A Call to Prayer

We are living in one of the most dangerous periods in history. Every day we see more crime and corruption, and the effects of a growing hatred toward the things of God. But because of our Lord’s faithful promises, there is always hope.

Dr. Stanley reminds us that it is only when we seek God, turn from our sin, and submit to His will that our nation—and our world—will be free. As we spend time with the Lord each day, we must remember to pray with passion and perseverance for our churches, our country’s leaders, and the challenges facing our nation. And let’s remember to thank our heavenly Father for His love and His willingness to heal our land. For more messages from Charles Stanley, including this week’s broadcast, go to www.intouch.org/watch

Solomon had just finished building the temple.
And the Bible says, they had this big celebration. Can you imagine how they celebrated?
And the scripture says that when they had finished all of that in this second chronicles, chapter seven, the scripture says then on the 23rd day of the seventh month, he sent the people to their tents, sent them home, rejoicing and happy of heart because of the goodness that the Lord had shown to David and the Solomon and to his people.
And so they just had this awesome time, but God spoke to them uh in a way that they knew God was speaking through uh Solomon.
And so the scripture says, beginning in verse 11, thus Solomon finished the house, the Lord in the king’s palace and successfully completed all that he planned to do in the house of the Lord in his palace.
Then the Lord appeared to Solomon at night and said to him, I have heard your prayers and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice.
And then he gave him a warning.
He said, now thinking if you choose to be disobedient to me, here’s what happens if I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain or I command the Locusts to devour the land.
Or if I send pestilence among my people, which is his way of saying if my judgment comes upon you, he says, then verse 14 and my people who are called by my name, humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
Now, my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer offered in this place.
We are in one of the most dangerous times in the history of this country.
There was a time when we were fighting two wars at one time, one on the west and one on the east.
And yet we won those wars.
In those times, the churches were filled with people does not mean that everybody was a Christian, but we were a Christian nation.
And then something happened. Some people who thought they were being very smart and who thought that they were recognizing everybody’s rights and so forth.
They decided to eliminate, to remove the laws of God from our society.
And so they removed the 10 commandments and in removing the 10 commandments, they not only took it down from the walls and edged it out of uh buildings, but here’s what they said.
They said these commandments of God no longer count.
And when you take the 10 commandments out of a nation, what happens is rut begins to take its place in that nation.
So that today we have lots of stealing lots of murder, lots of coveting lots of adultery.
You just go right down the list.
And what we have done is we have explained it away and we’ve said nobody is perfect.
Uh Everybody has sin in their life.
When you remove the deliberate willful spoken word of a heavenly father from any society, you are asking for the judgment of God, listen to what he said.
He said, if I shut up the heavens so that there’s no rain.
If I command the Locusts to develop the land, or if I send pestilence among the people that is you disobey me.
God says, and here’s what you can expect and we are in the process of disobeying God in this nation.
I mean, exceeding anything we’ve done before.
It was interesting just watching the news to the degree to which He re we rebelled against God and passed it down to our Children.
When the Children and young people decide they want to see a movie that must be full of immorality and they decide since they’re not at the right age, we’re just gonna mob the theater and we’re gonna get in anyway.
And that’s what they did. We’re living in the most dangerous times in the history of our nation.
When you look lightly, everything looks safe.
But when you look deep down inside, we are in more danger of the most cruel type of people we’ve ever known.
I don’t even have to explain it. You’ve heard enough of it.
And the question is this, what should we do about it? Shall we just continue in our way?
Sort of try to keep things quiet and move along. You can’t keep God quiet when God wants to speak.
He’s going to speak and you and I cannot do anything to cover the hand of Almighty God.
So when I come to this passage, some people would say, well, that’s in the Old Testament, that’s for the nation of Israel.
When the Bible says, if my people, let me ask you a question, who is more the people of God than those of us who have recognized their sins.
Acknowledge that Jesus Christ is the savior and whose death on the cross paid our sin debt in full and received him and believed that by His shed blood, we are saved forever and his Children, we are as much the Children of God as God was speaking to Israel.
