From:
Purpose Driven Magazine
Monday, April 6, 2009 5:18 PM EDT
In America, we’re facing the worst economic recession of our generation. It would be easy to blame Wall Street’s greed, Washington’s guile and graft, or the world’s gallop toward globalization. But the roots of our national crisis are far more complex and deeper than most realize. America needs more than financial bailout. We need a national healing. Our nation has been wounded by “isms”: materialism, hedonism, relativism, racism, extremism, secularism, narcissism, and cynicism. The patient is bleeding severely and needs immediate critical care.
On January 20 this year, I was privileged to give the invocation for the inauguration of our 44th president. In the back of my mind was a sermon I had delivered just two days earlier at Saddleback Church on “What will heal America?” I explained God’s guarantee in 2 Chronicles 7:14: “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 will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
With that hope in my heart, I stood at the podium on that cold, clear January day in Washington, choosing each word of my prayer with deliberate, purposeful intention.
Knowing that hundreds of millions of people around the world were listening, I dared not waste a word. So I structured my prayer around the six steps to national revival found in the Bible. Each paragraph of that prayer applied one of six biblical principles we must obey to experience cultural renewal, spiritual revival, and economic recovery in our land.
1. We must reconnect with God.
Any recovery—personal or national—must start with God, with who he is, and with his purposes for our lives. The reason we get into trouble is that we act like we are God and are in control of our circumstances. We plan without praying, and ignore the guidelines God has established in his universe. The Bible tells us that recovery begins with reconnecting: “Return to the Lord your God. He is merciful and compassionate, patient, and always ready to forgive and to change his plans about disaster” (Joel 2:13, GWT).
Because of this first principle for revival, I quoted Deuteronomy 6:4 and Psalm 145:8-9 in the first paragraph of my prayer: “Almighty God, our Father, everything we see and everything we can’t see, exists because of you alone. It all comes from you, it all belongs to you, it all exists for your glory. History is your story! The Scripture tells us, ‘Hear O Israel the Lord is our God and the Lord is one.’ ” Scripture also says, “You are the compassionate and merciful one, loving toward everyone you have made.” These Bible verses, by the way, are universally accepted by Jews, Muslims, and Christians.
2. We must rejoice in God’s goodness and grace to us.
Even in the most difficult times, God tells us to “Rejoice in the Lord always” (Philippians 4:4). Yes, we are experiencing a recession, but there is still so much we must be grateful for. Revival happens when we stop whining and worrying and start worshipping; when we stop griping about what’s lost—and start being grateful about what’s left. That’s why I prayed, “Today we rejoice not only in America’s peaceful transfer of power for the 44th time. We celebrate a hinge point of history with the inauguration of our first African American president of the United States. We are so grateful to live in this land of unequaled possibility, where the son of an African immigrant can rise to our highest level of leadership. We know today that Dr. King, and a great cloud of witnesses, are shouting in heaven.”
3. We must pray and request God’s help for our leaders.
Most people are unaware that God commands us to pray for our leaders, even those we may disagree with. To fail to do this is sin. 1 Timothy 2:2-4 enumerates the three benefits: It pleases God, it promotes the Good News, and it allows us to live more peacefully.
The three great pitfalls of leadership are arrogance, sex, and greed, so my prayer for our new president was specific: “Give to our new president, Barack Obama, the wisdom to lead us with humility, the courage to lead us with integrity, the compassion to lead us with generosity. Bless and protect him, his family, Vice President Biden, the cabinet, and every one of our freely elected leaders...We commit our new president and his wife, Michelle, and his daughters, Malia and Sasha, into your loving care.”
On January 20 this year, I was privileged to give the invocation for the inauguration of our 44th president. In the back of my mind was a sermon I had delivered just two days earlier at Saddleback Church on “What will heal America?” I explained God’s guarantee in 2 Chronicles 7:14: “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 will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
With that hope in my heart, I stood at the podium on that cold, clear January day in Washington, choosing each word of my prayer with deliberate, purposeful intention.
Knowing that hundreds of millions of people around the world were listening, I dared not waste a word. So I structured my prayer around the six steps to national revival found in the Bible. Each paragraph of that prayer applied one of six biblical principles we must obey to experience cultural renewal, spiritual revival, and economic recovery in our land.
