Pray KNCSB

Only those who pray prove that they are God-dependent. Each of us who prays prove to ourselves that we are not self-sufficient. Each church that prays prove its desire not to be self-dependent.

Once upon a time, Southern Baptist churches gathered on a week night to pray and pay attention to their personal walks with God in a group setting. It seems this is less so today than it used to be. Sure the whole church was not present on the day of the week designated for the church to pray but there was a sense that the church must pray corporately. Is this true of us today? I know we are busy. I know life has become more complex. All the more reason corporate prayer is necessary. Does it seem strange to you that a fresh call for the church to gather to pray has become necessary?

Blessed is the pastor who teaches and models to his people how to pray. Prayer is taught. Jesus taught his disciples to pray. However, he did not tell them about prayer when he taught them. He actually prayed in their hearing and thus modeled (taught by example) the way to pray. Church leaders must regain that sense of caring for souls as one of the major aspects of their work.

If you are reading this prayer of the week it’s because you are interested in prayer. Perhaps you are shepherding a flock of God’s people. Perhaps you lead a small group or class. Perhaps you sit on a committee. Or …

It is not sufficient that you bathe your own personal life in prayer. The church of the New Testament gathered regularly to pray corporately. At the head of the gathering was the shepherd of the flock leading, teaching, modeling how to pray.

Prayer is the single most important thing we do. The reason for making such a statement in such a matter of fact way is because only in prayer, modeled from the Word of God, do we have the means of knowing God and knowing what God expects of his people.

So how about it? If there is no regular corporate prayer time in your church, talk to your pastor (it may be self-talk) and spearhead one. If you have the freedom to do so, gather your small group together for the sole purpose of praying. By doing so, you are expressing to God, in the surest way possible, that you depend on him as a church. By modeling your need to depend on God and less on yourself, you would be walking in the shoes of every “saint” that ever lived and living in imitation of our Lord and savior Himself. By teaching the need for corporate prayer and modeling how to pray in the presence of others you would be following the example of every God-fearing people group and every New Testament church.

Paraphrasing parts of Colossians 3:1-17

But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath…put on the new self…after the image of God…compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience (bearing with and forgiving one another… put on love… let Christ’s peace rule in your heart… Be thankful… let the word abide in you and abide in the Word, honoring King Jesus with your life.

Anger has no plans of leaving us alone without putting up a fuss. Without a fight we will never put to death anger or wrath. What then is our strategy for defeating anger in our lives?

We must not settle for a strategy based on lies.

The blame game lie: “He made me angry”. It’s true that people hurt us to the point of anger. However, anger does not come into us from the outside, it comes from inside of us. So we can choose our reactions to hurtful things. In responding to angering events we must be Christ like.

The personality lie: “I’m just hot tempered; deal with it.” It’s true that people are more easily angered than others. However, this reality doesn’t excuse angry and hurtful outbursts toward others, friend or fiend. We remember the words of our Master who showed us another way: “bless those who hurt you…”

The helpless lie. “I can’t help it, my feelings take over.” This strategy, like its blame and personality siblings, is also flawed. We can actually do all things in the strength of Christ, including anger busting things. Our lives are hidden in Christ and we have died to the things of this world. We are to put off these things that beset us. We are more than conquerors. We are to be self-controlled.

Last, there is the culture lie. Our culture today encourages the expression of anger. Punch something, yell at your dog, and tell her how you feel, or take it out on a helpless triple cheeseburger with fries. And supersize it, please! Culture in this case must submit to faith. Jesus’ way trumps culture when there is a conflict between culture and biblical truth and ways of relationship. Put away anger. Pure and simple, but never easy!

All these crutches are excuses or lies we tell ourselves to justify behaviors that allow the flesh to gain mastery over us.

Put away anger and wrath, Paul taught in imitation of our Master Teacher. There is a principle here that must guide us: If we’re commanded undress anger from our person, it’s because we’re Spirit-empowered to achieve the command. This is true not only of anger but all the sins that beset us.

