Thursday May 7th is the National Day of Prayer in the United States. In this article, I want to share how important prayer is in seeing God’s will come to pass in the earth and then share seven things we should be praying for on the National Day of Prayer.
Prayer is vitally important because God’s will doesn’t come to pass in the earth unless God’s people pray His word. God gave us the responsibility to decree His promises back to Him in order for Him to establish His plan in the earth. A great example of this is what King David prophesied about Jesus in Psalms 2:
7 “I will declare the decree: The Lord has said to Me, ‘You are My Son, Today I have begotten You.
The word decree means an official order issued by a legal authority. God made this decree through David’s prayer and God established an executive order that Jesus would be His Son. Someone may ask, but wasn’t Jesus already God’s Son? Why did God have to make a decree? And more importantly, what does making decrees have to do with us today?
Those are great questions so let’s take a deeper look at the what the word of God says. John 1:1 says in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. This is speaking about Jesus. Jesus has been around from the beginning and He is referred to as the word. In this verse, the Greek word for Word is logos. The word logos refers to the entirety of scripture (the Bible). In the beginning Jesus was the entirety of scripture and He was with God in heaven.
So how did God get the entirety of scripture into the earth in the form of living, breathing, speaking person? God spoke. Specifically, He declared over 300 decrees through his prophets in the Old Testament about Jesus! According to Psalm 119:89 these words were the written word that was settled in heaven that God spoke into existence in the earth through people.
Eventually God sent an angel to tell a young woman named Mary that she would be the mother of Jesus. Look at Mary’s response in Luke 1:38:
Be it unto me according to thy word.
Mary spoke. She said be it to me according to your word. The Greek word for word in this verse isn’t logos; it is rhēma which means the spoken word. In other words, Mary gave a decree! This is how the word (logos) became flesh in the person of Jesus and tabernacled among us according to John 1:14.
You and I have been given the power to declare and decree. We are responsible for declaring and decreeing God’s promises into the earth so God can take His word and make it flesh in our life. God’s word is settled in heaven, but it doesn’t get settled in the earth until you and I speak it. This is how God provides fathers to the orphans, wealth to the poor, and healing to the broken-hearted.
The power of speaking is so important that after God called Jesus his Son in Psalms 2:7, He then told Jesus to speak in Psalms 2:8:
8 Ask of Me, and I will give You the nations for your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for your possession.
God’s will was for Jesus and His disciples was to disciple nations. This was Jesus’s inheritance, but it wasn’t automatic. Jesus had to decree Psalms 2:8 (the word ask in verse 8 can be translated to require or make a demand on). It’s not a passive asking. It’s asking with expectancy.
We all know Jesus was a man of prayer. Often between His times of public ministry of preaching and performing miracles, He would go off by Himself and pray all night. The reason He was so successful in public ministry when everyone was watching, was because He was successful in praying and decreeing God’s promises when no one was watching!
With that foundation established, here are some things we should pray on this National Day of Prayer.
1. We should pray for the eradication of COVID-19 and for the healing and protection for our people (Psalm 103:3, Psalm 91).
2. Wisdom for our President, congress, governors and other elected officials (1 Timothy 2:1-2).
3. Pray for boldness and clarity for the church. We need to be bold right now. God needs us to hear His voice and act on what He is saying (Acts 4:23-31, John 16:13).
4. Unity. Our nation needs unity and the church needs to stay in unity in during this season (Ephesians 4:3).
5. Rebuke Satan and his forces that have blinded the eyes of people and brought forth this plague and the confusion associated with it (Mark 16:17, 2 Corinthians 4:3-4).
6. Pray for our business leaders and employers to have boldness and wisdom right now. Also pray for divine favor to manifest. Our economy needs healing and God wants bless our nation financially (2 Timothy 1:7, Psalm 35:27, 3 John 1:2).
7. Pray for laborers to go forth into the harvest field and share the gospel with those who need to hear it! We are potentially entering a time of great revival, but that revival will only come if we pray (Matthew 9:36-38).
I want to challenge us to pray with boldness on this National Day of Prayer! Let’s speak God’s word and invite Him into this situation in our nation. He wants to conform America to His will. He just needs us to use our God-given authority and decree! Here is a message I taught on prayer at church in January! Hope it blesses you!.
