Today it is our desire that you would consider the word failure.    Of course with this word, like most words, context is critical for proper understanding.    The context we propose for our discussion is the current culture of our country, specifically, the failure of the body of Christ to impact our current culture in ways that would encourage the honor and worship of God.  A short list of evidence for this failure would include the propensity of pornography, the promotion of access to and exercise of abortion, the escalation and public promulgation of deviant sexual lifestyles, and the breakdown of the scripturally based family.

However failure is not always bad.   How so?  This is only true when failure is the foundation for success.   Untold success has been built upon the foundation of failure.    While the outcomes mentioned above certainly appear to be negative, the motivation to change could be a key positive.   Would you like to be used of God to make a change in these and other works of our enemy to destroy our country and its witness within and to the entire world?

Let’s look at another word:  Abdicate.   Webster defines this word: to give up formally a high office, throne or authority, or to surrender or repudiate a right or responsibility  

As we think about this word abdicate, let’s consider this quote: “Men may spurn our appeals, reject our message, oppose our arguments, despise our persons, but they are helpless against our prayers” -  J Sidlow Baxter

Yet another quote from E.M. Bounds from “ The Purpose of Prayer” –

“Ask of Me is the condition—a praying people willing and obedient. “And men shall pray for Him continually.” Under this universal and simple promise men and women of old laid themselves out for God. They prayed and God answered their prayers, and the cause of God was kept alive in the world by the flame of their praying.

Prayer became a settled and only condition to move His Son’s Kingdom. “Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened.” The strongest one in Christ’s kingdom is he who is the best knocker. The secret of success in Christ’s Kingdom is the ability to pray. The one who can wield the power of prayer is the strong one, the holy one in Christ’s Kingdom. The most important lesson we can learn is how to pray.”

 Jeremy Taylor -

“The prayers of holy men appease God’s wrath, drive away temptations, resist and overcome the devil, procure the ministry and service of angels, rescind the decrees of God. Prayer cures sickness and obtains pardon; it arrests the sun in its course and stays the wheels of the chariot of the moon; it rules over all gods and opens and shuts the storehouses of rain, it unlocks the cabinet of the womb and quenches the violence of fire; it stops the mouths of lions and reconciles our suffering and weak faculties with the violence of torment and violence of persecution; it pleases God and supplies all our need.”

 Perhaps even more importantly to our present discussion is this quote from Guy H. King:

“No one is a firmer believer in the power of prayer than the devil; not that he practices it, but he suffers from it”

Let’s journey back to the thought of abdication, could it be that the bride of Christ, most of us in our current generation and perhaps some previous generations, have abdicated our right, our responsibility, our sacred trust to pray specifically against those things that our enemy has formed against us?

It has been said that; “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”   Perhaps an accurate paraphrase of this quote is “that for evil to triumph in our land, the body of Christ needs only to fail to pray.”

Could it be that it is primarily the malfunction of our privilege to pray that stands behind the previously mentioned word failure?

We would like to suggest a couple of actions for you to consider.  But first let’s consider the strategy of our enemy.    While he has many different strategies, the one we would like to focus upon at this time is his strategy to start bending the minds of the very young.   They are told that they came from some scientific big bang, evolving over a long time from some ancient slime.   They are taught that anything that cannot be demonstrated in a test tube cannot exist.   We have allowed the enemy to remove prayer from our public schools, and generally replace family communication with video games and other electronic devices ....... and the list goes on.

I believe we should begin to pray, individually, collectively, and in small bands, praying for the spiritual input and salvation in the lives of our children.

We are told in the Book:  Matthew 18:19-20 (NASB) 
¹⁹  "Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven. 
²⁰  "For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst."

Kenneth L. Wilson is quoted as saying,” To pray in Jesus’ name means to pray in His Spirit, in His compassion, in His love, in His outrage, and in His concern. In other words, it means to pray a prayer that Jesus Himself might pray”

Jesus said in John 14:13-14 (NASB) 
¹³  "Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 
¹⁴  "If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.

We have the promises, but do we have the resolve to win this battle for our children?

Strategies:

Find in your community one (or more) other person who would be willing to join you at least one time per week to pray for our children.   You can pray on the phone or get together at the kitchen table, but consistently pray.   Ask, seek, knock on the doors of heaven for those who are so very vulnerable.   Pray that your local elementary school will be open to after school bible classes.  Child Evangelism Fellowship has great materials and also a great strategy to do Back yard Bible clubs in the summer and follow these same children into their schools.

There is opportunity for you and your church to get involved.   Think about this dream.   Every public elementary school in America will have at least one small prayer band to daily pray for the students, teachers, and administrators of this local school.  Every public elementary would have at least one sponsoring church that would consider the children of this school one of their primary mission fields.  They would sponsor back yard bible clubs, coordinate volunteer bible teachers and assistants to support an after school Bible Class.  And sponsoring Church(s) would commit to following up the families of these children and helping them learn to follow Jesus.

Now grow and develop this strategy for the next forty years.   How would this change the failures that we are currently experiencing?

The answer to our failure is not political, it is not financial, it is not legal, it is spiritual.   The primary power to change is spiritual and it is the same power that raised Jesus from the dead.   

The means to begin to work toward this dream is prayer!

So how can we start?   First investigate the school boundaries of the elementary school where you live.   Like Nehemiah instructed, should we not each build the wall near our home?   Then begin to pray that God will lead you to at least one other person with whom to pray.   Yes, this may entail some work, but it is eternally valuable work.   It is what God is waiting for.   He said in Ezekiel 22:30)   "I searched for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand in the gap before Me for the land, so that I would not destroy it; but I found no one.”

First, pray asking God is this something that He would have you investigate?   If He says yes, pray for wisdom and the leading of His Spirit.

John 14:13-14 (AMP) 
¹³  And I will do [I Myself will grant] whatever you ask in My Name [as presenting all that I AM], so that the Father may be glorified and extolled in (through) the Son. 
¹⁴  [Yes] I will grant [I Myself will do for you] whatever you shall ask in My Name [as presenting all that I AM].

Do you have one hour per week plus ten minutes per day that you can pray for the young, the vulnerable, those who are in the cross hairs of Satan’s desire to steal and kill and destroy?   Please pray that God will raise up laborers, that He would thrust out laborers into His harvest.  Oh, how our little ones are ripe for the message of salvation!

When we follow God’s plan in submission and faith we cannot fail!  He is waiting for us to pray.