Diagnosis America VII – Lack of Desperate Prayer

“I want you to pray, son”
“Ummm. Lord, feed the hungry, aannndd… bring peace to all of mankind.”
“How’s that?”
“Fine, if you wanna be Miss America. Now come on, what do you really care about?”
“Grace!”
“Grace, yes. You want her back?”
“No.”
(“God” raises his eyebrow)
“I want her to be happy. No matter what that means. I want her to find someone who will treat her with all the love she deserved from me. I want her to meet someone who will see her always as I do now through Your eyes”
“Hmmmmm. Now THAT’S a prayer! I’ll get right on it.”

- Jim Carrey and Morgan Freeman (Bruce Almighty)

“Mulder, what’s going on?!?! Is everything okay?”
“Do you remember disappearing off the face of the Earth for about 4 hours today?”
(Scully’s eyes blink, dart about the room searching for drug paraphernalia) “Nooooo”
“Then everything’s fine.”

- Fox Mulder and Dana Scully (Je Souhaite, The X-Files)

As discussed before, we Americans don’t know how to really pray because we’re inexperienced at it. Some would say we suck at it. Okay, whatever. Pray and suck are two words I wouldn’t normally consider in the same sentence. Anyway, our comforts have tended to make us confident in ourselves to solve any problem. But Bruce Nolan found even possessing the power of God he was still inadequate when it came right down to it. Agent Mulder thought he had the power to change everything once and for all, screwed it up royally, and fortunately was able to set it back the way it was. Like those fictional characters, we are never in much of a position to be desperate about anything. But I mean really desperate. Not just how am I going to pay this credit card bill, or the truck needs new tires, or Billy got a C in math this quarter.

Desperate is people in Iraq right now. People desperate for peace and freedom but not quite sure how to live in that kind of environment. People desperate to determine their own lives for a change. Do you think they really care about something enough to go to God about it? I do. As much as we hear things were better off and more “stable” under saddam – I’ll bet the trains ran on time dang it – freedom by it’s nature is messy. Iraq is the living example of that messiness. It isn’t stable because everyone’s got a voice, most of which don’t conform to some politically correct new order, because there isn’t any new order yet. That fact that some use bombs and bullets speaks to the fact freedom is a frightening thing to those with absolute power. We Americans claimed to be free, but are we really? Are Americans truly free, or are we slaves to our absolute comfort? Freedom threatens comfort; it threatens the status quo, yet freedom to worship Him is all that God ever wanted for us.

Desperate is Uganda right now. Senyonga described the fearful days of Idi Amin, who held absolute power over that poor country. The police were nothing more than gangsters in official uniforms that would shoot you (in the back) for your watch. Neighbors would disappear in the middle of the night. Churches held their services and prayer meetings out in the swamps to avoid detection from the murdering bands of roving government officials. Corruption, brutality, death on a village scale, was the norms of Uganda. Now that’s desperate. Did Ugandans pray desperately? “Yes they did” according to Jackson Senyonga. Ugandans prayed for their families, their villages, their states, their nations, and the world itself. They not only prayed, but they acted on the instructions received. AIDS in Uganda is on the decline now after years of leveling entire tribes. The reason according to Senyonga? Not the Ugandan government or the UN just running about handing out condoms to kids and adults alike, but rather the Ugandan government advocating and its people taking on for the most part a seemingly Christian ethic towards sex. There’s been quite the uproar/outrage at this, but that appears to stem more from a misunderstanding of the Christian view of sex (abstinence only – NOT HARDLY!! jeeez) on the part of the ultra leftwing. The Christian view of sex is can be quite heated. Just read parts of the Song of Solomon and try, just TRY, TRY not feeling amorous towards your better half! But I digress. Uganda’s situation was desperate and its people were desperate, so went their prayers.

Is ours a desperate nation? I think so. When you look at our cultural norms and “tolerance” for self-indulgence I tend to worry for this nations future in paradox to this site’s theme sometimes. The Kingdom of Israel and sometimes Judah went down these same paths as we and wound up destroying themselves because God said, “Fine, have it your way.” But there is a slight difference, and that difference is Christ. Our sins have been forgiven whether we like it or not and through Christ we receive that grace from God. We’ve been reconciled to Him through Christ. Okay, that’s nice but so what? What about all the suffering and death in the world? Say now, THERE’s a desperate prayer!! Why are we so blessed and the rest of the world so seemingly cursed? Why indeed. As I would say to the Class of 2005, there are those in the world that would demand we renounce our blessings, worse yet, denounce them as unfair. That’s a slap across God’s face, that is. Do we really think we earned the blessings of this nation on our own?

