This transcript is taken from the Stand in the Gap Today program originally aired on Feb. 25, 2020. To listen to the program, please click HERE.
Sam Rohrer: Well, have you ever heard the phrase prayer changes things? Well, I’ve got a question for you. Do you believe it? You know, the apostle Paul said, pray without ceasing and then James in the book of James says that the effectual prayer of a righteous man accomplishes much. And when you and I looked around and we see all these chaotic actions on our American political scene and our team right now, we’re just talking just before we went on the air about the increasing impacts from growing diseases like the coronavirus and it’s impacting the world. Literally. I’m looking right here at now, headline news, and here’s a picture of the world, the globe of the earth with a mask on it. Kind of interesting, but the idea is that the world is being impacted. Then you’ve got the historic plagues like the locusts that are happening in Africa, billions of acres, I think a billion acres they said so far right now, but Middle East now that is in India and Pakistan.
Sam Rohrer: That’s up to the border of China. Then you have the simmering, precarious economic conditions worldwide. We’ve talked about that a lot on this program because if no other reason we’re so far in debt. There’s a lot of things that are happening. I could go on and on and I’m not going to do that, but in times like this, ladies and gentlemen don’t you find that people run … you and I run one or two places. We either run to God in prayer seeking true divine assistance or if we run like the world tells us we run to government or like many do run into some type of medication for some pseudo temporary assistance. Where are you turning in these days of concern? With that, I welcome you to Stand in the Gap today. I’m Sam Rohrer and I’m going to be joined today by Dr. Keith Wiebe who is the vice president of our American Pastors Network state chapter development initiative and frequent co-host on this program and Dr. Joe Green, member of the Pennsylvania and American pastors network and pastor of the St. Paul’s missionary Baptist church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Sam Rohrer: Our focus today is going to be on prayer because the light of all of these things we need to pray, we really do, and it’s a part of our year long 52 Tuesday prayer initiative as a lead up to our nation’s biggest time of choosing human leaders. That’s the election coming up in the fall. We can’t get away from it. It’s before us every day. Our 52 Tuesdays prayer initiative though is all about choosing God first and like Joshua, to weekly, and we encourage when Tuesdays come around, think about the election because you can’t get away from it, but think mostly about doing just like Joshua said and every day, every Tuesday commit. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Choose God first. Our actual theme for today’s program is this: meeting God’s requirements for answered prayer and I trust you’ll stay with us for the entire hour as we seek to provide practical insights into what God says is necessary if we expect to see anything as a result of our prayer after we choose to serve the Lord.
Sam Rohrer: And with that, I want to welcome Keith and Joe to the program, and Keith, with that I want to go to you right off here. I want the program today, and we’ve all prayed about this before we’ve gone on the air, about this matter of practical prayer and in the next two segments we’re going to identify four … when I say four God requirements for answered prayer that a lot of people either have not been taught or maybe because of the culture of the day we conveniently forget, but when I opened the program, Keith, I cited the verse from 1 Thessalonians 5:16 where the apostle Paul says, pray without ceasing, which really sounds to me like a command. You pastored for nearly 40 years. What did you teach your people briefly about why prayer is so important in the life of a true Christian and why the apostle Paul commanded that it be done and done without ceasing? Pretty amazing.
Keith Wiebe: Oh yeah, Sam, it’s really very amazing and you are absolutely right. The verse is a command. It’s actually a series of verses of a number of commands that are given to help us to be sure that we live right in the context of that passage. We’re told to rejoice evermore, to give thanks in everything and then a part of that is to pray without ceasing. I don’t think it speaks to a description of an activity nearly as much as it speaks to a heart attitude that makes that activity possible. It speaks to the purity of our hearts. We’re going to talk about that more later on in the broadcast. It’s a command for unceasing prayer, unwavering prayer. It’s a very short verse. Three English words translate just two Greek words, but it is powerful and packed with meaning and significance.
