Praying For God To Call Out Intercessors For Our Nation

They weren't praying for particular candidates or political parties. Instead they were praying for the person of righteousness, the person of God's choosing, to be elected in every elected office........"

Patrick Joshua is the Director of the National Prayer Network and a father figure to the prayer movement in India. Because of a special burden for our nation, he visited the United States twice in recent months. Patrick believes the U.S. is at a very critical time in history, the impact of which will be felt around the world.

During his visits, Patrick told the story of God's intervention in India in 2004, in response to the fervent, united prayers of His people. At that time, political forces had mobilized with the intention of turning their nation in a direction that would make it almost impossible for Christians to share or practice their faith. Those forces had the momentum and the numbers as the Christian population in India is a minority, by some estimates representing only 6% of the 1.1 billion people in the nation.

The situation was desperate. Many thought it was impossible. So they turned to the God of the impossible and began to pray. In cities and states across their nation, a movement of united, fervent prayer arose, but with a unique focus. They weren't praying for particular candidates or political parties. Instead they were praying for the person of righteousness, the person of God's choosing, to be elected in every elected office.

Right up until the day of the election every poll and pundit predicted the election would be a landslide for those who were opposed to the gospel. When the votes were counted, however, the results revealed a different story. In district after district those candidates and political allies who opposed the gospel had been soundly defeated. At a national level they were out of power. The press and the pundits were stunned. No one saw it coming.

So what happened? It seems God heard the cries of His people and touched the hearts of the voters as they went into the voting booths. Some believe a corporate conviction came upon the people and they voted for the person of righteous, the person of God's choosing. This was seen most dramatically in the states and regions where prayer was the most concentrated and fervent. In one of those states, laws that restricted the advance of the gospel were immediately repealed.

This is a very hopeful report about what God did in the elections in India. While our situation is different, we are at a critical crossroad. He can do this in our nation too if we will PRAY!

For the next three weeks we will be praying for righteous men to rule righteously in our nation, starting with this prayer for God to wake up his people to pray. I bless you to let God wake up the intercessor in you.

Hear God's Word. I have posted watchmen on Your walls, O Jerusalem; they will never be silent day or night. You who call on the Lord, Give yourselves no rest, and give Him no rest till He establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth. Isaiah 62:6-7

Our Father, our Lord, bless intercessors who have stood as watchmen at their posts unseen and unsung in the hidden work of prayer. You appointed and anointed them by Your Spirit of grace and supplication for the authority they have wielded in standing in the gap between Your holy hand and the judgment that the sins of our nation deserve. Strengthen the hands of these intercessors with patient endurance and with Aarons and Hurs to come alongside (Exo. 17:10- 13).

Release and reappoint those who have been discouraged, distracted, or disillusioned by inordinate attacks on their body, soul, or spirit, or on their families or finances. Come, our Helper Holy Spirit, to the praying ones who have been robbed and beaten up. Pour the oil of Your Spirit on these wounded soldiers, take them up, and restore them to wholeness and health and to their gifting and calling in intercession.

Awake new intercessors in Your church that have been disinterested and lazy. Let us receive new mantles of intercession and hear Your appointment to our posts in prayer. By the Spirit of Christ Jesus, who ever lives to intercede, impregnate the hearts of every believer with the Spirit of prayer as simple obedience to the commands of God's Word to pray without ceasing and to pray for those in authority. Appoint new intercessors and birth in them a holy desperation for prayer until we see You answer and You show us great and mighty things we have never seen.

Ask our Father, our King, to have mercy and redeem and show us Your glory in the sight of all nations.

Let this be a trumpet call, as Nehemiah said, "The work is extensive and spread out. Whenever you hear the sound of the trumpet, join us there. Our God will fight for us. Remember the Lord who is great and awesome" (Neh: 4:17,20).

God is ever faithful. He hungers for His children’s earnest prayer. He loves each one though we break His Heart with our sin. How can we do that when He sent His only begotten Son to lead the Way, and to die to pay for our sins?

We must repent of abortion, homosexuality, rape and murder; of lying and thieving; of causing hurt and our many selfish acts. Then we must turn from our sins and invite the Lord into our hearts, and pray that we become like Him.

That doesn’t mean we roll over when attacked, and we are being attacked! That means, as Christ did to the money changers in the temple, we must stand up and fight for what we know is right. We must carefully weigh what should be and what should not be, and do something about it.

In God we trust, and as we are His arms and legs, it is up to us to keep Him in the center of our lives, private and public. The Bible is our Instruction Book. Read it.

