Are you groaning in prayer today, grieved by the state of the world? Open your heart before the Lord and lament with true emotion. For more information on national prayer observances, visit joniradio.org for a link.
I’m hoping you’ll be attending a special prayer event today!
Hi, I'm Joni Eareckson Tada and I trust your church is holding an observance for the National Day of Prayer because there’s no denying it. The last couple of years have been tough for our nation and for our world. Like Ukraine, right? I mean, everywhere, people are struggling with the tragedies and injustices of life. Our nation is torn apart by division and factions. It is as though wickedness is on the rise as never before. We get angry, we rail at all that’s wrong with our country. And we want to do something, but we feel powerless to stop the suffering or heal the divisions.
Well, it is why there is a day set apart for national prayer. And would you like to know how I will be praying today? Well, I’ll be groaning. I’ll be groaning as I make a list of all those things I just mentioned, all the factions and divisions; a list of the wrongs perpetrated against unborn children and the elderly. Corruption, waste are on that list. Groaning over young people who are confused about their gender, oh, my goodness! Or school boards that approve curriculum that’s against God. They are on that list! Disregard for truth in our national media. But more than all these things, much more? I am groaning before God about the despair. The spiritual deadness. The hopelessness that we even see in our own neighborhoods. People are spiritually dead, and they don’t even realize it. I mean, without Christ, your favorite bagboy at the market, or your letter carrier, or your next-door neighbor, they’re heading to hell. I mean, right there is plenty of reason to grieve and groan. Now, I’ve got my list, and I’m taking it before the Lord with great groaning.
Romans 8:22-23, it puts it this way, it says, “For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.” Followers of Jesus groan alongside all of creation; we long for a world without sin and suffering. Now, why do I bring up this idea of groaning on our National Day of Prayer? Because ours is a national lament. Friend, when you pray today for our nation; when you pray for our world, as sin-sick as it is, I hope you put a lot of groaning, a lot of emotion into it. Put genuine feeling into your prayers. And frankly, I hope you groan in prayer today. Ours should be a lament before the Lord, for we grieve not only over wickedness in our culture, but don’t you grieve over yourself, for the way we are all so self-centered, so self-focused? We are angrier about rising gas prices than we are about our spiritual laziness, or self-absorption, or indifference to the spiritual needs of those around us. I mean, when was the last time you spoke the name of Jesus to someone on your street? When we get together socially with other Christians, we talk about what’s on Amazon Prime with hardly a mention of the Lord. So I'm joining David – and you should, too – David, who cried out in Psalm 5, “Consider my groaning, O Lord.”
‘Cause now is the time not so much for anger, but for tears. For heartache. So, as it concerns America, Europe, Ukraine, Russia, China, Iran – as it concerns our own nation – let’s make this National Day of Prayer a national lament. A grieving, a groaning. Let us open our hearts before the Lord and ask him, first, to heal us of our own spiritual diseases, and then to heal this country. And if you need to find a prayer observance near you today? Visit joniradio.org for a link to the National Day of Prayer website for all the info you need. And thank you for joining me on National Day of Prayer in this lament.
© Joni and Friends