Author: Lisa Groen
Category: Devotional and prayer
Students of history will tell you history repeats itself when the lessons The Lord puts before a people fail to be learned by that people. Yet, even more deeply it should be considered that when the Lord would have a people learn a lesson, it should not just be learned, but retained. A lesson retained in the heart should be able to be brought forth from a fountain of wisdom so to speak to be accessible for meditation and reference in future times of need.
During the time Nehemiah came to organize the rebuilding of the wall of Jerusalem, Israel had been in captivity for about 70 years. The Babylonians were their captors. Some of the Jews had already been released to populate Jerusalem again, and the temple had been rebuilt. It is widely known that Nehemiah led the people of God to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem in a record of 52 days.
Before we get too excited about making 52 days a “magic number” that we tack on any massive project in our minds about saving America today we may imagine ourselves aspiring to, we must first imagine what the heart condition and meditations and posture was like for any average Jew in that day just having come from out of the land of their captivity. They had come from a place where there were no freedoms. They had come from a place where there was no professional advancement or free enterprise among the Jews. They had come from a place where there was much forced physical labor, and forced servitude. They owned no property themselves. They were beggars, and depended on whatever their captors might have thought they could count “as trash or leftovers” that ended up becoming the “savings and capital” of the Jews. In those kinds of times, we can imagine they did not get to eat what they liked, or travel at will, or even see next of kin for any type of holiday or family reunion-like event. They were estranged from the joys of what God had done for them in previous times of victory and their worship of God was most likely gagged by the enemy’s mockery and by their own shame and isolation from corporate times of celebration.
These events and circumstances no doubt created a refining fire I would dare say and a “holy breeding ground” for their hearts to become “ripe with humility and contriteness” and very likely a hunger and perhaps even a deep desire to pursue God for scraps of mercy. Truths from the word of God may have spoken loud and clear to them about how God is a God of mercy and a broken and contrite heart the Lord will not despise. They might have recalled the great mercy and compassion of the Lord from other times of victory in the Old Testament documents they may have had that would have pointed to times where they “would just need to show up for the battle and stand still and see the deliverance of their God”. But whatever the case was in their day, it is logical to believe they knew their God was a God of mercy who responds to a broken and contrite heart. They knew who God was, and they knew who they were—a desperate, helpless group of beggars. This was not false humility—this was their reality. For 70 years.
Our problem today in America is much of America does not know how desperate we are, how Revelation 3:17 is so much more true of us than anything else as a nation. It reads, “Because you say, “I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have no need of anything,” and you do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked,”…!
Unfortunately, it is not just the worldly pagans and the lost in America that are like this, but the Lord directs his statement in Revelation to “his bride” which he rebukes and says to the church—“…you do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked,”. We can venture to say in our times of coldness to prayer and fasting, we have no doubt some level of lukewarmness to God, and it can be said in those times his church doesn’t even know “…that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked,”. However, the solution God gives is found in verses 18-19: “I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, white garments so that you may be clothed and your shameful nakedness not exposed, and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. 19Those I love, I rebuke and discipline. Therefore be earnest and repent.”
Because of the evidence of the sins in America, and the weakness of our borders and broken southern wall, we have much to cry out to God for. Our God is a God of mercy, compassion, and grace, slow to anger, and rich in love. Let his truth be the fuel for us to seek God in spite of our sins. Let not our sins as a nation or our broken walls and breaches become a “sore spot” for the devil to poke at us to mock or harass and exploit our weaknesses, become a reason to get us to give up praying for protection against invaders and terrorists. Let our prayers and heart condition become like how the Israelites presented themselves before God, as a people aware of their utter weakness, aware of their inability to save themselves or make themselves into anything great, and as a people who looked to their faithful God who had a purpose in establishing a people for Himself, in spite of the problems his own people created for themselves.
Prayer:
Lord, we recognize our deep sins and apostacy in the United States of America. We ask for you to heal the breaches of the church buried within the USA, and keep us for yourself. Please let us keep our eyes on you as we pray and fight in the Spirit for the welfare of your people in this USA. Please heal the breaches of our walls in keeping our Christian rights alive and well. Please heal our breaches in our voice declaring the truth about homosexual marriage and transgender laws when we need to speak. We pray the right people would hear and listen to the truth. We pray you would soften the hearts of those who love abortion rights and those who get involved in racial battles, whether it be a battle within themselves or a battle within their communities. Remind us in our time in the word how to raise our children and how to live for you in the midst of a dark and perverse generation. Please help us stay the course and pray through these times when it seems like many people are doing what is right in their own eyes. May we pray with passion and contriteness and humility and steadfastness. Lord, we ask for a safe leader in the Whitehouse. We ask for one who will uphold your laws, your desires, your ways, your plans, and your righteousness and goodness. We ask you would remove or crush the enemy and keep us from getting taken over by any invading country. Help us to pray for problems in our political procedures that keep our southern border so dangerous and pitiful and weak and turn it around for our good! Make us not the laughingstock of the nations. Heal our breaches oh Lord, Heal our land! We humble ourselves and pray, and by your grace may we fast and seek your face and turn from our wicked ways, so you might hear from heaven, and heal our land! May we buy from You gold refined by fire so that we may become rich, white garments so that we may be clothed and our shameful nakedness not exposed, and salve to anoint our eyes so that we may see. Help us pray these things Oh Dear God until we see them fulfilled, Oh Dear Lord our Rock and our Redeemer! Lord have mercy! Amen and Amen!
Keep on growing in the Word! LG
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