Sam Rohrer: Joe, I’m going to shift over to you right now because as Keith was saying, prayer is not only a command for a continual, ongoing attitude of prayer between every true believer and God who answers the prayer, but it’s also a privilege. It’s a privilege that the God of heaven would invite us into his presence to fellowship and bring our petitions. How do you express the magnificent nature of this privilege that’s given to all true children of God? How do you know that? Because it’s powerful.
Joe Green: It is, Sam. And you know that’s a great statement when you, when we start to look at it as a privilege and I always look at in the natural we have people that we hold in high regard, whether it’s the president of the United States or a famous historical figure in sports. I always thought about Michael Jordan. If I had the chance to sit and talk with him, it would be such a great privilege and I would say I would be honored to do that. But when we put it in its proper perspective and we’re talking about the creator and the righteous judge of all creation and that he desires to, to speak with us, to fellowship with us. You know, I always reflect on King David’s words that he says, who are we that you’re even mindful of us?
Joe Green: And I always try to instill that in all those who I speak to because of the fact that it is such a great honor and a privilege and if in the natural we have people that we hold in high regard and we would drop everything to go sit and talk with them if we were given the opportunity, how much greater is that opportunity and privilege to talk to the creator, the Alpha and the Omega, the one who created all everything that we see and the one who loves us so much that he sent his only begotten son to die on our behalf.
Sam Rohrer: Isn’t it Joe? When I think about that, you know, as Keith was saying, pray without ceasing is a command to do it, but God does not make that impossible. He says, you have access before me 24 hours a day all the time, which does make the presence a prayer being in God’s presence. It makes it possible to actually utilize that privilege. Amazing. Ladies and gentlemen, I want you to grasp that today as we talking about prayer, but many times when we pray, sometimes we say does God is really answering our prayers? The prophet Habakkuk taught about that. When the Bible does talk about things that we do have to keep in mind for requirements for prayer before God will answer a prayer outline beginning in this very next cycle.
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Sam Rohrer: Well, welcome back to Stand in the Gap. Our theme today is meeting God’s prayer requirement’s. And after some prayer today and we’re doing this as a part of our 52 Tuesday prayer initiative. So if you’re just turning into this program for the first time, perhaps, we deal with headline news and we started out the program talking about a lot of the headline news, but brought it quickly to the context that when in such days in which we find ourselves, people are either driven to God in prayer or they’re driven to government or some kind of medication, it’s one of the other, where are you going? And because we’re talking mostly to Christian people, conservative, God-fearing people, at least who listened to Stand in the Gap today across America and over 400 stations. As you’re listening, when I’m talking to you who are inclined to pray.
Sam Rohrer: Do you ever find yourself wishing that you could pray more effectively? You know, most people say they pray. How much actually is getting done as a result of why they’re praying is another question. But if you wish you could pray more effectively, you’re not alone. Those of us in the program today, Joe and Keith and I, we’re all in there with you, we want to pray more effectively. Matter of fact that the disciples of Jesus asked him one time, Lord, teach us to pray. And then Jesus answered with the Lord’s prayer recorded in Luke chapter 11 and it begins with this, “Father, hallowed be thy name.” And that was the first aspect of prayer Jesus emphasized. You see, it was God’s holiness. AW Tozer wrote this quote, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” Let me restate that. What comes into our minds when we think about God and who he is, is the most important thing about us.
Sam Rohrer: “When we talk with God, how should we address him? Well, he is our friend and law giver. He is also the perfect King of Kings and Lord of Lords. When we view him properly,” AW Tozer is going on. “We will find ourselves praying more effectively. Our lives are about his kingdom and his desires, not ours. We exist to serve him including the way we pray.” And it’s in that context the way we should pray that we’re going to look next here. Ladies and gentleman, Joe, let me go to you here first and ask you this. I’m afraid that many people really, according to the research, most people say they pray, but you know like 80% of people who say they’re Christians say they have faith, but the great majority of them said it doesn’t really make any difference what faith they have as long as they have faith, which tells me they don’t have true faith in Jesus Christ, which means their prayers aren’t being answered because they’re not coming to God from the right beginning.
