A Prayer for America, July 2012

Our Father, we are asking today for You to open the heavens and let Your rains mercifully, gently and abundantly fall upon this nation and people. Where the wildfires of violence, lust, and division burn out of control – let Your rain of peace and love cover and extinguish them. Where we experience crippling droughts of reason and sanity, let Your wisdom fall and satisfy. Where corruption and greed ravenously consume, let Your justice sweep down like a flood to purify and cleanse. Where grief and sorrow burden and weigh down, let Your rain of joy and strength lift and raise spirits. Where discouragement and desperation cloud and darken futures, let Your rain of hope reveal a rainbow of promise to come. In this time of trial for our nation in these last years and the ones to come, we ask for the power and strength through the Holy Spirit to repent and turn from away from the things and ways of death and destruction; and to turn to You, and to life, and to purpose. We cry out to you to renew and heal the soul of this nation; that we may truly become one under You. In Jesus’ name, we pray, Amen.

Rev. Christopher B. Wolf
Isaiah 42:7
cbrianwolf@gmail.com
www.christopherbwolf.com

Christopher B. Wolf is pastor of First Reformed Church of Saddle Brook, NJ and is the author of Giving Faith a Second Chance: Restarts, Mulligans and Do-Overs (2007) and With You Every Step of the Way (2011); and the host of Walk With Me, Wednesdays 8 pm on WYFN 94.9 FM-NY and on www.yfnradio.com.

“It is a matter of sharing and bearing the pain and puzzlement of the world so that the crucified love of God in Christ may be brought to bear healingly upon the world at exactly that point.” N.T. Wright

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A Note from God

“The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.” 2 Peter 3:9

A Note from God, based on 2 Peter 3:9

My Dear Child:

Timing

I know you have often been confused about the difference between my timing and yours. I know there have been times when you felt like I was slow in showing up or making things happen. Please remember that when I promise something – it is going to happen because all things are possible with and through me. I just ask you to also remember that our senses of timing are different. Like it says earlier in 2 Peter that with me one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like one day.

Patience

I also want you to keep mind that I am patient with you. You know from my Word that all of you are going to fall short – a lot and that I no longer remember your confessed sins. Remember all those times you have asked for second, third and fourth chances? That’s my point – with Jesus standing before you as your savior, in my view, I have no memory of the reasons and the requests. I remain steadfast and faithful. And I am patient, you have seen that. Once you are mine, I never give up on you…

The Goal

The reason I am patient with you? Because I don’t want anyone to be permanently separated from me. I created you – I don’t want something I created to be destroyed. I want everyone to come to a point in their lives where they recognize the need for me – the need to repent and turn in their hearts to me for salvation and for living abundantly. And if you look over your lifetime, this is what I have been patiently and purposefully doing. I know in your eyes it often may not look purposeful or that the timing has not worked out according to you. But here’s the thing – the timing and the patience have to do in part you with you! How many times have you said to me about yourself or others, “Why does this take so long?!” Like all humans – sin, guilt, pride, stubbornness and a whole bunch of other things get in the way of your heart belonging to me – you know it’s true J. And I know it is true and that is why I sent Jesus into this world to die on the cross and rise again so that you may live and have the way to return to me. And, by the power of the Holy Spirit, through events, through people, I have patiently walked along side you – never leaving you – reminding you of my love and care for you and knowing throughout it all – the very moment or moments you will return to me. That is what I want for all my children – yes for you.

The timing, the patience and the goal are all part of my promised love for you through my son Jesus. Maybe all along, through all the valleys and mountains, today is the day that you will turn and give me your heart completely…

Love, God

Amen.

Discussion Questions

1. Is today the day? Why or why not?
2. Are you able to see/hear in this verse the “wideness of God’s mercy?” Why or why not?
3. Can you think of and share some times when God has been patient with you? How does it feel to know why he is patient with us?
4. Have you ever wondered about God’s timing? How does His timing look 5 or 10 years later?

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Who Knows?

Maybe it’s because I have reached my limit. Maybe you have too.

 

Maybe it’s because I can still vividly remember walking in the 1978 Memorial Day Parade in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, holding an American Flag alongside my Dad and his ambulance corps and feeling so proud of my nation.

 

Maybe it’s because we seem to be on a downward spiral and it seems less and less likely that we can turn around.

 

Maybe it’s because I believe a nation has a kind of soul and our nation’s soul is wounded and ill.

 

Maybe it’s because I have a daughter of a similar age.

 

But I can’t help but be so disturbed by the thought and reality of that little girl’s body found in the garbage dump after having gone missing recently.

 

Kids are supposed to be alive and walking home safely in their neighborhoods. Little girls should be swinging on the swing in the back singing Taylor Swift songs and writing and illustrating books with stick figures and backward letters.

 

But not for Somer Thompson, whose body was, as her father described, “discarded like a piece of trash.”  

 

I know this is not the first time it has happened…and it won’t be the last.

 

But it is a very startling metaphor – a young, innocent girl killed and dumped in the garbage. It screams of a people and a nation that do not value life. And we have known this for a while. It’s just a little more visible today.  

 

How can we say that we value life when we worship nearly everything else but the Author of Life? In God We Trust?

 

It’s more like – In…money, violence, sports, alcohol and drugs, possessions, sex, appearances, video games and ourselves…We Trust. You don’t need to be a person of faith to see where this has brought us and where it is going to lead.

 

The apathy doesn’t help either. Our apathy helps us drift off slowly, painlessly as we have watched our nation’s soul and many of the things of real substance disintegrate.

 

After hearing a message of warning from one of God’s prophets, a people of long ago began fasting. The king of those people was also moved by the message and said, “Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways, and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish (Jonah 3).”

 

And God’s response to those people? “When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened (Jonah 3).”

 

What does God see when He looks upon America’s soul? What does God think of Somer Thompson’s body in a Georgia garbage dump?

 

Yet, God does see and respond to repentance and turning our hearts to Him. The people of Nineveh, which I mentioned above, did so, and God relented. He is after all, a God of second chances.

 

I know this is not a typical Living Water. I would have preferred to write something else. But I had to be obedient. As much as I love to talk about grace, it doesn’t take away from how much sin and evil still offend God.

 

And I am no king, but I couldn’t be silent today about how I see sin and evil corrupting our nation and how we have to turn from it – soon.

 

Let everyone in our nation call urgently on God and let us give up our evil ways and violence.

 

Who knows?

 

Amen.

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