I would like here to introduce a concept that might be helpful in doing the hard work of getting rid of anger. There are certain attitudes and behaviors in the Christian life that are just hard to accomplish by trying, even when we try harder in spite of repeated failure. As much as I want to love my enemies, be humble, or stop being angry when hurt, I discover I am not able to love, be humble, or stop being angry. Trying harder would hardly do. Perhaps another approach may get me closer to godliness and self-control. Perhaps training will do what trying cannot do. Let me explain more.

The putting on of the new self is a process (the slow cure) that the Spirit undertakes (It’s called sanctification, the process of making us holy people) in my life to dress me up with the same mind that was in Christ Jesus (Philippians 2:1-11)”. Paul encourages me in Colossians 3 to “Put on the new self … after the image of God…  compassion, kindness, humility”, etc…  This process allows kindness, compassion, humility, etc… the antidotes of anger to become permanent residents in me. Through this process, I train to become the kind of person, who automatically responds to anger causing situations with the gentleness and meekness of Christ in me.

This process has a goal: to become conformed to the image of Christ. My goal is not to become more of who I am. God forbid. It is my very self that is in desperate need of becoming new. God transfers his divine nature into me (2 Peter 1:4) to make me like Christ.

Along with the goal the process has three components. First the Spirit is the agent of working on me. No solo work here. Teamwork is a required. The second component is life. The Spirit works through life’s troubles, joys, hurts, and troughs to do his perfecting work in me. Through life events, He turns me into an anger-defeating disciple. The third component is the means of grace. The means of grace enable me to do what I am not able to do in my own strength is called the habits of love. These habits work directly in me to enable me to prevent angry reactions in me

Especially pertinent to overcoming anger automatically, I name solitude and silence. They work in such a way to drive me to surrender whatever anger-responding weapon in my hand or to turn it into a fruit-bearing tool. I’m not sure how this works exactly. It’s a deep work of the Holy Spirit within. I only know, that I am what I am, because of these habits. Being alone with God learning to be silent before him, allowing his presence to wash away my pride, my desire to control others, my tendency for revenge, and my self-justifying actions.

I have learned that in walking with the Master that every life changing action in my life demands the work of God in me and requires my efforts. I am willing to participate in this work of salvation (Philippians 2:12-13). The prize: A closer likeness to Christ that refuses to let anger eat away at my apprenticeship to Jesus.

I quote the following from the book Jesus Manifesto a free reader’s copy of which I received recently Publication will be soon). The authors (Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola) claim that the ultimate question facing this generation in and out of the church today is: “Who do you say that I am”?  the question Jesus asked his disciples. Apparently, the church has given inadequate answers to this question recently according to Sweet and Viola. . The divine in Christ, they say, is eroding while the human in Christ is piling up as the church’s sole agenda.

Emphasis here is on “you say.” The authors also claim that “every revival and restoration in the church has been a rediscovery of some aspect of Christ in the process of answering this critical question. In fact, three features are present in every awakening in the history of the Christian church: (1) a rediscovery of the ‘living word,’ or the Scriptures and its authority; (2) a rediscovery of the loving Christ and His supremacy; and (3) a rediscovery of the living Spirit and the Spiriti’s gifts and power to manifest Christ in the context of culture. God has a history of taking seriously people who take God’s Word seriously.”

What do you think of this quote? Do the authors have a legitimate complaint to make with regard to the way many make much more of the human Christ and so little of the divine Christ?

It is now old news that people in the church and people out of the church are similar in the way they behave and make decisions on moral issues. A regrettable development to be sure.

New converts and long time converts, researchers tells us, are not shining stars of holiness, reflecting the image and glory of Christ. Instead of being conformed to His image, being changed from glory to glory (2 Corinthians 3:18), many have adopted a willing conformity to the world. In large part we have become a people who are in the world refusing not to be of it. This is a sad turn of circumstances. An awakening of our willingness to do what is right and a rejection of doing what is wrong awaits. Eternal and abundant living should fill our minds with the love of truth and the love of righteousness.

