Reflections on the National Day of Prayer

Last Thursday May 2 was the National Day of Prayer and I was privileged to be asked to participate in a prayer breakfast that day in our district. It is laudable that we, as a nation, designate a day to focus on prayers to the God of Heaven. However, the rest of the year it seems we don’t give much thought or time to that spiritual discipline. Pollster George Barna recently polled Americans and found the average American Christian prays just five minutes a day! Meanwhile, the typical American pastor is not much better, spending only seven minutes a day in prayer.

Prayer, along with fasting and giving to the Lord’s work are three important disciplines in a Christian’s life. But often we tend to be self-sufficient, allowing other daily activities to crowd out daily communion with the Great Shepherd of our souls. It takes focus, intentionality and discipline to maintain a life of prayer. We often try to work out our own problems, thinking we know best the course our lives should take. However, we forget our Heavenly Father sees the end from the beginning and knows perfectly what is best for us. We need to remember that faith filled prayers require leaning on someone who sometimes doesn’t seem close at hand, but always is!

The Father of our County, George Washington has been quoted as saying “It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible,” and, indeed, he is often portrayed in art as kneeling in humble prayer. Abraham Lincoln also spoke of how important prayer was to him as a leader, saying, “I have been driven many times to my knees, by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.”

A fellow senator confided in me recently he has leaned on the Lord more since working in Lincoln than at any time in his life. Why? Because he needs the help, strength, wisdom and encouragement only God can provide. Another senator did an extended time of fasting and prayer last summer for the same reasons--a job that is bigger than he is which causes him to consequently reach out to Someone bigger than the job. Truth is, it is wise to reach upward in prayer, not just to seek the Lord’s hands for help, but also His face for fellowship.

Today our country is fracturing in many places as we drift away from our spiritual moorings. We’re tearing apart morally, financially and socially, with broken families, demonstrations on campuses, anarchy in large cities, corruption in governmental agencies and an absent moral compass in the media. In the past, during times of great trials, our U.S. presidents have called for the citizens to pray and fast for our nation’s deliverance. One of those declarations was made by Lincoln during the dark days of the Civil War. I believe our 16th president’s call to prayer is apropos for today: “It is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime truths announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord. We have been recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God -- we have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined in deceitfulness of our hearts that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace - too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness… All this being done in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the Divine teachings that the united cry of the Nation will be heard on high and answered with blessings, no less than the pardon of our national sins and restoration of our now divided and suffering country to its former happy condition of unity and peace.” (April 1863) A principle of prayer established by the God of Heaven 3,000 years ago holds true today: “…if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” (2 Chronicles 7:14)

Loren Lippincott represents Legislative District 34 in the Nebraska State Senate. Read his column in the Nance County Journal.