Tonight we find ourselves not across the seas
in a mission field, but we find ourselves
in our very own country in a mission
field.
Tonight the title of the message is An
Urgent Prayer for America.
It is amazing to think of the awesome
and special privileges that God has granted the
United States of America.
The early principles of the pilgrims and the
Puritans laid a rock-solid foundation for our
country.
And think about what God has done for
us.
He has sent revivals, He has sent awakenings
unlike any time in the history of the
world.
Today we have freedom of conscience, freedom of
press, freedom of speech, freedom to worship God
anywhere, anytime, because many of the people that
founded this country believed the Word of God.
But we have left God in our country.
Sin is taking over our nation and our
love for sin is destroying our nation.
And what is a nation but a collection
of individuals?
And so when I speak of America, I
think of our families and our friends and
our neighbors.
God has given us wonderful things and we
are destroying the things that God has given
us.
I think of the verse in the Scripture,
to whom much is given, much shall be
required.
Now, if your company gives you a beautiful
car and you trash it, Mike Larson, you're
going to have to pay for it, right?
And America has trashed what God has given
to her.
Leonard Ravenhill famously said that Sodom and Gomorrah
have no Bible.
How much more will God judge America who
has the full revelation of Him?
America rejects God in light of all the
blessings He has put upon her.
And like Israel of old, we have squandered
the heritage that God has given to us.
You know what America has done?
We have squandered the gospel of the cross
of Christ for the false gospel of the
American dream.
We have exchanged the cross of Christ for
our own comfort.
And many of our churches have lost the
gospel altogether.
There is no change of lives because there
is no gospel.
Wherever the gospel is, it changes lives.
Amen?
What can we do?
What can we do to change the situation?
And the answer is nothing in and of
ourselves.
Christ said, without me, you can do nothing.
America's only hope tonight is the mercy of
God through the preaching of the gospel.
And that is why tonight I want to
urge you to earnestly begin crying out to
God, not just for some country, not for
some ideal, but for the souls of men
that we live right next to.
Because no real change has ever come without
earnest, desperate prayer.
All of the great awakenings came from Christians
agonizing in prayer.
Prayer releases God's power on wicked hearts to
soften and break them and mold them for
His purposes.
And our country is hardening by the minute
because of prayerless Christians.
Now, with our text in Daniel 9, I'd
ask you to stand as we read two
verses, verses 13 and 14, God's indictment against
His people of old for their prayerlessness.
As it is written in the Law of
Moses, all this evil has come upon us,
yet made we not our prayer before the
Lord our God, that we might turn from
our iniquities and understand thy truth.
Therefore hath the Lord watched upon the evil
and brought it upon us.
For the Lord our God is righteous in
all His works which He doeth, for we
obeyed not His voice.
As we read this, I want to ask
who will pray for America?
We need a work of God to awaken
this country.
Let's pray.
Oh God, we ask that you would light
a fire in our hearts for our loved
ones, that we would have the boldness and
courage of Paul and the tenderness of our
Lord Jesus Christ.
Lord, that you would save and break hearts
right here in this congregation.
Lord, that you would make us nothing, help
us to put aside all the facades and
the hypocrisy.
And God, that we might be true, Holy
Spirit filled, fruit bearing Christians.
Lord, your way be done in our lives,
we ask in Jesus' name.
Amen.
You may be seated.
Don't you want to see God work?
That God would fill our hearts with prayer
for those that we see every day who
are lost in their trespasses and sins.
Do you look at your family tonight?
Can you say beyond a shadow of a
doubt that each one in your family is
safe in Jesus' care?
Can you look at the people that you
live with?
I'm talking about in your house.
And say, I know that they all know
Jesus Christ and they worship Christ and I
have that assurance beyond a shadow of a
doubt.
Now if you couldn't answer yes to that,
agony ought to be in your heart.
And prayer of agony ought to go up
to God until you know that the people
in your house and in your sphere of
influence shine with the presence of God in
their face and in their life.
In Daniel 9, Daniel gives himself to prayer
for his country.
And that is what we need to do.
But when Daniel was praying, he wasn't praying
for some ideal, for some patriotic ideal.
Because all of the nations of this world
are going to pass away.