Sam Rohrer: And so I’m afraid there a lot of people who pray and the world says they pray, Hindus pray. I don’t know if atheist pray, but they don’t pray to God. The numbers would indicate most everybody prays to something, but there can’t be a lot of results clearly. Psalm 66:18, Joe, says this, “If I harbor sin in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.” Wow. Unconfessed sin pretty fatal to powerful prayer. Can you expand upon the significance of this verse just a little bit to our listeners and this our prayer requirement number one, which means pray with a clean heart. That’s a powerful statement that David made here in that song.
Joe Green: Sam, and it’s so important because you know, prayer is about relationship. It’s about making requests to God. And the first thing we have to do is not only acknowledge God for his true nature and character, which is Holiness, but we also have to in right standing with it with him. The Bible says the fervent effectual prayers of the righteous availeth much. And the Bible also talks about if we abide in him and his word abides in us. And so in order for us to effectively come into right standing a right relationship with him to make sure that our requests are going to be made known, is our hearts have to line up with his will and his purpose and his word. And if we don’t do that, just like a parent would not give request to their rebellious children, we shouldn’t expect God to give any requests to those who are in direct rebellion to God’s will and his purpose and his word just doesn’t work that way. So that’s important for us to have that mindset of being in right standing or right relationship with him as we make our requests known.
Sam Rohrer: Interesting, and Keith, let me ask you to expand upon that a little bit because that verse says, if I harbor sin in my heart, it doesn’t say the Lord won’t answer. It says he won’t even hear my request. That is a significant thing. I say how many people, perhaps even ourselves at times, open our mouths and we make motions, so then words come out as if we are praying, but it’s not going anywhere. God’s not even hearing them. I think there are many people, and I find myself, Keith, let’s be self-effacing here. I think it’s very easy to maybe hold some kind of a little sin in our heart, we would call it a little sin. Maybe we lie every once in a while, but we don’t confess it. Maybe we yield to temptation every once in a while and we say, ah, that’s just a little thing and we don’t deal with it. We say it’s not important. The Psalmist didn’t say in this verse anything about the number of those sins that we harbor or the size of them. He just said, if we harbor sin in our heart, talk to us about that a little bit.
Keith Wiebe: Well, that’s exactly what he said, Sam. One translation does say if I cherish iniquity of my heart, it’s the idea of something back there that I hang on to that I really know isn’t right. If I’m honest with myself, you know, and I tell folks, let’s be honest with ourselves. God is certainly honest with us and about us and it’s something that I harbor there that I know isn’t right, I know I need to deal with it, but I don’t. I am harboring iniquity. It constitutes rebellion against God. So the verse speaks on the one hand of the importance of my obedience to him. Isaiah 57:15 God describes himself as the Holy one who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy. He says he dwells in the high and Holy place and he does so to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite one.
Keith Wiebe: So it speaks to our obedience. It speaks also to our fellowship with God or perhaps like thereof because if I’m harboring any kind of little secret sin and like you said, it’s not issue of how many or how much, just the fact that it’s there. If I’m harboring that, it has an effect on my personal fellowship with God and how can I ask him to be intervening in things that are so needful that are so much bigger than anything that we can do, but I’m not willing to give him everything that’s in my heart. I think it’s a very significant concept.
Sam Rohrer: It is. And ladies and gentlemen, James talks about us, we can bring our sins and confess them and God will hear and get rid of them. We can take care of that problem. So we confess our sins and there’s a process to get rid of them so we don’t have to Harbor them. And Joe, let me go to you. The second requirement after following up to the fact that we must have a clean heart, is the idea that praying according to God’s will and example of Jesus himself going into the garden before going to the crucifixion and he’s going to carry the sins of the world there to the cross and it’s going to be a horrible, horrible time when he’s separated from God, his father and he prayed, God Father, if it be your will, let this cup pass, take away, determine some other way for the plan of redemption to be done. Not my will but thine be done. Joe, what does praying according to God’s will tell God about us when we say nevertheless, Father, not my will but thine be done.
Joe Green: Well, and that’s a great question, Sam, and I was looking at prayer as agreement. We’re agreeing with God in the natural realm as to what he has said and stated in the spiritual realm. And so with that being said, we need to seek his will and pray in accordance to his perfect will because he has a purpose and a plan and a direction. And when we come into agreement with him and we know that we’re praying his will and not only transforms and changes us, but it gives us that agreement that he’s looking for in the earth realm for him to move on our behalf. Because even as you stated with Jesus, he couldn’t pray against God, his father’s will because he was supposed to be partnering with the father to make salvation come to pass in the natural realm. And so when we look at a prayer as agreement, we understand as a brother Keith said that we are seeking God’s will. We are allowing our minds to be transformed, to change into the nature of God and we’re being as Christians being molded and shaped into his image, then that prayer of agreement is a thing that we know that the effective will of God is being executed in the earth, which is God’s original intention for us in the first place.
Sam Rohrer: Joe, we could really go a long way on that. Ladies and gentlemen, what Joe just said is very important. Prayer is agreeing with God. You know, even coming to Christ and salvation is ultimately is what is that? It’s agreeing with God that we need him when we come and we pray, we pray. Prayer requirement number one, pray with a clean heart. Sins confessed, putting ourselves right before God as a command, we’re going and praying but also as a privilege. We’re going into the presence of God and as Joe said, very clearly agreeing with God. So at the end of all of my prayers, I tried to say as much as possible, Lord, nevertheless, not my will but thine be done. If we do that however God answers and he will answer, we’ll be satisfied with it because we’re praying in agreement with God.
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Sam Rohrer: Well welcome back to Stand in the Gap today. I’m Sam Rohrer, accompanied today by Dr. Keith Wiebe and Dr. Joe Green. Both pastors, both a part of the ministry of the American Pastors Network and both regular on this program. Our theme today and the reason all of us are together, is I invited these men to be with me so that together we could talk about prayer. This is Tuesday. As you know, if you’re listening to the program, we emphasize 52 Tuesdays prayer initiative, which we started back in November and then we’ll go all the way up through November of this year where we’re trying to tie together and use this manmade established date called November 3rd this year, an election here for the country when we are forced to choose human leaders that we go back 10 steps prior to that and we said, if we’re going to have to choose people, let’s as God’s people make it a point and be reminded regularly like Joshua did in his household to say, as for me in my house, we will serve the Lord.
Sam Rohrer: Choose God first. If we choose God first in our lives, ladies and gentlemen, we will then choose to pray as we’ve talked about in the program because prayer is a command. Pray without ceasing, the apostle Paul said. But it’s also at distinct privilege that’s given to all of those who are a part of the household of faith as the Bible talks about true believers who are now adopted children of God. And if you’re listening to me right now and you know Christ is your savior, you are part of that number. You’re a part of God’s family adopted in just like Joe and Keith and I are and every person who’s ever lived who’s trusted part of God’s family, but God also says that as a part of that. Remember that when you come to me in prayer, there are certain things you’ve got to keep in mind.
Sam Rohrer: Number one, we’ve already talked about requirement that our hearts are clean. No unconfessed sin there because if we do, God says, Psalm 66, I won’t hear you. The second requirement that we just talked about in the last segment was that we must pray according to God’s will. And as Joe Green made very, very clear that really means praying in agreement with God, not my will as Christ said in the garden before he went to the cross, but thine be done. That is how we must think and pray. That’s requirement number two. But now the third requirement is found in Matthew 21:22 where Christ actually told his disciples whatsoever you ask in prayer, believing you shall receive. When we pray in faith, truly believing that God can answer, great things can be done and Christ said even move the mountains, but the opposite is also true. Little faith, little believing is a little power.
Sam Rohrer: Some prayer can be powerful. God wants us to pray, but pray in faith believing. Keith, much has been written on prayer and there are tremendous comments by folks even like AW Tozer who I quoted from in the last segment and others that we know who’ve talked about prayer, but there’s no real better place to go than what the word of God says about prayer and what the scripture says about it. Our own life experiences factor into it and I know you have many examples that you could share about how God has answered prayer, but why is faith and faith believing so important, Keith, in how we approach this matter of prayer and expecting to see prayer answered?
Keith Wiebe: Faith is absolutely essential to every aspect of our walk with the Lord and certainly in prayer. The Bible tells us that we’re to walk by faith and not by sight. It tells us that whatever is not of faith is sin. And faith, coming to God in faith is not a demand that we can tell him what to do, expect absolutely that he will do it. It is coming to him with our requests, with our needs, the things on our heart, agreeing with him that he is powerful. He is able, he can answer them and completely surrendering ourselves to his disposal and how he’s going to do it. We face things individually and collectively that won’t be fixed by anybody’s social or political solution. A part of our emphasis on these 52 Tuesdays of prayer, as you have mentioned, Sam is praying for our nation. Praying about this election that is coming up and it’s really understanding that what God says and the way he says it and what he does is right doing it simply because God says it. Praying in faith and praying for the election that God will grant us leadership that honors his ordinance, his principles, but do so trusting God that he’ll give us leaders that we need to have.
Sam Rohrer: Amen, Keith, and ladies and gentlemen, that’s one application. When we get to the last segment, Joe and Keith and I are going to pray and we are to pray for those in authority. Yes, we’re to pray for our families. We’re to pray for those who are our pastors to lead us and we’re to pray for a lot of things. I hope that you are in addition, Joe, I’d like to go to the fourth prayer requirement that I’ve pulled out of scripture that these seem to really link. We pray with a clean heart. That’s number one. We pray that God’s will will be done. Number two, and then I just, Keith this talked about, we must pray with faith believing, but the fourth one comes in the book of James. James 4:3 says, he says, “You ask and you receive not because you ask that you may consume it upon your lusts.” Very interesting. James says, I read this and put it in the vernacular. He says, if you’re not careful, you’re going to come to God with selfish prayers and God’s not going to answer you. So in a practical sense, Joe, how can a Christian easily come to God? Was selfish? Prayer requests a wrong motive and God not answered. Do you think this is a big problem today in America?
Joe Green: Absolutely, I do, Sam. And it’s part of our human nature as we gravitate away from God. You know, we have to get realigned many times. But one of the things I always like to look at is as we’ve been talking about, the more we spend time in fellowship with God and the more we come into agreement with his will and the more we meditate on his word, then our nature begins to line up with God. You know, our ways become more like him. And so when we pray we have to pray with the right motivation because when we don’t, even if we’re praying the right thing, but with the wrong motivation, then God won’t respond, because as the book of James says, we’re doing it for the wrong reasons. When God brings punishment or judgment on people, he does it only to bring them into the knowledge of God, to correct them because he loves them.
Joe Green: There’s times throughout the scripture when God had put a unrighteous king in charge of his people, but it wasn’t because you know, he wanted to harm them, but he wanted to get their attention and bring them back into a relationship with him. And so when we do that, we understand God’s ultimate motivation is for all of us to come into the knowledge of him, for all of us to come into his saving grace. And so that desire has to be our desire when we pray because when we don’t, it can draw us away from God and we begin to reflect more of the enemy of God than the friend of God that he desires for us to be. And so we always have to seek his ultimate goal, his ultimate desire, his ultimate motivation. And that only occurs when we spend a lot of time fellowshipping with him, agreeing with him, and meditating on his will and his word for us.
Sam Rohrer: Joe, I think of this, you may have just a brief comment on it. There was a group of people in the New Testament called Pharisees and they love to pray. They loved to pray standing in the public square so everybody could see them and Christ rebuked them. Seems to me that when I read this passage about praying with selfish prayer requests that the Pharisees were a great example of that. I mean, and we are looking at the Pharisees and say all how bad those Pharisees were, but it’s pretty easy, isn’t it, for us to kind of pray so that either we get the glory or we somehow can act like a Pharisee. I mean, talk about that just a little bit.