When America had strong leaning toward a Judeo-Christian code of behavior we could depend on Christian leaders and church member to reflect the image of Christ in their morality, in their politics, in their science, in their economy, and in every part of society. Alas, doing what is right is no longer a given when it comes to Christians. Many live by the heart-sickening sounding words “it all depends.”

Ask the generation after you if they believe that cohabiting is morally wrong and against God’s command and you may be surprised at the answer. Ask how far should a young man or woman go (sexually speaking) when dating and be ready for a jolt to your brain the size of an espresso double shot. Ask that if a couple is no “longer in love” should stay faithful to each other and wait for a confused response. It all depends, they may say.

You see morality is now an arbitrary decision governed by feelings and not by reason. The “mushy heart” of Hollywood drives most decisions of right and wrong among us. In “The Use of Science and Ethics” an American moral and social philosopher, Abraham Edel (deceased since 2007), has written this popular piece on morality quoted by John Stott in “Radical Discipleship” (p. 230). Our default relationship to holiness is now nonconformity.

It all depends on where you are,

It all depends on when you are,

It all depends on what you feel.

It all depends on how you feel.

It all depends on how you’re raised

It all depends on what is praised,

What’s right today is wrong tomorrow,

Joy in France, in England sorrow.

It all depends on point of view,

Australia or Timbuctoo,

In Rome do as the Romans do.

If tastes just happen to agree

Then you have morality.

But where there are conflicting trends,

It all depends, if all depends.

How sad. immorality has taken on the guise of prayer: If two agree it (immorality) will happen. Have mercy on us, O Lord!

When the church separates Savior from Lord, it (holiness) all depends. When we make following Jesus to the cross optional, it all depends. When disciple means something different from Christian it all depends. When bidding someone come a die with Christ is strange sounding to our ears it all depends. When we refer people with sinful patterns to the therapist next door, it all depends. When we study videos mostly and Scripture no more, it all depends.

Returning to holiness is the constant mandate of Scripture. Deciding right and wrong on the basis of Christ’s commands of loving God and loving our neighbors as ourselves must recapture our conduct. Self-control must return to our favorite words’ list in the church. Purity must no longer be viewed as prudish but the honorable thing to live by.

Without a commitment to prayer and holiness revival like tomorrow may never come. But it won’t be because the Lord is slow to act but because we are slow to respond to his holy call to be a holy people. Call me Lord only if you plan to live under my Lordship.

Prayer: Lord, help us to resolve no longer to linger in the world miring in unholiness, forgetting our roots in you. Rather, Lord, we cry out to you to grace us with the power to return to holiness. Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on us! Amen.

Who am I to call the church to repentance? Am I usurping the role of the Holy Spirit? To the first question I answer: I am a follower of Jesus Christ who loves the church because the church is the bride of Christ. But does this simple fact give me any right to issue the clarion call of returning to the Lord? To the second question I answer: not really. I have long given up on the idea of persuading anyone of anything. I am only a family member who deeply loves the family, calling us together to go on further along the road of repentance and trust. Perhaps in the wake of repentance the Holy Spirit of God would deign visit us in power and healing.

Repentance ought to be a very familiar practice in our lives. When Jesus announced the availability of the kingdom of God to all people he put forth two ways to see and enter the kingdom: Repentance and trust or belief (Mark 1:14-15). Now repentance and trust are not once in a lifetime kinds of actions. Rather they are constant conditions we ought to find ourselves in order to see and enter the kingdom or will of God as little children and long for it on earth as it is in heaven. Faith or life with God, and repentance, letting ourselves be found wanting and returning to God in our want, demand constant vigil and decisions to belong.