Amen?
There is only one kingdom that will last
forever and that is the Lord's kingdom.
But God has put Israel in a special
place and special privileges for her.
Not for themselves, but for His glory.
And any special privileges that we have in
our country are not for ourselves, but for
God's glory.
How can we see God return to prominence?
Blessed is the nation whose God is the
Lord.
If we as individuals seek first the kingdom
of God, all these things will be added
unto us.
And so it is with an entire nation.
What can we do to see America turn
back to God?
Well, the first thing that we need, which
is found in Daniel 9 and verse 3,
is that we need a serious commitment.
We need a commitment to not only seek
the kingdom of God, but to seek the
salvation of others.
You know this, nothing lasting in your life
has ever occurred without an all-out do
-or-die commitment.
We have to give ourselves as a living
sacrifice to the Lord if we are going
to see anything lasting happen.
Jim Elliott, he said, he is no fool
who gives what he cannot keep to gain
what he cannot lose.
And that is what we are required to
do.
We have to give ourselves in agonizing prayer
for those that we want to see saved.
And prayer works.
Do you believe that tonight?
God answers prayer.
He uses the prayers of His people as
means for accomplishing His sovereign purposes in this
earth.
Daniel says in verse 3, I set my
face unto the Lord to seek by prayer
and supplications with fasting and sackcloth and ashes.
I wonder how many sober-minded people we
have in this congregation.
I wonder who would be deemed by God
to be sober-minded.
God doesn't answer the prayers of people who
fool around with His word and who fool
around with His lordship in their lives.
God doesn't answer the prayers of any of
those people.
He answers the prayers of people who are
sober and serious-minded when it comes to
His awesome throne and His awesome majesty.
Look at what Daniel did.
He set his face unto the Lord God
and he sought Him by supplications, by fasting,
by sackcloth, by ashes.
This was a serious endeavor.
And we are to give every inch of
our being to prayer.
We are to give every ounce of our
power to praying because God will answer prayer.
Now, one of the things it mentions is
fasting.
You know that you are committed when you
are fasting.
What is fasting?
Fasting is denying ourselves of any lawful pleasure
for a spiritual purpose.
It's denying ourselves of any lawful pleasure for
a spiritual purpose.
It's not just cutting back on our eating
for health reasons, though that's good to do
that.
Fasting is denying ourselves of food or other
earthly pleasures for a spiritual purpose.
Why do we fast?
Well, fasting shows a commitment to God.
It shows a hunger for God.
And the Bible says that whoever hungers after
God, after righteousness, after righteousness, after righteousness, after
righteousness, will what?
They will be filled.
Matthew 6 tells us that when we fast,
we are to anoint our head, to wash
our face, that we appear not unto men
to fast.
We are to fast for the glory of
God.
We are to fast for His purposes, not
to be seen of men.
But fasting, giving ourselves in total commitment to
God.
What does it accomplish?
We all talk about having a stronger commitment
to God.
Here's one way that you can have a
stronger commitment to God right here.
You can fast because that's one thing that
it accomplishes.
It accomplishes a stronger commitment to God.
Think about it this way.
An athlete denies himself of everything in order
to train, in order to train, in order
to train, in order to train longer.
Have you seen someone who is training?
My brother recently went on a marathon run,
a bike ride that is, from coast to
coast, literally from California to Washington, D.C.
And in order to do that bike ride,
he had to deny himself first of all
in training to even be able to make
it across the United States.
And then he had to take off work
and he had to dedicate himself every day,
one minute at a time, one mile at
a time, one sore muscle at a time,
one flat tire at a time.
And he did everything that he could to
make it from Washington, D.C. And last
week he arrived in Washington, D.C. from
Sacramento, California.
That's what it takes to make progress in
prayer with God.
It takes an all-out commitment to God
and to others for the glory of God
that you would deny yourself to fast for
the souls of people.
Now, if you've never fasted, let me give
you an idea of how you can begin.
You can begin by praying about it and
start with one day for your fast.
And a fast can be denying yourself of
food, that's what we normally think of it
as, but it could also be denying yourself
of watching the news.
Instead of watching the news at night, you
go into your prayer closet and you dedicate
that time for the souls of men.
