Fasting for the Next Great Awakening: Sept 8 - Oct. 17, 2009
Week Three: Economic Recovery
After any major surgery the patient is wheeled into a recovery room to be watched over while they awaken from sleep. The doctors have used full extent of their skills to prevent disease from spreading or keep the patient from dying. Now it’s up to the body to respond. This week we are praying and fasting for great spiritual awakening in America and full economic recovery. As long as Christians remember who we are and return to the roots our fathers planted there is room for America’s full recovery!
Historically great civilizations follow a two hundred years cycle: From bondage to spiritual faith; spiritual faith to great courage; great courage to liberty; liberty to abundance; abundance to complacency; complacency to apathy; apathy to dependence; and dependence to bondage. America seems to be right on track. The major difference between our ‘civilization’ and most others however, is our root. America needs to wake up and recall to mind who we are, where we came from, how we got here, and how to get from here to recovery of our true destiny: a shining city set on a hill.
We the people once paid a price for the spiritual liberty that afforded us economic blessing. There is nothing that is free. No inheritance or any other thing worth possessing comes without a cost. You might reply: “Salvation is free!” Maybe you have not paid a price for it but someone did. Someone gave everything He possessed and all that He is including the life of His own physical body for you to own that free gift you hold. Perhaps the reason that things become valueless to the one who holds them is because the holder has never realized how costly the possession was.
Every piece of American currency by which we all do business has the words “In God We Trust” stamped on it. But unfortunately it is no longer just a cliché to ask, “When did we stop trusting in God Almighty and place our trust fully and firmly in the almighty dollar?” Money is not the problem. Moral corruption—the LOVE of money—is the problem. And there is where the root of the economic recession lies. The new question is, “Can we kill the root so that it no longer bears the bitter fruit we have only just begun to eat?” “Are we able to do something to create some assurance that the food our children and grandchildren will slowly die of hunger from will be replaced with life nourishment?”
The real answers are always simple, especially, God’s real answers. And the answer for economic recovery in America is as simple as actually reading the money we spend for everything everyday and doing what it says there: replacing our trust on God. As we are brought to the brink of bondage, the place Americans started just over two hundred years ago, we find ourselves with nowhere to look but up. So we do—up as high as possible for the answers we need but do not have. We are looking to God, the creator of the heavens and the earth and all they contain, who still rules over the world and all those who live therein. Come THOU Almighty King! Help YOUR NAME to sing. Father all glorious, over all victorious, COME AND REIGN OVER US, Ancient of Days!
Spiritual liberty can be found in only one source: the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel is the true account of the singular cosmological intervention upon the corrupt affairs of the human race. There has been a specific eternal accomplishment that was created at each step of His mission to earth.
His birth made him fully human.
His life made him fully obedient as a son.
His trial made him fully able to justify sinners.
His crucifixion made him fully destitute.
His burial made him fully equal to death.
His resurrection made him fully vindicated in all that came before.
His ascension made him fully King and Possessor of all.
His blood made His Spirit fully available to all.
His Spirit brings liberty.
We need His fullness to fill and satisfy our emptiness. As in the story of Elijah and the widow who gave her last bit of oil and flour, when we have finally come to the end of ourselves and find we are on the verge of death in spite of all our efforts. Now can we trust Him with our crumbs? “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. They shall be filled.” With God, even the last bit of bread crumbs, placed in His hand by a humbled heart, can be turned into overtaking blessing.
The Father in heaven already knows we are in trouble and have need of everything. His eye is on the sparrow. And, while He cares for the critters, He gave His Son for the life of His people. Jesus said, “LISTEN! If you will just get your priorities straight you will run after God as your Ruler and start doing business straight, the way He does it, and you will find a big train of His goodness falling in behind you!” (Our personal version of Matthew 6:33, but we think that’s pretty close to what He meant.)
America was born in God. The revisionists are unbelievers. Their worldview along with their slant on America’s true history comes from the father of lies. Spiritual liberty and economic freedom go hand in hand. It’s everywhere in the Bible. It’s everywhere in American history. When we the people keep the ways of God everyone is provided for— not by a handout from a wealthy neighbor or the federal “giverment.” When a people stop living by a moral conduct of faith towards God and simple fear of Him, the decline of human liberty and economic blessing begins.
But if WE THE PEOPLE, of God, will do what our side of the bargain calls for: humble ourselves and pray and seek and turn from ourselves back to Him, He will do what He promises: “all these matters you are so visibly concerned with and things you are in want of will suddenly get together and join up as your companions once again!” Our version, also, but this time with a little Greek entomology (that’s ‘word study’ not ants) thrown in. Even ants know better: "Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest" (Proverbs 6:6-8). How? God rules the ant kingdom and they do things the way He made them to.
On your knees, America! Oh wait— it seems the nation already is. For those willing to humbly admit we have come to the end of our own economic ability to sustain and replenish ourselves, it’s simple. Pray to the One who replenishes the earth with an abundance of harvest and refreshes His inheritance when its strength has failed. For those willing to admit our moral bankruptcy and ask the Origin and very Existence of moral being to replenish our account we pray:
Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, Father of nations, God of our fathers of America, we turn to You. Forgive our moral corruption, backsliding and rebellion. Forgive our broken covenant and restore us. Forgive us for putting our trust in man, in our money, in our own ability to save us. Have mercy to deliver us from slavery of our lenders. Bring us to remembrance of our fathers who trusted in You and lead us in their footsteps. Send the rain of Your Holy Spirit to awaken and revive the seed You have planted in this land. Restore us to our inheritance as You gave it in the beginning! You “who Almighty art, now rule in every heart, and ne’er from us depart, Spirit of Power!
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