To simplify, where do we stand, on the side of good, or on the side of evil in these perilous times?

I was very dismayed when, recently, a brother in Christ who is an African American said he supports Obama for the Presidency. How can someone be so deceived??? Why are we Christians settling and not issuing a battle cry and falling to our knees and taking our country back? We allow ourselves to be stripped of the right to pray at school functions and in school, we have the 10 commandments removed from government places and are told we cannot pray in school, all the while providing public prayer places for Muslims. What in the world is going on and why are we being apathetic? Why aren’t we praying? Our God is a mighty God who is waiting patiently for us to raise our voices to heaven to stop the tide of the anti-Christ actions in our world today. Now we find we have a charismatic candidate for president who does not respect our flag and refuses to wear one on his lapel except when it becomes politically expedient and whose own wife and pastor that he loves profess to have strong anti-white feelings, and we sit back and say ‘it is a given, we can do nothing.’ There has never been a time in 2000 years that we can do nothing, never a time that we must sit back and allow the evil in men’s and women’s hearts to take over our world. We should be very afraid because our apathy is leading us to perdition.

It is time for all Christian Americans to raise the battle cry and take our nation back. Maybe McCain on his own cannot defeat Obama, but our God can and He will if we take to our knees in prayer and raise a mighty cry to the heavens to ‘Save us O Lord.’ We have the power to change the course of this election and to keep a man as suspect as Barak Obama from leading our country to who knows where with his message of ‘change’ - a change which I fear will be away from our Christian ideals and away from Christ and further away from one nation under God to one nation under Allah.

We are great at passing stories and pictures around the internet, but where are our prayers and prayer warriors praying to stop this tide of Barak Obama? God parted the red sea, Jesus raised himself from the dead, and we can bring our country back to its Christian roots and stop the move to the rise of Muslims in our country. We can stop our country from being ‘under Allah,’ but we must begin to pray, to pray as if our country and our lives depended on it, because they do. We can stop all these atrocities against God’s commands that have taken root in our country through something as simple as sincere prayer, a call to God to deliver us, to forgive us our sins of apathy and to protect us from the evil that is upon us.

Okay prayer warriors, here is your challenge, start those prayer chains. Get the spiritual power working on our behalf and stop Barak Obama the proper way, by calling on our God to save us from the deception that charismatic preaching is using to lead us on the wrong path. Stop those who would take God out of our country and our government. Raise up good men to lead us and protect us. George Bush is being buffeted because he has fought a holy war against the evils that attack us and we should not be surprised because a prophet is not honored in his own country. But we should not rest on our laurels and allow ourselves to be taken further off the path of Christianity and to have God removed from our presence in our schools, courts, government and businesses. Invite God into the fray. Ask that His power rest upon us and give us the victory. Ask him to raise up a might army to defend us and to protect our country as he did in days of old. Let us be victorious beginning NOW. The battle is His but we must call on Him without ceasing and unite our voices and hearts in prayer and fasting.

Please get believers in Christ to pray. Especially in these last days until the election.
—
‘Be joyful always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.’ I Thes 5:16-18

Also Bishops Ask Catholics To Pray Election Novena

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August 19, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Bishops Ask Catholics To Pray Election Novena

WASHINGTON—The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) invites U.S. Catholics to pray before the November election a novena for life, justice, and peace called Novena for Faithful Citizenship. It is a podcast and available for download.

Joan Rosenhauer, Associate Director for the USCCB’s Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development, said that the special novena is part of “the bishops’ campaign to help Catholics develop well-formed consciences for addressing political and social questions.” The bishops issued their statement on forming consciences for faithful citizenship in November 2007.

Helen Osman, USCCB Secretary of Communications, expressed hope that the novena could help “Catholics enter into prayerful reflection as they prepare to vote.” Seventy-one percent of all visitors to the USCCB’s web site download the free podcasts of the daily NAB readings. These same visitors are encouraged to use the novena podcast for prayer. Osman said that the USCCB wants to support Catholics as they weigh pre-election issues and that “providing a prayer resource on the Web can help us focus on our common values and identity as Catholics.” The novena emphasizes the dignity of life, justice, and peace.

The Novena for Faithful Citizenship runs for nine days and can be used consecutively, one day each week, for nine days prior to the election, or “in any way that works best for a community or individual,” said Rosenhauer.

The novena will be available for download until the election and it can be downloaded online at http://www.faithfulcitizenship.org/resources/podcasts.

For other Faithful Citizenship resources and materials visit www.faithfulcitizenship.org.

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