There are many things that you can deny
yourself of, but set up a day, if
you've never fasted before, a one-day fast
would be good.
Choose a day when your activities are light,
if you're fasting from food, because you don't
want to endanger your health.
And if you're sick or you're on medication
or you're pregnant, you need to talk to
your doctor first.
But remember that fasting is for the glory
of God, it is to get things done
spiritually, it's not for vain glory.
And God will not bless anything that is
done for the praise of men.
So Daniel says, I set my face unto
the Lord, and he shows this amazing commitment
for his people.
Now look at, secondly, how we need to
pray.
Not only with this commitment, this serious, sober
commitment to God, but also with a steadfast
confidence in God.
Look at verse 4 of Daniel chapter 9.
He prays to the Lord, he says, O
Lord, the great and dreadful God, keeping the
covenant and mercy to them that love him
and to them that keep his commandments.
Daniel's confidence was in a dreadful God, but
verse 9 also says that God is full
of mercy.
And when you think of God and standing
before God face to face, standing before him
is a dreadful thing, because his holiness is
beyond anything that we could ever dream of
keeping.
Do you find yourself failing?
Do you find yourself weak?
How much more will you be when you
stand before the dreadful God of the universe?
But verse 9 says that he is great
and full of mercy.
That is the only way that any one
of us could ever think of entering into
heaven and standing before the awesome presence of
God.
Aren't you glad that his mercies are new
every morning and his faithfulness is great to
you?
Not because of you, but because of Christ
who we look to.
Our confidence is in Jesus Christ.
And as we think about this, I want
to sing a verse from the song Before
the Throne of God above.
And if you have your handout, it's on
the front sheet of that handout.
Because our confidence is not in the next
presidential election.
Our confidence is not in our finances.
Our confidence is not in a good program
or in some false promise of a politician.
Our confidence is in Jesus Christ and in
his great mercy.
Sing this with me.
Before the throne of God above, I have
a strong and perfect plea.
A great high priest whose name is love,
whoever lives and pleads for me.
My name is graven on his hands.
My name is written on his heart.
I know that while in heaven he stands,
no tongue can bid me thanks depart.
No tongue can bid me thanks depart.
When you think of our country in the
last century, we've fallen from hope in the
gospel to hope in this thing called the
American dream.
Everybody can have a chicken on their table.
And everyone can have a college education and
a picket white fence.
And they can have two dogs.
And for you cat lovers, they can have
one cat for a very short time, okay?
And two and a half beautiful children.
The American dream is not God's dream.
Abraham Lincoln said this, my concern is not
whether God is on our side.
My greatest concern is to be on God's
side.
My concern tonight is not that any of
you have the American dream.
Fathers and mothers, my hope for you is
not that you would be rich and increased
with goods and have need of nothing.
My hope for you is that for you
and your house that you will serve the
Lord.
Revelation 3.17, Christ describes the church of
Laodicea and I think it's very much like
the people of America who say, I am
rich and increased with goods and have need
of nothing.
And knowest not that thou art wretched and
miserable and poor and blind and naked.
Our country thinks that they are rich and
increased with goods, but on the day when
Christ comes, all of this will become nothing
and it will show itself to be worthless.
And there are so many people that say
that they are Christians, but Jesus asks here
tonight, why call me Lord, Lord, and do
not the things that I say?
And I will say that to you, my
brothers and sisters in Christ.
You say that you know Christ, but don't
call him Lord if you do not the
things that he says.
But oh, if you love Christ and you're
hot for him and you're on fire for
him, go out and preach the gospel and
show a real Christian life to people who
need to see it.
Because this nation needs so many more true
and genuine Christians.
I don't want for my children the American
dream.
What does it profit my daughter Katie or
my daughter Kristen or my sons Will and
soon to be born Evan?
What does it profit them if they gain
the whole world and lose their own soul?
What is a person going to give in
exchange for their soul?
Daniel saw that his confidence was in God.
He needed to pray to God, not go
to the government for some new tax rebate
for some loan that's going to make some
deal happen.
Our hope is not in anything but Jesus
Christ.
And Daniel says in verse four, Lord, the
great and dreadful God, keeping the covenant and
mercy to them that love him.
