One reason I wrote the book
I ran into a friend a while back who was halfway through my book, First of All, Pray. She grabbed me by the arm as if she was letting me in on top secret information and said, “I know why you wrote this book! You wrote it so we wouldn’t give up on praying for our country!” Honestly, I couldn’t have put it any better.
She continued, “I got 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 beautifully summed up my purpose for writing the book. I realize that God’s raised up others who are far more adept and 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 the nation, I also observed that that many of my fellow Christians were either bewildered and overwhelmed by everything they saw going on or they refused to acknowledge that anything was amiss at all. And I knew that for God to truly have His way in this nation, He must first have His way in the Church. And that involved two things: being honest about the state of the nation and being boldly vigilant in maintaining an overcoming faith in the God of the Bible.
And so, I am praying this: May the will of God be done—in the Church, in the United States of America, and across the globe—as it is in Heaven. May God’s 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.
17 [For I always pray to] the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, that He may grant you a spirit of wisdom and revelation [of insight into mysteries and secrets] in the [deep and intimate] knowledge of Him,
18 By having the eyes of your heart flooded with light, so that you can know and understand the hope to which He has called you, and how rich is His glorious inheritance in the saints (His set-apart ones),
19 And [so that you can know and understand] what is the immeasurable and unlimited and surpassing greatness of His power in and for us who believe, as demonstrated in the working of His mighty strength,
20 Which He exerted in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His [own] right hand in the heavenly [places],
21 Far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and every name that is named [above every title that can be conferred], not only in this age and in this world, but also in the age and the world which are to come.
Ephesians 3:17-21, Amplified Bible