Back in those days, we are the Children of God and everyone who’s accepted Christ as their savior is a child of Almighty God.
So what shall we do? Shall we just keep going the way we are going?
And if we do the judgment of God is coming upon this nation in ways we’ve never known before.
And there are people today who not only want their way, they want absolute freedom from all religion.
And so those of us who live in big cities or small cities or small towns and only see a part of what’s happening.
We don’t realize how deep in sin and far away we are from God as a nation.
And so we’ve looked at our laws and what we don’t like, we decide they don’t count them all.
I’m here to tell you, we need to open our eyes and see what God says.
Listen to what he says.
For example, in this passage, he says, if I shut up the heavens so that there’s no rain, if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among my people, which means leaving them absolutely desolate.
If I do that, he says, here’s what you must do.
And what he was saying is that when nations get in the position that we are, whether it’s 1000 years ago or today, here’s what God says.
He makes an awesome promise. And he says, 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 I will hear from heaven will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
Now, my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place.
God’s word has not changed it doesn’t change his mind.
He doesn’t change his laws, it doesn’t change his love for us.
But if we disobey God, we will suffer the consequences.
We have already disobeyed God and we have committed ourselves to disobeying him by tolerating all kinds of sin that God specifically.
There’s no guesswork specifically for bids to be a part of our life.
And so he says, well, if you realize what’s happening, if you’re wise enough to see that if you want deliverance, here’s what you must do.
And I want to read these four and just comment on a few moments because this is our hope.
This is the hope. Listen to what he says.
He says, if we will humble ourselves, what does it mean to humble ourselves?
It means to acknowledge our sinfulness and yield ourselves absolutely and completely to almighty God, drop our pride and recognize who we are, we are sin and saved by the grace, we’ve become the Children of God and the lifestyle of sin doesn’t fit who we are to humble ourselves is to acknowledge the sovereign power and the sovereign leadership of Almighty God upon us and over us, if we humble ourselves and the Bible speaks very clearly about pride.
And if you turn for example, to a Proverbs 16 pride watch.
This does not go before a difficult time.
Pride goes before destruction and the hottest spirit before stumbling, we have a hottest spirit among people in our country.
We don’t need God, we don’t need religion of any kind. A hottest spirit is spirit of pride and arrogance.
And he says, pride goes before destruction and the hardest spirit before stumbling, that is the judgment of God comes upon pride.
And there are many verses in the Bible that stated.
And if you look, for example, there is an arrogance, there is a sense of pride, we can handle it, don’t worry about it, just leave it to us, leaving it to you will cause us heartache and problems and suffering.
Like we’ve never known, this is a warning of Almighty God and that is humble yourselves before Almighty God.
The humble myself means I’m no longer looking at myself. What counts is Almighty God.
I’m seeking him bowing before him and acknowledging him.
And people who never go to church, never read the Bible, never seek God’s solutions and direction for their life.
That is absolutely arrogance and pride.
And if you think living your life apart from God, that somehow you will escape the judgment of God, you’d better read the word of God.
He said, I don’t believe the Bible one of these days you wish you had because it is the spoken word of God that He has written for your good.
And for mine, the first thing he says in order to face these things that are coming, he says, humble yourself before me, ask yourself the question.
Do you have any pride in your life.
Do you sort of think that, uh, other folks are fine but you are something else.
Can you boast of your income? Can you boast of your position?
Is there pride in your life or do you walk daily?
Recognizing that you and I are absolutely dependent upon God for everything you can breathe this breath and be gone the next moment and every so often, far too often I hear of friends or people I’ve known all of a sudden they’re gone.
Well, how long were they sick? They weren’t sick.
You see, we think that somehow we’ll be able to outskirt all of God’s laws. No, you won’t.
This is the word of God and the scripture says the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever, which means that His laws, his principles, no matter what the generation may be, no matter what the nationality may be.
We live under the absolute authority of the word of God, either disobediently, pridefully arrogantly or humbly, we submit ourselves to Him.
So when you’re facing the kind of dangers that we are facing, you don’t, you don’t look at Washington to find out what kind of dangers you’re facing, you just look around, you just find out what’s happening.
Look at news that comes from other nations hear the cries of people who are suffering as we’ve never suffered before.
He says, humble yourself. That is, don’t depend upon your own self realize that God almighty is your source of protection, watch care and the provision of your life.
Then he says, not only that, he says, humble yourselves and pray all through the scriptures where it managed to pray.
So let me ask you a question after you have prayed for your, yourself and your Children, your household, your income, your job, you’re this, you’re that.
And when you finally run out of things to pray for yourself, I wonder how long it takes you to get around to praying for this nation went to or if you said, well, I don’t know how to pray for the nation.
Well, I’m telling you right now, here’s what he says. He says, you humble yourselves and you pray you.
The Bible talks about crying out to God, crying out to God is an indication that I recognize how inadequate I am crying out to God recognizes that I know we’re in danger, crying out to God says I am dependent upon you.
God. If you don’t help us, we are lost.
Crying out to God is what every believer ought to participate in, in their prayers.
When they begin to realize how serious the circumstances are, you can’t just read the newspapers or watch the television or listen to the reports of those who have rule over us and to get in the word of God and see what is the indication that things are wrong.
Things are not right and we don’t see any evidence of anybody being wise enough, brilliant enough, humble enough, submissive enough to come up with the right answers.
And so we walk and we go in circles, well, things are going to get better while they’re still getting worse.
He says we have to pray to him.
And if you think about it, that that’s the way we communicate with him, listening to him, listening to him and praying to him.
And when I look at, look at that uh 34th psalm and um look, if you will uh in this fourth verse, I sought the Lord and the answer me and delivered me from all my fears.
And uh you can just go right down these passages of scripture about praying and God answering our prayers.
And when the righteous cry and the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles, the Lord is near to the broken hearted, saves those who are crushed in spirit.
Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all who else delivers us, who else can deliver us?
Not some other nation, not we delivering ourselves. That is the height of pride.
So God gives us the all these admonitions to pray and to seek his face and for our nation.
We need to pray for our leaders. We need to pray for those who are making laws.
We need to pray for God to waken up the people who have responsibility to govern us when you ask for God to wake them up.
In other words, stop worrying about your position and how long you’re gonna be there and start thinking about the people you’re supposed to be governing and only God can do it.
He says, we, we, we’re to pray.
So you think about this, I wanna ask you again, how far reaching are your prayers?
God, I want you to speak to Him. I want you to speak to her.
I want you to deal with them. I want you to change their attitude. I want you to protect them.
I want you to supply their needs. That is God delights in answering the prayers of his Children.
But I think we are lazy when it comes to praying, for example, don’t raise your hands.
But I wonder how many of you pray for me every day?
You say, well you, you, yes I do. And I want to say this to you.
There are people all around you who need it. Don’t take it for granted.
The people, you work for the people, you work with the people in your school, the people who are your teachers, your professors, the people who protect us.
I think about all the firemen and all the policemen and all.
First, when you look around, everybody needs prayer, you may not be able to name their names, but you get several million people praying for this group.
And that group and the spirit of God is not going to ignore your petitions when we, when we cry out to him.
So he says, we had to humble ourselves before him.
We had to pray to him and then we had to seek his face or what in the world does that mean?
We don’t see garden, listen carefully when you get on your face before almighty God.
And you humbled yourself before Him and you deal with sin and you get your heart clean and pure.
You won’t see Him physically but your relationship with him and the intensity of his desire to speak to your heart.
You’re gonna sense something. You’re gonna feel something when it comes to seeking his face, what it is is simply this.
You’re not gonna see Him, but you’re gonna have a relationship with him that is extremely intimate.
You’re gonna have a relationship with Him. You know that he’s listening.
He’s there in presence, not visible presence, but invisible presence to seek his face is to seek his will and his way in your life.