Oh, I have a covenant with Jesus Christ,
the new covenant in his blood, and he
has shed his blood and made a promise
to me that all my sins will be
taken away if I trust in him.
And that's what we need to be preaching
the gospel, not the American dream.
If my children get a college education and
they work for NASA and go to the
moon and they know not Christ, they're going
a place that's a lot farther away than
the moon for eternity.
They're going to an eternal lake of fire
if they don't know Christ.
Don't you love your family?
Don't you love your extended relatives?
How about loving the relatives of other people
who are wicked and who don't even pray
for their family because they don't know Christ?
How about praying for them?
How about praying for your neighbor who has
nobody praying for them?
That's what we need to do.
Our confidence is in God to convert their
heart as it was with Daniel.
My confidence is in Christ and I hope
my children's confidence will be in Christ.
My children, I don't care if they're driving
a garbage truck or they're driving a Fortune
500 company, I want them to seek first
the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and
all these things will be added unto them.
We need to boldly come before the throne
of grace that we may obtain mercy because
that's what rebel sinners need is mercy and
find grace to help in time of need.
I can't convert anybody.
I know for sure, as sure as a
father can be, that one of my children
is saved, but I don't know about the
rest.
And even though they're young, I am agonizing
for my children's souls and I'm going for
help because the only one that I know
that can give mercy is Jesus Christ.
And so we need to pray seriously.
We need to pray confidently.
We need to pray with a sincere confession.
And here we find in verses 4 through
5, Daniel begins to confess his sin.
You know what's going to send our children
to hell?
You know what's going to send our children
to hell and your neighbors to hell?
Their sins.
That's what's going to send them to hell.
We need to begin reaching our children and
giving them the message of power and grace
and forgiveness of sins, but we can never
give that message in a credible manner if
we love the world.
If you love the world and you love
the things of this world, no matter how
small that fox is, it's going to spoil
the vine and it will reek of hypocrisy
before your children and it will send them
to hell.
And so you need to begin by confessing
your sins.
If you want to see God work on
behalf of your children and on behalf of
this neighborhood and this city and this country,
Daniel, he begins to confess his sins.
He says, I prayed unto the Lord my
God and made my confession and said, O
Lord, the great and dreadful God, keeping the
covenant and mercy to them that love Him
and to them that keep His commandments, we
have sinned and have committed iniquity and have
done wickedly and rebelled even by departing from
Thy precepts and from Thy judgments.
I want to ask you tonight, won't you
be zealous and repent of your sins tonight?
How zealous are you to get sin out
of your life?
The Bible tells us to confess our sins
one to another and so fulfill the law
of Christ.
The best way to get sin out of
your life is to reveal it, to corner
the enemy, to unveil the enemy.
Confess your sins.
Tell the sins that you're struggling with to
another brother.
At times it's appropriate to tell it to
the whole church because you're going to be
a lot more successful and you're going to
be able to circumspect if you take those
sins out from underneath the rug.
But I want to give you some encouragement
because if you're a believer, if you confess
your sins, He is faithful and just to
forgive you of your sins and to cleanse
you from all unrighteousness.
There is not a sin that God cannot
forgive.
Confess your sins.
What do you think?
You're going to hide under the rocks on
the day of judgment?
The rocks won't hide you.
Confess your sins.
You'll be standing naked before the throne of
God soon enough.
I want to ask you, are you on
praying ground?
Are you able to pray and get a
hold of God so that He will actually
move the hearts of sinners?
You need to get there.
Pray individually.
Confess your sins individually, but we also need
to confess our sins corporately.
We need to pray for our families and
we need to pray for the families of
this church that are not meeting with God.
We need to pray for fathers and mothers
and children that go weeks and months and
maybe even years and say that they're Christians
and they don't open their Bibles and they
don't find themselves on their knees.
If you're a praying Christian, you need to
pray for prayerless professors of Christianity in this
church.
Because what do we have?
What do we have after all of our
Bible knowledge and after all of our words?
What do we have if we don't have
Christ?
We have a bunch of empty knowledge and
all of those words and knowledge can be
just as much idolatry as pornography on the
internet if you don't know God.
Anything you find your end in that doesn't
result in the glory of God is an
idol.
