Don’t box God in while praying for the nation
The last time July 4th was on a Saturday like it was this year was 2009. That day I had a very unusual experience in prayer.
You see, fifteen or twenty years ago, I started a personal tradition—every 4th of July I put aside some time to pray for America. Each year is different. Some years I pray about issues while other years I pray for various government leaders.
But on that July 4th in 2009, something a little different happened. I began like I usually do by praising God and seeking Him about how He wanted me to pray; I expected to pray for the president or about one of the many issues facing the country.
Instead, I couldn’t get the Scripture I had read earlier that morning out of my mind. It was Luke 2:41-51, about Jesus’ adventure in Jerusalem when He was twelve. Verse 43 haunted me. “…the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. But His parents were unaware of it.” I noticed a sense of panic gripping me—evidently I was relating on a very deep level to what Mary and Joseph must have felt when it dawned on them that their Son had been missing for an entire day.
I reread verses 44-46. “[They] went a day’s journey; and they began looking for Him among their relatives and acquaintances. When they did not find Him, they returned to Jerusalem looking for Him. Then, after three days they found Him...” I was fixated upon the horror of discovering that your child was missing and not knowing whether he was alive or dead. Since I could not shake the sense of heaviness, I yielded to it as I began praying for the children and teens of the nation.
I found myself praying for every one of the nation’s children to be safe in their activities for the entire holiday weekend. I prayed against two main scenarios—little ones getting separated from their parents and teens losing their friends in a crowd. I also prayed in the name of Jesus against abduction attempts of all sorts—that they would be thwarted and for adults in charge of kids to be on high alert.
When I realized that I had prayed along this line for most of the morning, I honestly felt disappointed. I had wanted to pray for the nation, not kids, but I ran out of time and needed to leave for a barbeque. In my spirit, however, I sensed God correcting me: “You did pray for the nation.”
Monday evening, July 6th, I was in the kitchen making dinner as one of the local TV newscasts started. I could hear the teasers opening the broadcast from the set in the living room. “Tonight we will take you to a local church where an alert volunteer stopped a child abduction Sunday morning.” I dropped what I was doing and raced to the living room, waiting for the opening story. And this is what I learned:
A 10-year old girl was attending children’s church Sunday morning at the church I used to attend. A registered sex offender—a pedophile—had been skulking outside her classroom, unobserved. He caught her attention and motioned for her to step outside. When she walked into the hall to see what he wanted, he put his arm around her and started escorting her out of the building. However, just in time an alert volunteer noticed what was going on, and he abruptly demanded the man to stop. The girl was led to safety by another volunteer and the would-be abductor was arrested.
I sat in awe, taking it all in, and wept as I recalled my intense time of prayer two days earlier on the 4th, interceding against child abductions that holiday weekend. And I thought about how disappointed I had been with the prayer direction God had given me that morning—and how grateful I was that I had obeyed His prompting.
God’s desire is for every one of us to yield to His leading—however He prompts—resulting in prayers that hit the target. As more and more of us make ourselves available for Him to lead us as we pray, more and more bull’s eyes will be hit.
How can America be saved? First of all, PRAY—and that by the leading of the Holy Spirit.
Dorothy