I have already spoken of pluralism as a challenge in the church. The second “ism” that demands our repentance I want us to consider together is materialism. Some of the most attractive elements of our faith are material. Jesus was born of flesh, he ate real bread, he built real homes of brick and mortar, he was baptized in real water, he lived with real people who lived off a material land, he died on a cross made from wooden material, and was buried in a tomb hewn from real rock wrapped in materials made by real hands. The apostles saw him and handled him before and after the resurrection. Our faith is part of the material order.

But materialism is of a different sort of thing. Materialism is scrupulous obsession with material things. It’s built on a disordered desire to horde, to own, to possess things to the detriment of living in the presence of the Holy Spirit. As John Stott says, it “smothers the spiritual life.” Storing up earthy treasures, hoarding what eventually moth will devour, and coveting more and more of the material world until we become distracted from and forgetful of the fact that this world is not our home, we are just passing through.

Thus we live complicated lifestyles stressed beyond our capabilities to cope. Simplicity is for simpletons, we think. Generosity and contentment are only for the filthy rich. Never satisfied with what we have, wanting more because more wants more we reject our circumstances, neglect the example of our Lord and injunction of Paul to be content in whatever state we find ourselves in. We borrow, we sweat, and we claw our way to the top Mountain Riches to find the same discontentment with life that the chase after materialism never gave in the valleys of life.

If living in “godliness with contentment [is not] great gain” (1 Timothy 6:6) to us then materialism’s mesmerizing pull has undermined our trust in God. We must return or repent of our ways (that is change our minds or the way we think about materialism). If memory serves, everyone enters this life with nothing and exits it with nothing. Wise and patient Job had it right: Naked he came and naked he will leave this world. Stott adds this poetic thought: “In other words, life on earth is a brief pilgrimage between two moments of nakedness.”

So in my call to repentance to myself, to my spiritual family, I am calling for light travel. The kind that does not beset us and weigh us down, the kind that speaks the soft words of Jesus to Martha: you are weighed down with too many material burdens.

What then is the point of tongue lashing our preoccupation with materialism? When the Holy Spirit comes down on us in revival, materialism will be stripped away. Let’s hold it lightly while we have it. Let’s let it slip away from us willingly. Let’s begin now by repenting of holding it too dear and too close to our chest. When the Holy Spirit came down upon our dear apostles and disciples early in the church’s life, they took material things and gave them away to those in need. The example is set. Must we wait until Holy Spirit comes again to do what we already know we must and have a mandate to do? Let’s change our minds!

Changing our minds with regards to materialism requires deep conviction from God. Human nature is given to want more even when we have enough. Being willing to loosen our hold on our materialistic existence may open the floodgate of generosity and begin a movement of the Holy Spirit to eliminate poverty, heal the sick, and permit us the luxury of time to pursue no more the greenback but the prisoner’s welfare, to eliminate the widow’s loneliness, and to set sin-captive souls free. Let the revival begin in my heart. Amen.

The church is a group of radical disciples; followers of Christ who are transformed from the roots up. Radical disciples uproot everything in their lives that is not in conformity with Christ. Radical disciples intentionally follow their Master’s teachings, his ways, his life. And no one else’s. They do not escape the world but they do not conform to it either. They are holy people living in a world where they are not at home. One day, when this world is totally transformed, they will fit in.

What we often see in the church is less than radical discipleship. Radical discipleship has flown the church coop. In its place foreign “isms,” once alien in the church, have taken up permanent residence. John Stott mentions pluralism, materialism, ethical relativism, and narcissism as four main “isms” that are threatening the witness of the church today. They are foreign “isms” that share the bed of faith with some in the church, the live in partner that has taken liberties and left an anemic discipleship among us.

Pluralism denies the uniqueness of Christ. It muddles the finality of Christ and makes him an equal partner with others. We must not surrender the absolute truth of Christ’s uniqueness and his exclusivity. No matter what pressure for tolerance we receive, no matter what bigotry we get accused of fostering, Christ will always be the Only Way.

