Greetings,
"RESPOND - REPENT - RETURN"
"Gird yourselves, and lament, ye priests: howl, ye ministers of the altar: come, lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God: for the meat offering and the drink offering is withholden from the house of your God. Sanctify ye a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the Lord your God, and cry unto the Lord." Joel 1:13-14
When such days come upon a nation, a church, or an individual, there is a needed moment to stop, understand and respond. In Joel, it is a national moment, 'the day of the Lord is come' and God is telling them what to do in their response. No doubt, the worst response, is no response. We see God's response to our response as a nation and as a church and as an individual. This is my process of prayer of these 3 areas that are directly linked together before the Lord. My response impacts the church and my nation; the nation and churches response impact me. And from these responses, God responds; for righteousness, He blesses; for wickedness, He curses. And this is how I come before the Lord for these circumstances unfolding and happening upon us.
In Jeremiah 32, I see a revealing of these 3 "R's" of God's response to our response and the call to repent and the return of His people to Him. Allow for me to share this with you in brevity, with the hopes of preaching this out in fullness and perhaps writing it out later more fully.
1. RESPOND - 2 things to consider in regards to our prayer lives and the impacts of God and man; God's response and our response. God's response is generally and directly related to our response. If we respond rightly, He responds in kindness. But if we respond wrongly, He reciprocates. Within Jeremiah 32 God declares the wrong responses by Israel and Judah that they provoked Him to anger and wrath with their choices. And due to that wrong response, God will judge them severely.
In our current plight God's response of historic judgement on our land, reaching Epidemic proportions is due directly to our response as a nation, as the church and as inidivudals. We have walked contrary to Him, legalized abominations and pursue evil and now God walks contrary to us. And unless our response matches Joel 1 & 2, and we return to Him with repentance, there will no return of God to us as His church. And the response begins with the church; for as the church goes, so goes the nation. "If we return to Him, He will return to us." This is our immediate response right now, to repent and return to Him.
2. REPENT -
3. RETURN -
PRAYER TARGETS:
EPIDEMICS -
1. Drugs/Alcohol - continued rampage across society, homes, and generation;
2. Natural Disasters - earthquake over 7.0; still no 8; floods, fires in AZ;
3. Great Evil - suicides top 11,000; mass shootings continue to escalate; homicides have leveled off; murder-suicides continue impacts;
4. LGBT - Supreme Court rules in favor, adding sexual perversion to Civil Rights Law for hiring/firing over sex, race, age, etc.
5. Children - continued prayers for protection, deliverance due to neglect, abuse, sex traffic;
6. Plagues - corona virus reaches 120,000 death; closing in on 500,000 world wide; huge spikes in multiple places;
Until,
Dan
Started: June 18, 2020
Continued:
Finished:
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