Watchmen on the Wall & Prayer Walk
to Strategic Points in Washington DC
It’s
been a very long day that is filled with enormous and impacting spiritual
activities. The day started with an hour of Prayer for the nation and for
pastors from 6am to 7:00am. There were many guest speakers today. Two of them
stood out because they are well known names in evangelical circle. I will share
about some of their speeches before the end of this blog.
Some
of the programs planned for today include a meetings and prayers with our state
congressional officials. As it happened, our California Congressional officials
did not respond to our request to meet with and pray with them. I suspected
that this could be because it coincided with the visit of President Obama to
California. Another program that was planned for the day was prayer walk around
the strategic points of Washington DC. I was a part of a group that went on the
prayer walk to the area of the Whitehouse, ACLU headquarters, Planned
Parenthood headquarter, Treasury Department, FBI headquarters and National
Museum. One remarkable thing in this prayer walk is the unity by which we
prayed for the president, the elected officials, and the nation in general. The
focus was not on painting one party as saints while the other is of the devil.
That is remarkable. It is an inspiring exercise as we also sang some historical
national songs like Battle Hymn of the Republic and the like.
As
indicated earlier, two noted speakers spoke, in addition to a host of others
like, Dr. Johnny Hunt, Ken Ham, Dr. Kenyn Cureton.
Dr.
David Jeremiah who spoke on the Biblical Perspective of the America’s Debt
shared talked about 4 things that we could as Christians during this time of
financial crisis. Here are his suggestions:
1.
Keep your head in the game. 1 Thessalonians 5:6; Romans 13:1; 1 chronicles 12:32;
Matthew 16:3.
2.
Keep your house in order.
Take
a personal inventory. Minimize your indebtedness.
Cf.
Crown ministry is very helpful with debt and financial education.
3. Keep
your heart in your faith. Daniel 8:27; 11:32-33.
GOD
can still do great things.
4.
Keep your hope in GOD. Job 17:15, Jeremiah 17:7-8. Lamentation 3:21-26.
Nothing
is too difficult for GOD.
Dr.
Ravi Zacharias spoke on the topic: convincing your church to engage culture. He
was a very powerful speaker. He captivated the audience throughout the time
given to him. He used the story of Nehemiah to motivate pastors to action. He said that when there was a need, Nehemiah
rose up to the occasion. He gave us a few suggestions as follows:
1.
Nehemiah felt the pathos for his people. You will never lighten any load until
you feel the pressure in your own soul.
2.
Nehemiah prioritized his mission in prayer. Eleven times in the book of
Nehemiah, he fell on his knees to pray. He shared a popular quote of Chrysostom
on prayer. I remember sharing the same quote in our church before.
3.
Nehemiah got close to the situation. You cannot address the problem in a
distance. We must understand that we are dealing with people and people have
feelings and needs.
4.
Nehemiah prepared for the task ahead.
5. He
avoided the paralysis of pessimism and we should do the same.
6.
Nehemiah built the build the wall in 52 days and returned to Persia.
In
conclusion, we are advised to do what is bright and we will be able to help the
people.
Before
concluding this brief blog for today, I must say that we also had a great
worship experience throughout the event. Charles Billingsley, worship leader
for Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, VA led us in a rejuvenating and
inspiring worship time.
We
ended the day with an hour of night watch prayer for our nation. I am now
getting tired and needs to go to be because we are starting out by 5.00am
tomorrow morning. See some of the pictures and videos below:
