Halfway through the book

I  spoke last night to a woman who is about halfway through my book, First of All, Pray. She grabbed me by the arm and said, “I know why you wrote this book! You wrote it so we wouldn’t give up on praying for our country!” I honestly couldn’t have put it any better.

She continued, “I’ve grown so tired of everything going on in government and politics, that I just backed off of praying for the nation. But now I see that we can’t afford to quit–we’ve got to keep pressing in no matter what it looks like.”

She also shared that she and her prayer partners have sensed the Holy Spirit saying to them, “As goes the Church, so goes the nation,” and she said that she is seeing the results in the nation of a complacent Church.

She beautifully summed up my purpose for writing this book. I know that there are many others far more adept and way more experienced in the things of prayer than I am and who have articulated the art of prayer far better than I ever could. Yet, at the same time that I was witnessing widespread, far-reaching decline in my nation, my heart also burned with the desire to see the Church in the U.S. stirred from what seemed to be a lull in her primitive, raw pursuit of the move and power and glory of God. And I knew that for God to have His way, truly, in this nation, He must first have His way in the Church.

And so, God, may Your will be done–in the Church and in the United States of America and on the entire face of the earth–as it is in Heaven. May Your people in this nation not give up on the high calling and privilege to stand in the gap and pray for America!

In Jesus’ name,

Amen.