Joe Green: Absolutely. Because in Matthew 23 and other places, he was very specific. He says, do what they say do but don’t do what they do. Because even though they professed me with their mouth and they say the right things, but their hearts are not right with me, their hearts are far from me. And when we do, we begin to get self-righteous many times because our motivation isn’t right and when we do that, God rejects because their hearts weren’t right with him. And he said, they sit on Moses’s seat, they give the word, they’d pray the right time, they even give tithes, but because their hearts weren’t right with God, then he didn’t acknowledge their prayers because again, his ultimate goal is for us to be conformed into the image of his son, and that’s not just on the outside, but more importantly, that’s on the inside. He wants our hearts to be pure before him and for his essence to become our essence in his nature, to become our nature and for our will to become his will.
Sam Rohrer: And Joe, when you lay it out like that, ladies and gentlemen kind of ties together what we’re saying, that when we choose God, it’s got to be manifested in the heart. And that’s why the first requirement, Psalm 66 says that if I regard iniquity in my heart, if I harbor sin in my heart, not any unconfessed sin, if I hold onto that because I don’t want to turn over everything to God, then you end up looking like a Pharisee and God looks at the heart first, does he not? So that’s why if you want to be powerful and prayer, got to start with the heart first, pray according to God’s will, number two. Pray with faith, believing God to believe that God will in fact the answer. And then fourth, we pray with the right motive and that is ultimately that God would get the glory. When that happens all of a sudden powerful prayer.
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Sam Rohrer: Well, welcome back to Stand in the Gap today and we’re about to go into our final segment now. You’ve been with us for the beginning. We are focusing today on prayer and we’re doing this as a part of our 52 Tuesday prayer initiative. This segment here, this last segment, we’re going to try to devote mostly to prayer. We’ve talked about prayer requirements today. Meeting God’s prayer requirement’s. 52 Tuesdays is really an emphasis that we are trying to encourage by all those, the remnant across America, those who know how to pray and those who have a relationship with the God of heaven, who alone is able to answer prayer requests. It is all of you and us who are right now listening to the program who have the ability to go before God and expect prayer to be answered and we’re talking about those four requirements.
Sam Rohrer: Once we choose to, as Joshua said, for me and my house, we’re going to serve the Lord, once we choose to obey, which is a choice. One of the things that that will reflect in is that we will be concerned about what’s in our heart. That’s why David said it’s a requirement, Psalm 66 that first requirement we identified was if I harbor sin in my heart, God will not only not answer, he won’t even hear me. Isn’t that a terrible thing to talk to somebody and know they’re not even listening to you? Even worse talking to God and knowing that he’s not even listening to you. Sometimes you feel like your prayers are not going above the ceiling. Many times they aren’t. If we have sin in our heart, they’re not. We’re wasting our time. God doesn’t want us to waste time and neither do we. So requirement one, clean heart.
Sam Rohrer: Number two, we pray according to God’s will, as Jesus demonstrated in the garden before he went to the cross, as Joe said, very clearly earlier on, it’s really agreement with God’s will. That’s why it’s a good idea, I really encourage it when you conclude your prayers, whatever they are, however you are manifesting them and offering them up, good way to close, nevertheless, not my will Lord and what I want, but your will be done.
Sam Rohrer: And then the third requirement that we identified is that answered prayer as a result of faith. Believing Jesus told the disciples that you can move mountains or you can move nothing, but faith believing we have to believe that God in fact is able to answer or why are we going to him? And then the last one is we have to pray with the right motive. If we pray like the Pharisees to be seen of men rather than of God, we are praying with a wrong motive, but we’re praying selfish ways that we can get ahead rather than God’s will is advanced. We don’t have prayers answered. If we do these things, God will answer our prayer. Keith, very quickly, 30 seconds of comment if you have any and then go to the Lord in prayer and pray just as God has led you and then we’ll come back. I’ll make a comment and then we’ll go to Joe.
Keith Wiebe: Certainly, Sam. And I do think the emphasis here is critical. We devote this last segment not to talking about prayer, but actually to praying. The most effective meeting I ever attended that had anything to do with prayer was a meeting of about 25 of us from around the country. Very concerned collectively about where our nation was going in a two day period. We spent 11 hours together, fully nine hours of that actually praying and God said, my people who are called by my name will pray, and that’s what we are here to do today.
Keith Wiebe: Heavenly father, we do come into your presence, grateful for the privilege. You’ve told us that you are the God of all comfort. The father of mercies. You have told us that your son, the Lord Jesus, our intercessor, our mediator understands everything that we face and therefore we can come boldly to the throne of grace to obtain mercy and find help in our time of need and Father, we are a needy people.
Keith Wiebe: We are broken, we are human. We are beset with situations and circumstances and conflicts that are beyond us that we can’t fix and we need you. Our prayer focus during this time is on our 52 Tuesdays prayer initiative. We are praying specifically for our nation, for the election that is coming. We need Father, we acknowledge in that election what only you can do. And I pray that each of us will present at your throne of grace hearts that are pure, not perfect certainly, but hearts in which we are no longer harboring, cherishing what we know to be sin, but as you reveal those pockets of disobedience and unbelief to us, that we confess them and we deal with them. As we pray for this election, we pray for leaders who will govern us with the wisdom that comes from the principles of your word, wisdom that will protect the inalienable rights that our declaration of independence and our constitution has given to us.
Keith Wiebe: We pray to be governed with that wisdom from your word and, Father, in harmony with our constitution that defines the laws under which we live. Lord, I pray that your people will exercise what is both their privilege and their responsibility as citizens to vote. Ours is a government of the people, by the people, for the people. And that Father, is no good if those people do not come to you. And if they do not come to you with pure and repentant hearts. Father, we need you, your power, your mercy upon us. And I would pray asking you to extend for a little longer that period of mercy and grace that I think you have given us in our nation these years to live and respond at your way. And we come father not because of our merit but we because the merit of the Lord Jesus, our intercessor and we pray in his name.
Sam Rohrer: And brother Joe, let me go to you now. There’s not much time that is left here. Do you have any comment on anything we prayed about? And certainly as we’re talking about the other challenges facing our nation, other things that are facing the world, we need to pray for our families. We need to pray for moms and dads and individuals to be looking to God right now in their own personal lives. Comment and pray as you feel led.
Joe Green: Yes, absolutely. One of the major problems that we face in this country especially. There’s a lot of teachings out there. Some people call it word of faith and I mean extreme cases of that that believes that you can make things happen by your prayers based on your own will. And that’s contrary to what the scripture says because as we’ve been saying, our prayers are effective when we pray in accordance to God’s will with his motivation and with his heart and hearing from God, the Bible says that the guarantee that we have, that God answers prayers. Jesus said, if we abide in him and his words abide in us, then we ask for whatever we want to and it shall be done.
Joe Green: And so Father, we just thank you today. We praise you and we bless you. We thank you for the opportunity, the privilege. We thank you for the responsibility and the authority that you’ve given us. We also know that Romans tells us that all things work together for the good of those who love you and are called according to your purpose because your desires for us to be conformed into the image of your son and your son. Jesus said he only said the things he heard you say and did the thing that he saw you to do. And so with that idea and understanding, Father, we pray for us to hear what you are saying in this season to turn away from our rebellion and our sin nature and to turn to you and to cry out to you, for you to heal our land. And we know when we do that, that you will hear and you will respond.
Sam Rohrer: And ladies and gentlemen, our program has come to an end. Go to our website, americanpastorsnetwork.net. Sign up to become a part of 10,000 warrior prayer army strong across America. Do that right now. Stand with us in prayer.
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