1. We must reconnect with God.
Any recovery—personal or national—must start with God, with who he is, and with his purposes for our lives. The reason we get into trouble is that we act like we are God and are in control of our circumstances. We plan without praying, and ignore the guidelines God has established in his universe. The Bible tells us that recovery begins with reconnecting: “Return to the Lord your God. He is merciful and compassionate, patient, and always ready to forgive and to change his plans about disaster” (Joel 2:13, GWT).
Because of this first principle for revival, I quoted Deuteronomy 6:4 and Psalm 145:8-9 in the first paragraph of my prayer: “Almighty God, our Father, everything we see and everything we can’t see, exists because of you alone. It all comes from you, it all belongs to you, it all exists for your glory. History is your story! The Scripture tells us, ‘Hear O Israel the Lord is our God and the Lord is one.’ ” Scripture also says, “You are the compassionate and merciful one, loving toward everyone you have made.” These Bible verses, by the way, are universally accepted by Jews, Muslims, and Christians.
2. We must rejoice in God’s goodness and grace to us.
Even in the most difficult times, God tells us to “Rejoice in the Lord always” (Philippians 4:4). Yes, we are experiencing a recession, but there is still so much we must be grateful for. Revival happens when we stop whining and worrying and start worshipping; when we stop griping about what’s lost—and start being grateful about what’s left. That’s why I prayed, “Today we rejoice not only in America’s peaceful transfer of power for the 44th time. We celebrate a hinge point of history with the inauguration of our first African American president of the United States. We are so grateful to live in this land of unequaled possibility, where the son of an African immigrant can rise to our highest level of leadership. We know today that Dr. King, and a great cloud of witnesses, are shouting in heaven.”
3. We must pray and request God’s help for our leaders.
Most people are unaware that God commands us to pray for our leaders, even those we may disagree with. To fail to do this is sin. 1 Timothy 2:2-4 enumerates the three benefits: It pleases God, it promotes the Good News, and it allows us to live more peacefully.
The three great pitfalls of leadership are arrogance, sex, and greed, so my prayer for our new president was specific: “Give to our new president, Barack Obama, the wisdom to lead us with humility, the courage to lead us with integrity, the compassion to lead us with generosity. Bless and protect him, his family, Vice President Biden, the cabinet, and every one of our freely elected leaders...We commit our new president and his wife, Michelle, and his daughters, Malia and Sasha, into your loving care.”
4. We must repent of self-centeredness.
The heart of our problem is the problem in our hearts. God did not cause our economic problems. We brought them on ourselves by ignoring God’s principles of honest accounting, wise spending, faithful saving, and proportionate giving. We’ve been conned by the myth of materialism that having more would guarantee us more satisfaction, more significance, and more security. We’ve bought things we didn’t need, with money we didn’t have, to impress people we didn’t even like!
Personal revival, which can lead to national recovery, begins by repenting— turning away from—our preoccupation with ourselves. The effects of self-centeredness listed in Galatians 5:19-21 (MSG) are obvious everywhere in our culture: “Loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness…paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming‑yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper…divided homes and divided lives…the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions.”
So I asked God to forgive us: “When we focus on ourselves, when we fight with each other, when we forget you, forgive us. When we presume that our greatness and our prosperity are ours alone, forgive us. When we fail to treat our fellow human beings, and all the earth, with the respect that they deserve, forgive us.”
5. We must respect one another.
If you read the writings of the Old Testament prophets, like Amos or Micah, it is obvious that God considers disrespecting and demeaning one another to be a serious national sin.
God has never created a person that he didn’t love. Every human being is due the dignity of being created in God’s image. And the fact that God came to earth as the man Jesus to die for all of us shows our infinite value. We must never disrespect anyone, since Jesus died for everyone!
Sadly our civilization is becoming increasingly uncivil. Rudeness, disrespect, insults, slurs, and slander have increased exponentially through the media and Internet. At the inauguration, my daughter, Amy, said, “While we’re finally making progress with civil rights, we’re going backwards with civility.” We need a revival of respect, not mere tolerance.