The world wants to rob Christianity of its uniqueness: The absolute Lordship of Christ. It wants to demote him to the level of a great healer, leader, or prophet. The world wants to place the creator of heaven and earth on par with Gandi, Alexander the Great, or Napoleon! Jesus is not great or greater. He has no equal: Not Mohammad, not Buddha, not the Dalei Lama.

This demotion won’t do for the radical disciple. Christ is on his rightful throne and he won’t step down. Not ever again. Radical disciples must resist to the very bitter end those who would pillage the divine realm of Christ for a mere mess of equality. He is Lord. Period. He is Lord because he is God in flesh appearing, in flesh suffering for humankind, bodily resurrected, and in the same manner reappearing. His status is not tentative. We are not waiting for society to pronounce the final verdict. He is Lord. God. Savior. That’s our only and final answer in every way.

He is the only God-man, the only God who dies for our sins, the only conqueror of death, the only judge and final word of every issue of life and humanity now and eternally.

Repenting of our pluralism, the obsession with other ways to live other than in radical discipleship to Christ is necessary for awakening to happen. Let’s heed the call, which comes to us from God: Repent and live again. Change and come back to me.

In pluralism the primacy of Christ is compromised. Allegiances and treaties with our souls are forged that move us in the direction of nonconformity to Christ and conformity with the world. Crying about this reality is the right thing to do. Crying out to God in repentance is the better thing to do.

Therefore,

We repent, dear God, of trusting in man’s ingenuity rather than Christ’s uniqueness and finality.

We repent of making god out of government.

We repent of joining politics to Christianity.

We repent of putting our trust in education.

We repent of believing that a robust economy is our savior.

We repent of doing good to save ourselves.

We repent of trusting in human personalities to solve our spiritual lethargy.

Revive us again, O Lord, and deliver us from our competing godless, pluralistic ways. Strip away our false gods. Strip away our false powers. Strip away our self sufficiency, our dependence on and our conformity to the world. Amen.

I was prompted to remember and reflect slowly on this poem by John Donne this week:

No man is an island,

Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manner of thine own
Or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

In light of the tolling of the bell for all, I thought it appropriate this week to reflect and pray in light of eternity and my character development. In light of eternity, my goodness as a person who follows Christ matters most. How shall I live to add to without diminishing others? The determination came once more that I ought to live as I pray, and pray as I ought to live. I have formulated these prayers to guide my reflections on certain character issues in the next little while. Perhaps you will find them helpful.

Integrity: Lord Jesus, help me to practice what I preach in every area of my life.

Kindness: Lord Jesus, help me to speak ill of no one and good of everyone.

Boasting: Lord Jesus, help me to sing others’ praises, never my own.

Humility: Lord Jesus, help me to be willing to readily admit my mistakes, slow to find them in others, and ask forgiveness of anyone I sin against.

Preferring Others: Lord Jesus, may it never be that I should lift myself up in order to put others down.

Respect: Lord Jesus, help me to manipulate no one, especially those I lead.

Contentment: Lord Jesus, help me to be thankful for all I have, and to be content with the state I’m in.

Generosity: Lord Jesus, grant that my hands shall always be open to those who suffer want.

Holiness: Lord Jesus, I ask that what holiness is in me, attract rather than repel.

Flexibility: Lord Jesus, allow that I would not force my goodness on others, or protect it with rigid laws that push others to conform to it.

You alone are supremely good, Lord Jesus, and all my goodness is from you. So let my life be what my prayers are. Amen.

The need for revival in the our nation is evident to those who are sensitive to our shortcomings. Evident in the facts of our poorly attended worship centers, our moral ambiguities as Christ’s people, and our monstrously muddled confusion regarding what used to be debauchery not too long ago: Homosexuality, cohabitation, public violence and anger, greed, and arrogance.

Prayer is situated here: We need to respond to our apathy, our sin, and our apostasy.

With prayer comes fasting, another way to respond to this sorrow-generating condition. We fast to respond to what we see: brokenness all around, to what we feel: compassion for the broken, hurt, sorrowing among us; to what we must do: enter into the messed enabled by God’s, supplication, and intercession.