And all of us have to pray that God, what is your will about this?
Show me what to do here. Show me how to handle this.
We are to humble ourselves, cry out to him and to seek his face.
How do I do that?
I get in the word of God and say, Lord speak to my heart.
What are you saying to me, you have, you have big decisions to make about your Children and about your husband or wife.
Big big decisions to make about your job. Big decisions to make about your future. Do you ever ask him?
Do you seek his face? Lord? What would you have been to do since Lord?
You’re omniscient and you know what’s best?
I don’t know what to do at this point, but I’m asking you, I’m seeking the face of God, the mind of God, the will of God, the plan of God, the purpose of God.
What do you want me to do? You say?
Well, I don’t think God answers that kind of prayer for me.
The reason He hasn’t is because you haven’t asked him and you haven’t expected him to do it and you did not trust him to keep his word.
Yes, he will. He is a God of love.
He’s a God who cares for us as a people, as a nation and he cares for us as individuals.
And we’re at a time in the history of our nation.
We need to be intimate with almighty God because the things that are happening, people say, well, that won’t happen in this country won’t happen here.
Nothing pleases the devil or our enemy more than for us to sleep while the enemy is coming.
You so you’re trying to frighten me.
No, I’m trying to get you to realize that we have the only sure defense that’s all mighty God almighty.
God is our defense. He can stop any enemy, right where they are. He can change people’s minds.
He can put fear in their hearts. He can defend his people at any moment.
The question is, are we see in the face of God? That is, am I asking him?
I’m looking in the scripture. Am I saying?
Lord God is more than willing to answer our prayer?
But let me ask you this. When is the last time you watched this?
You felt in your spirit, you felt in your heart. You, you, you felt something deep down inside of you.
You just felt God. I just, I just, I, I need to hear from you.
And the Lord, maybe if I get on my knees, maybe I’ll hear from you.
When’s the last time you felt God in your life wanting to speak to you and trying to show you what He would have you to do.
God will show our leaders if they’ll listen. He will show us if we listen.
And every church in America needs to begin listening to God for our nation.
Lord, what would you have us to do? And what would he say?
He would simply say, humble yourself before me, cry out to me.
And as he says, here, seek my face, but that’s not all one other thing he says.
He says, and turn from your wicked ways. Do you know what a wicked way?
Is wicked means, determined, willful disobedience, wicked. And so he says, turn from your wicked ways.
And somebody says, well, I don’t, I don’t think I have any wicked ways.
Deliberate disobedience, deliberate rebellion toward God is wickedness in the eyes of God. It’s wicked.
And when there is greed and pride and selfishness and all the rest, when we’ve turned our eyes away from God and just decided we’re gonna live the way we wanna live.
That, that is indeed wickedness. And I think about, I think about what’s happening in our nation, nation.
It’s like a plague, immorality in America today is like a plague.
It’s penetrating every aspect of life and I won’t even name the things that are going on.
But when I think about people who are sitting on their job watching porn being paid for by taxpayers or by their boss or whoever it might be, that’s wicked.
And when people mistreat each other, each other, parents, sometimes mis treat their Children. It’s wicked.
It’s deliberate willful rebellion, disobedience toward God and hurtful to other people.
So when you ask yourself the question, well, so what are we supposed to do about it?
Which is exactly what God said and notice what he says.
He says, if you are willing to humble yourself, pray, seek my face and turn from your wicked ways.
Turn doesn’t mean I just recognize that I’m a sinner. Turn means I turn away from it.
Confession must be followed by repentance.
Or you think about it, how many times have all of us at some point in our life confessed sin?
And said, Lord, I want to confess this to you, ask you to forgive me of my sin.
Thank you very much. And uh and next night you confess in what not some different sin, the same sin.
There’s some people who confess the same thing over and over and over again and say, well, the Bible says, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, keep reading because it isn’t just saying the same thing over and over to God every night.
It’s turning from it. He says, if we do these things and turn from your wicked ways, then I’ll hear from heaven, forgive your sin and heal your land.