Americans must learn to treat one another with dignity, so I prayed, “Help us to share, to serve, and to seek the common good of all…As we face the difficult days ahead, may we have a new birth of clarity in our aims, responsibility in our actions, humility in our approaches, and civility in our attitudes, even when we differ. Help us, O God, to remember that we are Americans—united not by race or religion or blood, but by our commitment to freedom and justice for all. May all people of goodwill today join together, to work for a more just, a more healthy, and a more prosperous nation, and a peaceful planet.”
6. We must revere Jesus’ name.
The fact that Americans aren’t offended when Jesus’ name is continuously abused as a profanity in public—but then are offended when a pastor prays publicly in Jesus’ name reveals upside-down values. If we want God’s help in our recovery, we must remember 1 Samuel 2:30 (NIV): “Those who honor me I will honor, but those who despise me will be disdained.”
If we want God to bring revival and recovery out of this recession, we must give God the respect and honor he deserves. This is why I closed my prayer with, “May we never forget that one day all nations, and all people, will stand accountable before you. I humbly ask this in the name of the one who changed my life: Yeshua [Hebrew for Jesus], Isa [Arabic for Jesus], Jesús [Spanish], Jesus.”
These six principles of revival can heal our nation. My hope is that each of us will begin praying with purpose for our country, and the entire world. God is a gracious God who loves to bless. He’s waiting on us.
The heart of our problem is the problem in our hearts. God did not cause our economic problems. We brought them on ourselves by ignoring God’s principles of honest accounting, wise spending, faithful saving, and proportionate giving. We’ve been conned by the myth of materialism that having more would guarantee us more satisfaction, more significance, and more security. We’ve bought things we didn’t need, with money we didn’t have, to impress people we didn’t even like!
Personal revival, which can lead to national recovery, begins by repenting— turning away from—our preoccupation with ourselves. The effects of self-centeredness listed in Galatians 5:19-21 (MSG) are obvious everywhere in our culture: “Loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness…paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming‑yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper…divided homes and divided lives…the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions.”
So I asked God to forgive us: “When we focus on ourselves, when we fight with each other, when we forget you, forgive us. When we presume that our greatness and our prosperity are ours alone, forgive us. When we fail to treat our fellow human beings, and all the earth, with the respect that they deserve, forgive us.”
5. We must respect one another.
If you read the writings of the Old Testament prophets, like Amos or Micah, it is obvious that God considers disrespecting and demeaning one another to be a serious national sin.
God has never created a person that he didn’t love. Every human being is due the dignity of being created in God’s image. And the fact that God came to earth as the man Jesus to die for all of us shows our infinite value. We must never disrespect anyone, since Jesus died for everyone!
Sadly our civilization is becoming increasingly uncivil. Rudeness, disrespect, insults, slurs, and slander have increased exponentially through the media and Internet. At the inauguration, my daughter, Amy, said, “While we’re finally making progress with civil rights, we’re going backwards with civility.” We need a revival of respect, not mere tolerance.
Americans must learn to treat one another with dignity, so I prayed, “Help us to share, to serve, and to seek the common good of all…As we face the difficult days ahead, may we have a new birth of clarity in our aims, responsibility in our actions, humility in our approaches, and civility in our attitudes, even when we differ. Help us, O God, to remember that we are Americans—united not by race or religion or blood, but by our commitment to freedom and justice for all. May all people of goodwill today join together, to work for a more just, a more healthy, and a more prosperous nation, and a peaceful planet.”
6. We must revere Jesus’ name.
The fact that Americans aren’t offended when Jesus’ name is continuously abused as a profanity in public—but then are offended when a pastor prays publicly in Jesus’ name reveals upside-down values. If we want God’s help in our recovery, we must remember 1 Samuel 2:30 (NIV): “Those who honor me I will honor, but those who despise me will be disdained.”
If we want God to bring revival and recovery out of this recession, we must give God the respect and honor he deserves. This is why I closed my prayer with, “May we never forget that one day all nations, and all people, will stand accountable before you. I humbly ask this in the name of the one who changed my life: Yeshua [Hebrew for Jesus], Isa [Arabic for Jesus], Jesús [Spanish], Jesus.”
These six principles of revival can heal our nation. My hope is that each of us will begin praying with purpose for our country, and the entire world. God is a gracious God who loves to bless. He’s waiting on us.
Photo: Scott Tokar
http://video.aol.com/video-detail/wayne-dyer-living-the-wisdom-of-the-tao/1066380995