We must also hope. Many churches do not have a narrative of hope. Full-bodied hope, unadulterated hope. Not optimism, which will never do. There is a difference between the two. Optimism and hope, this oft confused duet, exist in different galaxies. Both optimism and hope entail positive expectation  with regard to the future. But when it comes to seeing reality, galactic distance applies. Optimism works this way: a past happening is likely again in the future. An event caused an effect in the past. If that same event were to happen again we ought to expect the same effect in the future. Based on this thinking we can extrapolate what to expect. Dark clouds spell rain. Next time dark clouds move in, expect rain. That’s optimism.

Hope in contrast, is no repecter of people’s circumstances. Hope is radically rooted in the faithfulness of God. The song hope sings is God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. God is faithful, merciful and is daily present. His love endures for ever. Hope is in God. Optimism is based on circumstances.

Hope points us in the direction of a positive future, a future full of God’s actions; not simply the future that inevitably comes wrapped with the potential of the past and present. It’s a different future, future in the sense of advent, which comes not from the past or the present potential but from the realm of what is not yet, from outside, from God (Miroslav Volf).

What then should our response be? Prayer of course. But desperate, ardent prayer that waits or hopes expectantly for the coming of the Holy Spirit in a way that transforms our churches, and rocks our world. We can’t be simplistic or optimistic. Our circumstances are dire and our only hope is in the advent of God.

I have a desire: That every time churches in KNCSB get together, they would cry out in hope for God to revive us again, to visit us in our confusion and sinfulness and make us whole and holy again.

The deadly sin of Wrath or anger.

Listen to this Jeremiad: This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, said to me: “Take from my hand this cup filled to the brim with my anger, and make all nations to whom I send you drink from it” (Jeremiah 25:15). The “cup of the wine of the wrath of God”, as the Hebrew literally says, is the cup of the righteous anger or judgment of God. God was angry with his people and with the nations in their disobedience. There is a point of no return when the axe of judgment falls upon debauchery. And God’s anger is the driving force.

In a final way, Jesus downed this judgment cup with one crucifying gulp when our judgment was nailed to his cross. But as long as the cosmos remains rebellious against God the residue of the anger of God remains as an instrument of judgment and reconciliation.

So much for God’s anger; what about ours? Since we are made in the image of God, is not anger or wrath part of the human gene pool? So we deduce then that there must be a right anger and a wrong anger since it is inconceivable to call God’s anger wrong.

Right anger serves and protects something good. The world God created is good, and we, the apex of creation, are very good even if we are desperately flawed. Anything that causes this goodness to wane or be destroyed incurs the judging wrath of God. In turn, we who are imitators of God (Ephesians 5:1-2) also make right and wrong anger choices. Righteous anger is God’s way of protecting the good, of purifying the world and our hearts. The wrong or sinful anger promotes the dark side of rebellion.

What is right anger? One time someone attempted to harm one of my children. I became a fiery and irritable 5-foot ball of anger. This kind of anger is right, fair and just. Justice and putting things to rights demands it. When the poor suffer and are taken advantage of, God is angry and we should be too. Not at God, not at ourselves. At a world system we are determined to transform in our anger. When a woman is abused in any way, our anger leads us to sympathize with her. Is justice even possible without right anger? Probably not! Until the kingdom of God comes in a final way and the will of God is done anger is the right response to injustice of any kind. Angry feelings, stemming from these situations, are not sinful. They fit well with Paul’s repetition of an Old Testament teaching to be angry but without committing sin or breaking a commandment of God. Letting the sun go down on this anger does not seem right.

The right kind of wrath is part of the life of the heroes of Scripture. Abraham beats the tar out of Lot’s rival warlords. I assure you he did not enter the war in love. Moses, by God’s voice, encouraged an eye for an eye, and made mincemeat of Egypt. And what to say of all the prophets of Israel, who railed against injustice, abuse of God’s moral law, and life in the fast lane of sin? Just as God’s wrath is positive and active so must our anger be.