There needs to be a turning in this country. There needs to be a revival.
I don’t mean some tent revival somewhere.
I mean, in the hearts of people, especially those of us who say we are Christians.
If we’ll do what we need to do, God will use us to help other people realize what they need to do.
And God says, if, if we turn from our wicked ways, here’s what He says, He’ll do.
So if you think about where we are as a nation, if you think we are secure, you better look again because we as a beautiful example in years past of a nation committed to God on our coins, our pledge, all of these things, churches everywhere and uh something has happened.
We’re not who we used to be.
We’re not where we used to be and we’re not honoring God like we used to honor Him.
And so we can expect God to be truth if I should ask you.
Does God tell the truth? How many of you think God tells the truth?
All right, then listen to what he said, you sin against me.
He said it to them. He says it does in a different way.
I’ll shut up to heaven and I gonna be in the rain, I’ll send the loss to devour the land.
I’ll send to devour my people.
When we violate the laws of God, deliberately willfully violating the laws of God, accepting immorality as a way of life, caring little for each other mostly for ourselves.
God is going to do what he says. He’ll do. He’s going to keep His word.
His judgment will come upon our nation.
And I think God is sending us lots of warnings and very few people seem to be listening to it.
But listen to what he says.
He says, he says, if you’ll turn to me, that is if you, if you humble yourself and cry out and pray and turn from your wicked ways, I’d hear you cry.
I’m listening, I’ll forgive your sin. I always will and I will heal your land.
I will rescue it. I will protect your land.
I will keep it from being invaded, destroyed and devoured when God makes a promise.
Watch this all the sovereign power of Almighty God is behind that promise.
And there is nothing that can withhold the power of God. But where does it begin?
It begins with his Children. Well, how many of his Children?
Well, it’s amazing what God does with the remnant. A remnant is a few.
And so I’m saying to you today, there needs to be a remnant of people who take God seriously on behalf of our nation and you and I are part of that remnant.
And I’m gonna ask you today to do something very specific.
And I’m trusting that when people see this in their homes, people all across our nation will do the same thing.
I’m gonna ask you if you’re willing to pledge to Almighty God, you’re not gonna be perfect.
I understand that. But if you’re willing to humble yourself before Him and say God and mean it, I acknowledge my absolute dependence upon you.
Secondly, I’m committing myself to pray to you dear God every day for our nation.
And third Lord, as I learn to seek your face, look to you for your will and your way.
I choose to do that. And God, I want to forsake. I want to depart from, I want to repent.
I want to turn from every known sin in my life and Lord to the best of my God given abilities.
I choose to live a Godly life crying out for the future of this nation and praying God that you’ll use me beginning this morning and recognizing it doesn’t take millions and millions.
It starts with a remnant of people who are willing to take God seriously.
And if you’re willing to join me in that, I’m gonna ask you to stand up in a minute, walk down this aisle, kneel, fill this place up, fill up the aisles, stand where you are turn to your friend, pray silently or pray with somebody else.
But let’s make a statement this morning, God, we take a stand for you and let’s start right now.
This altar needs to be filled.
These aisles need to be filled with people who are serious about God and about our nation.
Although some of you can’t move or maybe where you are, but you can pray alone or you can pray with somebody.
But we are praying for those few things that we’ve mentioned.
And apart from this is not gonna happen and we want to pray that God will do it all over this nation.
And if you’re standing in the back, turn to somebody else and say, let’s pray or if you can’t come down there, I’ll just stand over there against the wall, just make some kind of move that you are crying out to God this morning and we’ll pray for a few moments and then we’ll close it.
Oh Jesus to you, dear God.
And people would cry out.
Lord, we know from Psalm 33 that blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom you have chosen for your inheritance.
Father. We are grateful that you look from heaven and see us, father, we commit our nation to you.
We acknowledge that our leaders are not saved by mighty armies, nor our warriors delivered by great strength.
Only you father can truly help us. So father, we wait for you.
You are our help and our shield, our hearts rejoice in you because we trust in your holy name.
