The Great Smoky Mountain Journal
OUR VIEW
Posted: Tuesday, January 01, 2019 02:50 PM
OUR VIEW: As We Celebrated National Day of Prayer This Past Week It Behooves Us To Make Sure God Is On Our Side And We Are On His
For people of faith, prayer is an indispensable part of our relationship with God. All relationships require conversation, and prayer is our chance to talk with God. In prayer we share our hopes with God, and we listen for God’s hope for us.
The Second Continental Congress established days of prayer and fasting going back to the earliest years of our nation. Various other national days, including Thanksgiving, were set aside in the 1800s. It was 1952 when the National Day of Prayer as we know it was enacted.
Over these many years, our attitude toward national prayer has changed. Originally, there was a great deal of humility in the prayer. Sometimes people fasted, going without food as a gesture of humility before God. The point was to conform our nation to God’s will.
If you read political speeches from the 1800s, you’ll notice that when presidents invoked God, they expressed hope that our nation was on God’s side. They prayed with humility. This is a far cry from the common assumption today that our nation is always in the right, and that we must thereby speak with assurance that God is on our side. Too often, we tell God what to do, instead of asking God what we must do.
The National Day of Prayer is not a day for using prayer to achieve whatever political aims we might want. It is rather a day for inviting God to guide our politics and leaders.
One of the things that I most worry about our nation is that in all our political discourse, we are always looking to find out if we are on the side of Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives, and a myriad of other debates that pit us against each other, instead of bringing us together.
The only side Americans need to worry about being on is God's! We need to also be sure that God is on OUR side as well. Without God's help this nation is doomed no matter the leader!
We must humble ourselves before God and ask Him to cleanse our land of the things that displeases Him. In our arrogance, we destroy ourselves!
Our President is not perfect, but he is God's choice for his hour and it's a choice that I believe will bring America back to a historic era of prosperity if we allow this course to be maintained. We as believers hold a huge key to that with our prayers and intercession.
I'm thankful each year that we are allowed to recognize a national day of prayer! Let's not take these events lightly or for granted because in this volatile political atmosphere in our nation, there resides forces bent on America's destruction and the removal of such.
May God bless this nation today and please help us to align our allegiances and priorities with Him so He can be on OUR side in these coming days!
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Christopher McDonald, Publisher, Editor in Charge
Great Smoky Mountain Journal
