Prayer predicament

Repeatedly, we’ve tried to address the corporate sins of the nation without first addressing the corporate sins of the church.

Four generations ago, the white church in the Deep South launched the Confederacy with prayer and fasting. Faithful Christians cried out to God, certain their cause was righteous; their war, holy. As the Civil War progressed, Southerners were bombarded with distressing political news, distressing economic news and tragic news from the battlefields. They prayed and fasted with increasing frequency and fervency. Prostrate before God, they confessed the sins of the Yankees – and such things in their own lives as drinking, swearing and card-playing.

In the end, with the South in ruins and the death toll on both sides numbering well into the hundreds of thousands, the church collectively still did not see or uproot the tangle of strongholds that held them. Utterly desolate, they cried,

“Why have we fasted … and you have not seen it?
Why have we humbled ourselves and you have not noticed?” (Isa. 58:3)

Today, US Christians in record numbers are crying out to God on behalf of our nation. Bombarded with distressing political news, distressing economic news and distressing world news, we’re praying with increasing frequency and fervency. We’ve even fasted! Indeed, every time we turn around, someone is calling us to fast and pray for our nation. Already, we too have begun to ask the Lord:

“Why have we fasted … and you have not seen it?
Why have we humbled ourselves and you have not noticed?”

In Isaiah 58, God answered those questions. He said he had not responded because his people were fasting for the wrong reasons and in the wrong way. They had not entered into the fast HE had chosen.

Today, our Lord who loves us deeply is giving the same answer. Collectively, we’ve often fasted over their sins – confessing the wrongs of people with whom we do not identify or associate, people we consider unrighteous and may even count “the enemy.” Repeatedly, we’ve tried to address the corporate sins of the nation without first addressing the corporate sins of the church.

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Our time and season to fight back

Prayer of Graham Cooke

Father, thank you that this is our time and season to fight back – to war against a religious spirit that has bound up your people in legalism, judgment, and an earthly logic that prevents discovery of the realm of Your Spirit.

Thank you that we can war against a religious system that teaches rules, performance and duty but does not allow us to have ongoing encounters with the Living God.

Thank you that we have a joyful, legal right, because of Christ’s sacrifice, to wage war on the enemy wherever we may find him. Thank you for favor and vengeance combined. That, in our freedom in Christ, you not only deliver us from being victims but you give us a ministry in the very areas where we have been robbed and ashamed.

Everyone that we in turn set free is a sign of our payback on the enemy. To destroy the works of the devil is the evidence of Your power at work. I pray that You would give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Jesus. That you would cause our eyes to be opened into enlightenment of the glory of Heaven here on earth. On earth as it is in heaven – no more, no less.

Be our tutor, lead us into a revelatory experience of the power of the Christ-life within. In His name and for His glory. Amen.

Graham Cooke, “Invocation,” Qualities of a Spiritual Warrior (Vacaville, CA: Brilliant Book House, 2008), 7.