Let your loving kindness be upon us for we hope in you father as David prayed in Psalm 51 we ask for your grace and forgiveness over us personally be gracious to us.
Oh God, according to your loving kindness, according to the greatness of your compassion, blot out the stain of our sins, wash us thoroughly from our guilt and cleanse us from our sins.
For we know how rebellious we are and our sins are ever before us.
Forget our sins forever and remove the stain of our guilt in the way that only you can through the blood of Jesus create in us, clean hearts, oh God, and renew steadfast spirits within us so that we may always serve you faithfully.
But we also confess the sins of this nation.
And we echo the words of Ezra nine when we say, oh God, we are ashamed and embarrassed to lift up our faces to you for our sins are piled higher than our heads.
And our overwhelming guilt has reached the heavens.
Thank you for not for psyching us for extending loving kindness to us.
You have never failed or forsaken us father and we know you can lead us back to you with this in mind.
Lord, we pray for our leaders and elected officials.
Father, draw those who don’t know you into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ as Paul prays in Colossians.
One, we ask that you would fill our leaders with the knowledge of your will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding so that they will walk in a manner worthy of you.
We ask that you would move them to please you in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in their knowledge of you, strengthen those leaders who honor you with all power according to your glorious might so that they will be able to stand firm in Jesus name.
We pray amen. Father.
We are crying out to you in obedience to your word, humbling ourselves before you knowing in our heart that you desire to hear the prayers of your Children praying first of all dear God for our own hearts to be clean and pure, committing ourselves to you humbling ourselves before you and acknowledging, we need you, acknowledging, we want you, acknowledging that we desire you to guide us and to lead us.
And that every day would be a day of prayer that every day we would come before you.
Not sometimes once in a while, etch in our hearts this morning as we need to hear us stand here, Lord, we are making a commitment, dear God to humble ourselves before you.
We are making a commitment to cry out to you and to believe dear God that you hear and answer the prayers of your Children.
Oh Father, we ask that our hearts would be clean today and lord that you would etch in our minds that we bow before you, we kneel before you.
We stand before you saying, Lord, we love this nation of ours. We love the propagation of the gospel.
We want the world to hear the truth of the gospel.
And Lord, you’ve given us freedom and liberty and you’ve provided the finances necessary to get the truth of the gospel all around this world.
Dear God that we are crying out to the sovereign God of this universe. You are our strength.
You are our defense and we pray for the defeat, dear God of the enemy and father, not just victory for victory, but father that your name would be honored and stood up and exalted the God of all Gods and the Lord of all lords and the God who has all power and all might, who knows all things, we glorify you, we honor you, we love you, we adore you.
We look to you as our salvation and to no one else, we pray that you’ll change the minds and hearts of those who rule over us.
God. We pray for great conviction. You said, Lord, turn away from all wickedness. God.
I pray that you will begin to etch that in the minds and hearts of your Children.
Lord, that none of that belongs to us.
We are your Children, the holy family of the living God and Lord, we’re not asking you to do what we deserve.
We’re asking you to demonstrate your awesome power that when your Children fall upon their face before you and cry out to you, you hear our prayers, you’ll honor our prayers.
Lord, not because we deserve it, but because you promised it and you’re honored when we humble ourselves, you’re honored.
When we cry out to you, you’re honored when we acknowledge our absolute total dependence upon you.
So today we pray, father, we, we wanna make, we want to make a move, we want to make a mark.
We, we want to make a statement today, God that we as this remnant.
We are trusting you for the forgiveness of sin that you will begin to change in the life of this nation.
You will protect us and you will bring us back to yourself. God.
You know exactly what it takes to do that. And that is our prayer.
We love you and we praise you and we thank you for this time that we could acknowledge our dependence upon you, our love for you and acknowledge your God our love for each other and acknowledge your God, the wonderful privilege of having the word of God as our God book.
May it be our God book every day of our life? And we pray this in Jesus name.
Looking forward to demonstrations of your power, expressions of your awesome power in Jesus name.
Amen.