways

The psalmist said,

“If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened” (Psalm 66:18). If we want to experience the presence of God that changes our lives and the world, we need to get rid of anything that pushes Christ from the center of our lives. It might be our complacency, apathy, and indifference to what God is concerned about—the poor, the brokenhearted, the exploited, or the unemployed. God hates sin and all forms of wickedness, whether it is abortion, sexual sins, lying, cheating, drunkenness, drug abuse, hatred, jealousy, envy, and fits of rage. And He is not pleased with a Church that refuses to stand out against the many great evils of our day—believers who never fight for what is right, who compromise in an attempt not to offend, who carry no cross and stand for nothing.

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Then Will I Hear From Heaven and Will Forgive Their Sin and Will Heal Their Land

From the place

of authority, heaven itself, God will “hear,” which means “to listen to a point where you are moved to action.” In other words, He has promised to respond to their prayers.

Evangelist Dwight L. Moody said that when God’s people fulfill His conditions, He “brings heaven within speaking distance.”

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