Everything that has been given to us is
to get us to God.
And if you're satisfied completely in anything on
this earth without a vision to God, then
it is an idol.
It could be this tie.
It could be preaching.
Anything that we idolize that doesn't get us
to God is an idol.
And we need to confess our sins because
there are many people who are prayerless.
There are many people who are totally lost
and they'll never pray and their prayers will
never get through to God.
But if you know God, you need to
pray.
You need to pray for those who can't
get a hold of God.
That's the means of grace.
Pray for them.
I read an article recently by Reb Bradley
on WorldNetDaily entitled, What's Happened to America?
This is why we need to pray.
He writes, quote, according to a crime study
from the Department of Commerce Census Bureau, in
the last 30 years the murder rate has
increased more than 100%.
While crime is increasing, stability of family relationships
is on a downward spiral.
On a national average, marriages are now dissolving
at nearly a 50% rate of divorce.
Now adolescents are not only alienated from their
parents, but they sue them for emancipation.
And in one well-known case, a man
who had been born with a birth defect
sued his parents for not having an abortion.
This article was written during the week of
Columbine, but he goes on, quote, students are
killing their classmates.
Crime is up.
Families are falling apart.
And academically, student success is at an all
-time low.
Since 1963, SAT scores have been dropping steadily
from an average score of 980 in 1963
down to a score of 901 in 1999.
In the last few decades, premarital and extramarital
sexual activity has increased markedly.
Graphic pornography, once available only on the black
market and popular only with the, quote, lower
elements of society, unquote, can be found in
corner video stores and reputable hotels and is
enjoyed as entertainment by the masses.
In the last generation, the numbers of teenage
girls that have become sexually active has increased
from 12% in 1955 to 70%
now, unquote.
Bradley's conclusion is that America is no longer
the home of the free, but the home
of the slaves.
He says, quote, in modern America, most individuals
are ruled by their passions.
They lack self-restraint.
They cannot say no to themselves.
When they are angry, they give vent to
their anger and lash out in violent actions
or words.
When they lust, they gobble up pornography like
candy and pursue those they lust after with
no thought to wedding vows or little thought
to risk.
When they covet, they steal to obtain or
they cheat to achieve.
When they need an escape from stress, they
drink, inhale, or pop a pill to numb
the pain.
When it's to their advantage, they have little
regard for integrity, but lie, mislead, or break
a promise.
The addiction to personal gratification rules the individuals
who comprise America.
The land of the free has become inhabited
by slaves, unquote.
Tonight, what can release us from this slavery?
My friends, the gospel of Jesus Christ is
that Jesus Christ died for sinners of whom
I am chief.
Christ can set us free from our sins,
but we need God's mercy on this country.
In this country, we have murdered the unborn.
In our hospitals, the hospitals that some of
you gave birth to your children in, these
hospitals, they're aborting the 1.3 million babies
in America every year.
We need God to have mercy on this
country where we have allowed godless humanism to
invade our schools.
The answer, though, is not to get God
first back in our schools.
The answer is to get God back in
our families.
How about that first?
How about to get God back in our
pulpits?
How about let's get some preachers that preach
the word of God without compromise, that are
not afraid to preach the truth.
We must beg God to have mercy, even
as Christ did on the cross, when he
said, Father, forgive them, for they know not
what they do.
And then we need to seek and pray
for a spiritual solution.
And the solution is not that we would
eradicate poverty from America.
Giving more money to our children is not
going to make them love God.
Giving them tax rebates, lower gas prices, is
not going to make America love God.
In fact, it will probably make America more
greedy.
But some of us here today are more
concerned about high gas prices than the souls
of men.
And we need to get on our knees
and see the lost souls, and that God
can redeem them.
Don't you believe that?
The problem is not that we're not smart
enough.
Is the solution more education?
Get them a higher degree.
Get them a master's degree.
My children can get master's degrees, but if
they don't know Christ, what good does it
do them?
Listen, the solution is found in Daniel 9
.16. Daniel says, essentially, that we must be
made nothing.
We must be made nothing.
We need to see our own guilt.
