{"id":5004,"date":"2014-06-24T01:29:21","date_gmt":"2014-06-24T01:29:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/?p=5004"},"modified":"2014-06-24T01:29:21","modified_gmt":"2014-06-24T01:29:21","slug":"one-reason-i-wrote-the-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/?p=5004","title":{"rendered":"One reason I wrote the book"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u00a0ran into a friend\u00a0a while back who was halfway through my book, First of All, Pray<\/em>. She grabbed me by the arm as if she was letting me in on top secret information and said, “I know<\/em> why you wrote this book! You wrote it so we wouldn’t give up on praying for our country!” Honestly, I couldn’t have put it any better.<\/p>\n

She continued, “I got so tired of everything going on in government and politics\u00a0that I just backed off of\u00a0praying for the nation. But now I see that we can’t afford<\/em> to quit\u2014we’ve got<\/em> to keep pressing in no matter what<\/em> it looks like.”<\/p>\n

She beautifully summed up my purpose for writing the book.\u00a0I realize that God’s raised up others who are far more adept and experienced in the things of prayer than I am\u00a0and who have articulated the art of prayer far better than I ever could. Yet,\u00a0at the same time\u00a0that I was witnessing\u00a0widespread, far-reaching\u00a0decline in the nation, I also observed that that many of my fellow Christians were either bewildered and overwhelmed by everything they saw going on\u00a0or<\/em> they refused to acknowledge that anything was amiss at all.\u00a0And I knew that for God to truly have His way in this nation, He must first have His way in the Church. And that involved two things: being honest about the state of the nation and<\/em> being boldly vigilant in maintaining an overcoming faith in the God of the Bible.<\/p>\n

And so, I am praying this: May the will of God be done\u2014in the Church, in the United States of America, and across the globe\u2014as it is in Heaven. May God\u2019s people in this nation not give up<\/em> on the high calling and privilege\u00a0to stand in the gap and pray\u00a0for America!<\/p>\n

In Jesus’ name,<\/p>\n

Amen.<\/p>\n

17\u00a0<\/sup><\/em>[For I always pray to] the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, that He may grant you a spirit of wisdom and revelation [of insight into mysteries and secrets] in the [deep and intimate] knowledge of Him,<\/em><\/p>\n

18\u00a0<\/sup><\/em>By having the eyes of your heart flooded with light, so that you can know and understand the hope to which He has called you, and how rich is His glorious inheritance in the saints (His set-apart ones),<\/em><\/p>\n

19\u00a0<\/sup><\/em>And [so that you can know and understand] what is the immeasurable and unlimited and surpassing greatness of His power in and for us who believe, as demonstrated in the working of His mighty strength,<\/em><\/p>\n

20\u00a0<\/sup><\/em>Which He exerted in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His [own] right hand in the heavenly [places],<\/em><\/p>\n

21\u00a0<\/sup><\/em>Far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and every name that is named [above every title that can be conferred], not only in this age and in this world, but also in the age and the world which are to come.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ephesians 3:17-21, Amplified Bible<\/em> <\/p>\n

Buy hydrocodone<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u00a0ran into a friend\u00a0a while back who was halfway through my book, First of All, Pray. She grabbed me by the arm as if she was letting me in on top secret information and said, “I know why you wrote this book! You wrote it so we wouldn’t give up on praying for our country!” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prayerperspective"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5004"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5023,"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5004\/revisions\/5023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}