Do we truly think we’re the most powerful and richest nation on the face of the Earth because we’re all that righteous?!?! Absolutely not! Our cultural is downright repulsive at times. Let’s see a show of hands. How many people felt a swell of patriotism versus a swell of something else when Janet Jackson flashed the world at the ’04 Superbowl? How many people wish her brother would disappear into a cave somewhere with his wine and Peter Pan books, or whatever books he’s reading these days? How many people wish Madonna and Brittany would lip lock in private and leave the rest of us alone? How many people wish Paris Hilton would get a job, a REAL job, and a real life, crack open a book and learn the hotel business, or just dry up and blow away, and NOT SELL BURGERS? I don’t know about you but American culture is downright boring since it is oh so predictable and self-indulgent. It is! It’s a total snoozer! It’s 1,001 ways to be titillated and that’s about it. Come on folks!! How many people really think they’re going to get a lap dance from Paris for forking over those six bucks for a Superstar meal? What a cheap, tawdry, meaningless existence we teach our progeny and ourselves! You know what? The one thing I have no patience for is being worthless. So all you people out there drooling over the dribble called American culture, do the rest of us a favor and kill yourself now if that’s all life means to you. I mean it. If the above lifestyle type qualifies as the good life to you, but you have heard your calling and know it to mean so much more but ignore that calling, you serve no meaningful purpose to anyone but yourself. The dead are the most skilled at having no purpose. If you’re not alive, you’re dead or on your way (existing and taking up space) to being there, so join them already and take your toys with you. Let the dead bury their dead. Choose Christ and walk in Life.

(Gee. I thought Christians were supposed to make nice)

Shocked to hear a Christian advocate suicide? I’m not. I’m advocating Life by declaring simple existence worthless. Animals have more class than Paris, Carl’s Junior or Madonna, or any of the other worthless icons of our society. So what is Life?

(Uh-oh, now he’s sounding like the drunk at the end of the bar!)

Life with a capital L is purpose. America’s purpose, I desperately pray, it is waking up to. We are the most gifted nation in human history. When those gifts are used wisely, they make us the greatest nation in human history. Like it or not our gifts in this nation were given to us for a “to be Great” reason. And by gifts, I mean our wealth, our education, our power, and certainly not last - our faith. At Adventure Christian Church here in Roseville, we’ve been wrestling with just what do our gifts mean anyway. America has been called is what they mean. You and I have been called to something more then just living the good life. Those that know me know I make wine as a hobby...

(I JUST KNEW I heard him going off at the end the bar once!!)

... because I’m a John 15:2 man in that I believe the Vinedresser has been spending years pruning and tending to me to produce “much fruit.” There was an article in a May issue of US News and World Report that caught my vinous eye. Bottles of high-class Frog hooch going for as much as $40 grand each to “discerning palates.” Give me a break! What a worthless waste of time and resources. Wine is for drinking and then it ends up getting mixed up with other bodily wastes. To spend that kind of money on wine is just plain criminal. The phrase “idle rich” was the one thing communists actually got right. I’m going to cop some lines from Tim Dally, ACC’s Exec, that as the nation to whom God shed His grace on, we are ambassadors to the world of that grace. Through our blessings and gifts, we translate the grace of God to the world in a language all can understand in ‘our wealth, our education, our power, and certainly not last - our faith.’ Am I proclaiming that salvation to the world comes through works? Not at all. But through our works, the world will see good or evil. That’s totally up to us. The evil in the world will declare our good works evil, and fools will believe them. But Christ will know the truth, and those who are in Christ will know the truth.

America has been commissioned by virtue of its blessings to change the world. Jesus Christ as a man could only touch those He could travel to. Even in this day and age, Christ still has a better means of reaching the entire world through us. Through us, God has created a new, but imperfect, Body of Christ. When a part of that body hires a child prostitute in Phnom Penh, that part declares God’s love a lie to Cambodians who witness that perversion. When a part of that body ogles a Carl’s Junior ad to the detriment of acting on its purpose, that part declares salvation a lie, and crowns self-gratification as master of all. That part of the body is an anti-Christ. America can be so much more than a collection of anti-Christs. Before anyone accuses me of advocating wealth redistribution like so many imbeciles have before, quite the opposite actually. I advocate Americans as parts of that body creating as much wealth as possible. Through wealth missions are born and sustained. Through wealth, the Body of Christ grows and spreads. Through wealth used as intended, people everywhere hear the Good News of Christ. That’s the meaning of wealth, not to oppress, not to enslave, but to enlighten and free God’s people from ignorance of Him.

So who stops us?!?! The Dark One, the Old Bastard, the Evil One, the Great Deceiver, that’s who. This seven-part series discussed the seven strongholds Jackson Senyonga observed that old creep has on us. The Dark One has all of us to one degree or another by one of them. Which one do you need to shake off? It could be as simple as the TV remote, or the Lazyboy handle – those are dangerous items in a Christian or even worse, an American household. Or it could be something much darker and sinister.

Today my desperate prayer is that each of us Americans find our purpose for the world. That we shake off the shackles of the Dark One and glorify God in Heaven. That we understand our wealth, our education, our power, and our faith, are gifts to be shared with all. That we determine how we are to be ambassadors of grace to those everywhere around us. That this nation would unleash a 1,000 Pauls into the world. That the people in our family, in our neighborhood, in our city, in our nation, in our world, receive the love they’ve always deserved from us. That we see them wherever they are, in whatever circumstances they are in, as God sees them through His eyes. My desperate prayer for America is it bow down and acknowledge the power and the glory of the Gift Giver and open its eyes. I ask these things in name of the Christ Jesus, Amen.