On America’s National Day of Prayer, Christians’ thoughts and prayers turn to our nation. We see a mighty and beautiful nation with a heroic history, high ideals, and trouble living up to those ideals. Few other peoples have matched our hopes for goodness, and no peoples with such hopes have ever perfectly met them. Christians lament our national sins and our personal sins, and by the grace of God, strive to improve. In this time of self-doubt, weakness, confusion, and division, how do we pray for the USA?
By Mark D. Harris, MD, MPH, MBA, MDiv, ThM, PhD, DBA
Song – Have Faith in God
The United States is one of the greatest nations in human history.
- Our economic and military powers are unsurpassed.
- Our intellectual and cultural powers are immense.
- We live in a large and fertile land with excellent waterways, guarded by mountains, deserts, and oceans, and full of natural resources.
- All national greatness comes from virtue, such as hard work, courage, wisdom, knowledge, and good character. Each of these virtues is a result of God working through people, whether they acknowledge Him or not (Isaiah 45:4).
- Our culture, as reflected in our founding documents, is built on Greek, Roman, English, and Judeo-Christian concepts and values. As a result, we aspire to high standards:
- Abraham Lincoln (Second Inaugural Address) – “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan–to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”
- Pericles (Athens, funeral oration) – “While we are thus unconstrained in our private business, a spirit of reverence pervades our public acts; we are prevented from doing wrong by respect for the authorities and for the laws, having a particular regard to those which are ordained for the protection of the injured as well as those unwritten laws which bring upon the transgressor of them the reprobation of the general sentiment.”
What other large nation or empire has even tried to hold itself to such standards? Napoleonic France, Communist China, The Soviet Union, or the Ottomans. Each in their turn invaded their neighbors, coveting ground, gold, and glory. Though our actions have often not reached our aspirations, we keep trying.
Yet America feels her strength fading. There are even those among us who wish for America’s destruction. Why?
- They do not resist the evil found in every human heart (Jeremiah 17:9)
- They deny the work of God (Proverbs 30:8-9)
- They love what God hates (Proverbs 6:16-19)
- They despise (make small) God’s righteousness (1 Thessalonians 4:7-8).
- As punishment for our sin, the land may vomit us out (Leviticus 18:28)
“At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” Abraham Lincoln
How can the Church save our nation?
- Remember our first love, from whence we have fallen (Revelation 2:5). Christians must not make the errors above. This verse was written to the church in Ephesus but applies to all Christians for all time. Our first love, and our first allegiance, is Jesus Christ. Once our hearts are right with Him, other allegiances fall into their proper place.
- Rejoice and pray. Happy are the people whose God is the Lord (Psalm 144:15)
- God’s remedy for the sickness of His people (2 Chronicles 7:14).
- Have faith in God, that He will hear from heaven, forgive our sins, and heal our land. In the end, the righteous win.
Evil and unreality will eventually collapse from the weight of their own contradictions. The laws of God’s physical creation will not be denied, no matter how desperately we wish we were God and could change or defy them. Likewise, God’s moral law will ultimately bring lawbreakers to judgment, no matter their oceans of tears or mountains of anger. We will reap the consequences of our sins just as surely as we reap the consequences of stepping unaided off a towering cliff. Ultimately, Man cannot break any of God’s laws, rather we can only break ourselves against His laws, like an anvil wears out a hammer. There is only one hope for salvation…Jesus.
Prayer for America
- Job 12:23-25
- Psalm 2:10-12
- Proverbs 11:14
- Jeremiah 29:7
- Romans 13:1
- 1 Timothy 2:1-2
- 1 Peter 2:17