Our problem is with the wrong anger, the Cain kind of anger that acts to destroy brother and neighbor (raising Cain we say). Rather than love, hatred digs its ugly claws into the seat of anger. The passage in Genesis 4 tells us that Cain branded his moral compass with the seal of internal anger. He then nursed the internal scar until it broke through his skin in the form of a hateful killing club.

But physical violence is not the only anger we commit. Pride, greed, and envy often lead to backbiting, slighting, or demeaning language against our neighbor. “How many reputations have you killed, O unrestrained anger?”

Then again, angry feelings are not always served piping hot or sported at the tip of the tongue or dangled on the sleeve. Often vengeance is calculated in the frigid temperatures of anger. Stafford (Disordered Loves, 82) quotes this Spanish Proverb: Vengeance is a dish best eaten cold. Vengeful anger injures with a deliberate word (a disposition of character that calls a neighbor a fool, Jesus said), withholding goodness, or ongoing unforgiveness.

And this: Displaced anger. I had to stop the other day when I realized I was beginning to react angrily to a situation. I quizzed my soul: Why are you angry within me? My soul admitted: I am angry at the injustice of a previous situation and because you haven’t let go of it, you’re wearing your anger on your sleeve in this other situation.” Touché! I took a mental shower and returned to my usual self.

Put away your wrong anger? But where? On the cross where Jesus traded hate for love. Those who walk with the master train their souls to respond with love when hate is more natural, when vengeance is pleasurable, and when keeping that angry piece of our minds we’re so willing to part with, right where it belongs: On the lips of prayer.

War has been the way we, human beings, gathered as nations, have settled our differences with other nations. Individually, as our forefather Cain did, we violate our way out of conflicts, real or imagined. One day we anticipate that war shall be no more as the Prince of Peace teaches us how to lay down weapons of death and pick them back up again as pruning hooks. One day the lion of war shall lie down with the lamb of peace. Meanwhile, back at the farm, war is a reality we must contend with. Contend we must and a way we contend is to pray.

Our nation is in the throes of wars and peacekeeping and peacemaking. More starkly, our young men and women are sacrificing precious lives in the belief that freedom is worth dying for and for the sake of justice rolling down like streams, that right must prevail over wrong, that self-sacrifice is oppression’s answer whether on our own soil or on foreign soils.

It’s true that nations have no friends but only interests. But interests can be the greater common good (of our nation and of the rest of the world). So we fight in the hope of gaining ground over the forces of evil. But we must not only fight. We must also pray. Long ago, God instructed his people to pray and work for peace. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. And pray also to become peacemakers.

So let’s pray.

Dear God, we confess that our dependence is on You who sees humanity as the object of his love.

Dear God, we pray that Your kingdom of peace will be established upon the earth as You promised.

Dear God, we pray that Your will prevail on earth as it is in heaven.

Dear God, we pray that the hope of doing good by young men and women will not give way to despair.

Dear God, we pray that the loved ones of fighters would be able to lay their anxieties at the feet of the Prince of Peace.

Dear God, we pray that those who enlist to achieve dreams of goodness in the world, would have their dreams come true.

Dear God, we pray that those who give up their lives in the fight for freedom and against oppression would be convinced that greater good occurs when we engage the enemies of goodness and justice rather than when we are indifferent to the plight of humanity.

Dear God, we pray that we learn war no more as we sit at the feet of the Peacemaker.

Dear God, we pray that the work our soldiers do in the name of justice would not go in vain.

Dear God, we pray that in our brokenness we are relieving the greater brokenness of the world.

Dear God, we pray that American soldiers would fight with dignity and preserve the dignity of others.

Dear God, we pray that the hand of Him who is our Peace would heal the damages and ravages of war on the soul of men and women, children, and parents.

Dear God, we pray that the nations and men of war would cease to roar and wage war.

Dear God, we pray that every opportunity for peacemaking would be thoroughly exhausted and humility prevail.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us.