Did you know that every Sunday at 5pm for the past 6 weeks, 20 to 30,000 people have gathered online with Laura Trump and a variety of Christian leaders and pastors to pray over our President…our nation…our government? Each week’s prayer time has been beyond powerful – Holy Spirit powerful.

Pam and I have joined in all 6 weeks. It has been an amazing outpouring of love, grace, and humility. When has there ever been anything like that for a man or woman running for public office? None that I know of.

As well, did you know that in 2011, Donald Trump asked his pastor to gather a group of spiritual leaders to meet with him and pray about the possibility of running for president in 2012? Six hours they prayed together. A few days later his pastor told him this was not the time to run. The scenario was repeated in 2015, and a different outcome emerged. Pretty amazing isn’t it.

So here we are in 2020, with everything on the line, and it is not too late to take a stand. NOW is the time…

>To gather
>To unite
>To stand up
>To pray unceasingly

During these final six days we need to shake the very foundations of this nation.

This IS NOT a time to be silent. This is not a time to be a timid critic from the corner. This is not a time to be afraid of what your liberal friends or family members might think of you, because you can be sure they are going all out to destroy everything that is good about the United States of America. Are we going to let their voices be heard over ours? Their #1 goal in 2020, other than to get President Trump out of the white house, has been to silence us. Sadly, they have been quite successful.

But it is not too late. Now is the time, THESE FINAL SIX DAYS, to come together and lift our voices in prayer and to pray to the God of all nations, of all people for intervention on November 3rd, 2020.

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Some mornings I just randomly open up the Bible and read where the pages fall.

This morning I fell upon 1 Kings chapter 8.

At first it seemed Solomon, with everything imaginable working in his favor, would gratefully follow God. His prayer of dedication for the temple in 1 Kings 8 is one of the most majestic ever prayed. Yet by the end of his reign Solomon had squandered away nearly every advantage.

In one generation, Solomon took Israel from a fledgling kingdom dependent on God for bare survival to a self-sufficient political power. But along the way he lost sight of the original vision to which God had called them. Ironically, by the time of Solomon’s death, Israel resembled the Egypt they had escaped: an imperial state held in place by a bloated bureaucracy and slave labor, with an official state religion under the ruler’s command.

Success in the kingdom of this world had crowded out interest in the kingdom of God. The brief, shining vision of a covenant nation faded away, and God withdrew his sanction. After Solomon’s death, Israel split in two and slid to ruin.

I remember a quote from Oscar Wilde that I think provides a great epitaph for Solomon: “In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.”

Solomon got whatever he wanted, especially when it came to symbols of power and status. Gradually, he depended less on God and more on the props around him: the world’s largest harem, a house twice the size of the temple, an army well-stocked with chariots, a strong economy. Success may have eliminated any crisis of disappointment with God, but it also seemed to eliminate Solomon’s desire for God at all. The more he enjoyed the world’s good gifts, the less he thought about the Giver.

The parallels to our nation today are stark.

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Spent some time in the Book of Jeremiah this morning, chapter 29, where we see one of the most quoted versus in the Bible – “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

Chapter 29 is about Exile…

Being where we don’t want to be with people we don’t want to be with. Ever felt like you were in exile? Do you feel like you are in exile today? Exile forces a decision in our lives doesn’t it – will I focus my attention on what is wrong with the world and feel sorry for myself? Or will I focus my energies on how I can live at my best in this place I find myself? It is always easier to complain about problems than to engage in careers of virtue…

Daily we face decisions on how we will respond to exile-like conditions. We can say: “I don’t like it; I want to be where I was ten years ago. How can you expect me to throw myself into what I don’t like – that would be sheer hypocrisy. What sense is there in taking risks and tiring myself out among people I don’t even like in a place that seems to have lost its mind.”

Or we can say: “I will do my best with what is here. Far more important than the climate of this place, the economics of this place, the government of this place, the neighbors in this place, is the God of this place. God is here with me. What I am experiencing right now is on ground that was created by Him and with people whom he loves. It is just as possible to live out the will of God here as any place else. Yes, perhaps I am full of fear and am uncomfortable with the rapid change of life around me. There are days I’m not sure I can make it. But I’ve had those feelings before, and God worked it out. Change is hard. Developing intimacy among strangers is always a risk. But if that is what it means to be alive and human, I will do it.”

All of us are given moments, days, months, years of exile.

What will we do with them? Wish we were someplace else? Complain? Escape into fantasies? Drug ourselves into oblivion? Or build and plan and marry and seek the shalom of the place we inhabit and the people we are with? Exile reveals what really matters and frees us to pursue what really matters, which is to see the Lord with all our hearts.

It’s Wednesday. Choose to make it the best it can be.

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Spent some time in Jeremiah chapter two this morning where God is basically telling us that what we are doing doesn’t make sense. We’re exchanging the Almighty God of the universe for a bargain-basement Barbie doll. Exchanging a diamond ring for a daisy chain, the original Gutenberg Bible for a scratch pad. Instead of fresh water from a sparkling fountain, we build cisterns in the sand.

Perhaps what surprised Jeremiah the most was not that his people had forsaken the Lord, but that they had no awe of Him. They took forgiveness for granted. He was always there to come home to.

Thus in Jeremiah’s mind, there was a downward progression and he saw the steps this way:

STEP ONE: Forsaking God, the spring of living water.
STEP TWO: Going after other gods; digging cisterns in the sand.
STEP THREE: Having lost an awe for God and His Justice.
STEP FOUR: Having lost any shame for sin.
STEP FIVE: Committing themselves to follow other gods.

Those downward steps are not unique to the Israelites nor to Jeremiah’s lifetime. The same steps are taken by most of us today. We may begin to forsake God by neglecting his Word, by being so busy with other things that we don’t spend time with Him in prayer and private devotion, by becoming careless in our attendance at services of worship and praise with our brothers and sisters in Christ.

It often starts, however, with our attitude toward the Book. Steve Brown once said about the Bible, this Book will keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from this Book. Jeremiah knew that too. When we neglect God’s Word, when we stop drinking from the stream of living water, we start digging our own cisterns in the stand.

Today is the day to begin climbing back up the mountain. Pray for me. I’ll pray for you. Have an awesome Tuesday.

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