God IS calling US to PRAY-Really !

“if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”
2 Chronicles 7:14

I am going to stick my head above the parapet this week! Last week I wrote on the sense I felt that God was calling His people to PRAY! It was the least read of ALL the blogs so far? I was not surprised! There’s cliché around that says, ‘you can tell the state of a church by its Prayer Meeting!’  I think you can take that cliché a little further ‘you can tell the state of our Nations by the Churches Prayer Meetings!’

I, like everyone else laments the state of our world and I like so many others am often pointing my finger at people and angrily hollering at the television screen on which they are pontificating their warped opinions. I’m looking to blame somebody or some ‘Body’ for the corruption, for the senseless slaughter of children in countries ravaged by warlords, for the endless millions dying every year from needless starvation, over 4 million every year, for the unwarranted taking of life in abortions, some 125.000 every day that’s almost 2 every second!! For the insidious perversions that I am forced to see as normal or at least acceptable in these modern days? Like homosexuality? For the horrendous tide of sexual exploitation that goes on unawares in our suburbs, because we choose to ignore it, to even suggest it happens in my street is unpalatable? These are just to name a few, I could go one and on!  (By the way please take time to look at this video of a young Christian friend of mine who took his stand on homosexuality and pornography and needs our prayers and support www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6A9Vd7T0qE)

When I get going I get enraged and infuriatingly frustrated until I realise that the problem is not with the world at large! The problem is not with a lack of proper government or the enforcing of law and order it is with ME and it is with YOU? Those of US who profess faith in The Lord Jesus Christ, who are the ‘people of God’, who are the ‘Body of Christ’, who are ‘The Church’!!! My Bible tells me this.“For the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God; and if it begins with us first..”  1 Peter 4:17              Do you get that??                             

 It was Harry Truman when President of the United States kept a sign on the desk in the White House that said, ‘The Buck stops here’
We can point the finger and holler at whoever we like but the people of God have got to accept some responsibility for the state we find our world in today because like God’s people of old we have turned away from the ways of God and we have forsaken the Prayer Meeting.. And those of us who are in spiritual leadership must accept the major part of that blame, as the Prophet Joel said,
“‘Yet even now,’ declares the Lord, ‘return to Me with all your heart, and with fasting, weeping and mourning; and rend your heart and not your garments.’ Now return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in loving kindness and relenting of evil. Who knows whether He will not turn and relent and leave a blessing behind Him, even a grain offering and a drink offering for the Lord your God? Blow a trumpet in Zion, consecrate a fast, proclaim a solemn assembly, gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children and the nursing infants. Let the bridegroom come out of his room and the bride out of her bridal chamber. Let the priests, the Lord’s ministers, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, ‘Spare Your people, O Lord, and do not make Your inheritance a reproach, a byword among the nations. Why should they among the peoples say, ‘Where is their God?’”
Joel 2:12-17

Closer to home, these last couple of weeks have seen elections in Great Britain, where UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party) polled extremely well. It seems it was a protest vote against both the over dominating of the European Union on the British national affairs and the rise in immigration that has led to a perceived, if not actual decline in Britishness! Never mind the devastating recession that there seems no end in sight of.
Then there was the Queens Speech to Parliament where Her Majesty outlined the present  Government’s plans for the coming months.
I am not able to work out facts and figures but the future is bleak, to say the least. The Coalition has little or no answers for the real problems. Is that why they introduced the scandalous act that will change the Bible definition of Marriage? To divert attention away from the economic disaster that the greed of men caused and continues to cause?

Ah! When I then go to my home country I find the people fighting over flags, and the people who represent the people still arguing over whose fault it was that former terrorists are standing shoulder to shoulder with others in power sharing. If it wasn’t so serious it would be  laughable that there we have the so called leaders still standing on their own hilltops playing the ‘blame game’ clodding stones at one another and wondering why the people down in the valley are doing just the same?

Back in 1940, Britain had come to a time in its National Life described by the then Prime Minister, Winston Churchill as ‘Britain’s Darkest Hour’. As the forces of evil advanced through Europe, 300.000 British troops found themselves cut off in retreat on the beaches of Dunkirk. It looked very likely too that with the Battle for France now won, Hitler’s eyes would now turn toward England and the Battle for Britain would begin. So it was that Churchill requested King George the VI to call a National Day of Prayer and repentance and on Sunday 26 May 1940 the Nation responded. Churches were inundated with men and women, royalty and politicians and from every avenue of life the people came to pray to God for help! The call to prayer was made at a time of sheer desperation, at the time when everything else had failed. Deliverance didn't seem possible at the time, but it came. By the grace of God, nearly a third of a million souls were saved as a result, as was the British nation.

Are we not at that place of desperation? Do we as the people of God not recognise the need of the day? Have we so lost our understanding of the Power of Prayer? Have we given up HOPE?

Great Britain has had neither a Prime Ministerial nor a Royal proclamation calling for a National Day of Prayer since WWII. (Would it not have been more profitable for Her Majesty to call her people to prayer last week than a mere speech?) On one occasion Rev. Ian Paisley asked the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair. "Would the Prime Minister remind himself that before each sitting of the House, prayer is offered to the God of heaven and earth? Would he also remind himself that, in days of crisis in this nation, the one who held his office advised the monarch from time to time to call a national day of prayer? Does he not feel that, in the present crisis, the nation should express its desire to have our nation healed, and that the way to have it healed is to call upon the sovereign God of heaven?
The Prime Minister’s answer was “I am sure that the nation will pray in its own way for what the honourable Gentleman says. I do not know whether it is right for Government to impose that, but I am sure that, according to their own consciences and faith, people will pray for the objectives that he has set out.” (I very much doubt if Mr Cameron would even have that answer?)                                                                                                                          
Give the folks in USA their dues they continue a call to a National Day of Prayer every year on the first Thursday in May and was held this year on Thursday 2 May 2013, however their call is for a Day of Prayer being a time for people of all faiths to pray together in their own way. BUT there is ONLY ONE God and He alone has the answer and it is ONLY through Jesus Christ that we can come to God. (John 14:6)

To get back to where I started! Folks I am not suggesting that the Nations are called to Days of Prayer, although that would be good BUT what I am saying is, that it is absolutely the time when the Church needs to be called to DAYS of PRAYER..I am completely sold out to God’s word that tells me, “if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” 2 Chronicles 7:14. Can God make it any clearer?

I think of my own home country.. so many of the men and women in leadership are ‘born again’ believers.. Don’t they read the same Bible as me? Would it not be far better for the people of that Country to hear those leaders calling those people to prayer? Would it not be better for them to join the Church leaders in calling God’s people to pray? Would I be naïve to think that so many other Countries Christian leaders could and should do the same???
BUT rather than just wait and hope…WHAT excuse have I myself.. I look on hopelessly at what goes on around me. I throw up my arms in disbelief and in horror (EG as I watch those three young women released from ten years of captivity in Cleveland this week!) and ask who is going to do something about this?

Catch yourself on! YOU and I know WHO can do something about this!! BUT we have forgotten Him, we have forsaken Him we have abandoned His Word and His Will, WE have refused repeatedly to answer our spiritual leaders in the past as they TRIED to call us to pray and until we do, until we turn to God!!! That’ right until WE, HIS PEOPLE turn to Him in repentance and pray and pray and pray we will NOT see any change. BUT if we do? Just go back and read last week’s blog that you thought wasn’t worth reading then!

PS. Just in case you think I have made little of events in Northern Ireland or England, in the time it has taken me to writes this blog, 521 people have died from malnutrition BUT worse 3195 had died across the world and how many of those without hearing the Gospel of Jesus Christ??