He says in verse 16, O Lord, according
to all Thy righteousness I beseech Thee, let
Thine anger and let Thy fury be turned
away from Thy city Jerusalem, Thy holy mountain,
because for our sins and for the iniquities
of our fathers, or our parents, Jerusalem and
Thy people are become a reproach to all
that are about us.
What we need is God's people to have
a burning desire to become nothing.
To have no ambition in this life, but
only to follow Jesus Christ.
That's what we need.
We need to stop all of our American
dream and throw it away and follow Christ
and let's see what God will give us
in exchange for that worthless American dream.
And we need God's glory to become everything.
In verses 17 and 18, He says, Now
therefore, O our God, hear the prayer of
Thy servant and his supplications.
This is his prayer.
Cause Thy face to shine upon Thy sanctuary
that is desolate for the Lord's sake.
Is your sanctuary desolate?
Have you seen God work in your heart?
Or is there dust in the chambers?
Oh, we need the Holy Spirit, the wind
of God to come and blow us clean
of all of our iniquities and all the
things that are besetting sins to us and
those things that we cling to.
And we need to admit those things to
God and let God fill us and let
God be our end.
And then we can pray for people and
God will answer.
As we close, I want to share with
you five minutes of a sermon from David
Wilkerson.
I played it for the men a couple
weeks ago.
This is a man who went to New
York City to reach drug addicts and gang
members and he ended up planting a church
in Times Square, New York City.
The gospel is powerful and it can reach
the hardest of sinners.
I'm going to go ahead and get that
started.
If I as a pastor knew you personally
and I was watching your life and as
one of the pastors of this church I
come to you and say, I love you,
but I have to tell you the truth.
You're changing.
You're not what you were.
Something in the world has gotten in your
heart.
I don't know if it's television.
I don't know what it is that has
your heart, but I see changes in you.
I don't see the brokenness.
I don't see the compassion you had once
for your family.
I don't see concern for your unsaved loved
ones.
You're changing.
Little by little, something's happening to you.
Would it bring you to your knees when
the ruin that you are not even aware
of is suddenly brought before your eyes?
But the truth of the matter is, in
all honesty, there are numbers among us that
are changing.
You've lost your fight.
Little by little, you're losing the love of
God, the love of Christ.
Little by little, these things are making inroads.
Folks, why do you think your pastors cry
out against television?
These things, I don't know where it is
on the job.
These things that creep in and suddenly this
Jerusalem, the walls go down.
Ruin sets in.
Does it really matter to you that your
unsaved loved ones are dying and we're getting
closer and closer to the end?
Does it really concern you they could die
and go to hell?
Where's the anguish?
Where are the tears?
Where's the mourning?
Where's the fasting?
Anguish means extreme pain and distress.
The emotion's so stirred that it becomes painful.
Acute, deeply felt inner pain because of conditions
about you, in you or around you.
When is the last time you've been to
church where you've seen young people under such
conviction because the people of God have been
on their face and there's such a concern
and there's such an agony that young people
are falling on their faces and calling on
God because a spirit of conviction is called
down from heaven upon them.
Our so-called awakenings, our stirrings, last but
a short time.
They are so short-lived and in those
times we promise God we'll never return to
our passivity.
That it's not long, it's just weeks or
months and we're back and this time we
slip further back into passivity than when we
started.
And we say this time, oh God, you've
touched me for life.
I'll never be the same.
And it's like fireworks.
A loud bang and a lot of noise
and then it dies.
All true passion is born out of anguish.
All true passion for Christ comes out of
a baptism of anguish.
You search the Scripture and you'll find that
when God determined to recover a ruined situation,
He would seek out a praying man and
He'd take him down into the waters of
anguish.
And I remember breaking down and it didn't
matter the crowds going by I sat on
the side of a building and wept.
Weeks and weeks of calling on the name
of the Lord.
Confessing my own deadness and dryness.
And see them selling a kind of heroin
would kill you so I've got the good
stuff, it'll kill you.
And I was in anguish.
I was in anguish four blocks from here
on Broadway.
Weeping and crying and wailing.
I wasn't looking for a ministry.
I wasn't looking to build a church.
I was feeling God's pain for a lost
city.
A true prayer life begins at the place
of anguish.
A place where lifetime decisions are made.