Three Prayers

[Sam]

Three Prayers

I would like to pass on these three prayers.

1. The first is for our country.

It is attributed to Billy Graham and has a 2001 date on it for the 50th anniversary of the National Day of Prayer.

Prayer for the Nation

Our Father and our God,
We praise you for Your goodness to our nation, giving us blessings far beyond what we deserve.
Yet we know all is not right with America. We deeply need a moral and spiritual renewal to help us meet the many problems we face.
Convict us of sin. Help us to turn to You in repentance and faith. Set our feet on the path of Your righteousness and peace.
We pray today for our nation’s leaders. Give them the wisdom to know what is right, and the courage to do it.
You have said, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.” May this be a new era for America, as we humble ourselves and acknowledge You alone as our Savior and Lord.
This we pray in Your holy name, Amen.


2. The second is for our men and women in the military,

I found this prayer in the Chapel at Bethesda North Hospital a few years ago when I stopped in there to pray after making a hospital call.

Prayer for the Troops in Iraq (or anywhere)

Dear Lord, please hold our troops in your loving hands.
Protect them, Father, as they protect us.
When they are tired, give them strength and rest.
If they are in distress, Father, give them comfort.
When they are lonely, may they feel You near them.
Give them strength, courage, and wisdom for their tasks.
Lord, uplift and strengthen the families and loved ones who wait for their return.
Please, Father, bring a quick end to all this conflict.
I pray in the name of Jesus, our Savior. Amen


I would also like to encourage you to pray for healing for those in the military who have been wounded in any way and also for all of our veterans who need healing.

--1 out of every 4 homeless persons in the U.S. is a veteran but vets are only 11 percent of the adult population

--45 percent of those in the VA's homeless programs have a diagnosable mental illness and more than 3 out of 4 have a substance abuse problem. 35 percent have both a mental illness and a substance abuse problem.

--Iraq war vets seeking help are more likely to be women, less likely to have substance abuse problems, but more likely to have mental illness --mostly related to post traumatic stress.

3. The third is a prayer for Israel.

Over the years and off and on, I have watched Zola Levitt on television. He was a man of Jewish descent who had found Jesus as his Savior and Messiah. He has gone to be with the Lord but others are carrying on his programs. Zola and now his successor end the show each week with this quote: “Sha’alu shalom Yerushalayim (pray for the peace of Jerusalem); they shall prosper that love thee” (Psalm 22:6).

Here we are told to pray for the peace of Jerusalem and we are promised that those who love Jerusalem shall prosper.
This is a command and a promise for those who love Jerusalem and pray for her peace.

I have been praying for the peace of Jerusalem for years. When I pray for Israel and for peace I am praying for two things:
First, that Jewish people would receive God’s peace or shalom by accepting Jesus/Yeshua as their Lord, Savior, God, Messiah and Prince of Peace as prophesied in Isaiah 9:6-7;
Second, that Jesus will return to this earth, tear down our human governments and set up His kingdom, ruling in peace from the throne of David in Jerusalem as predicted by the prophets and promised by the Angel Gabriel to the young virgin Mary in Luke 1:31-33.

I have heard that there are more Jews coming to Jesus in the past few years than came to Him over the past few centuries. Sid Roth, a Messianic Jew who is an evangelist and has a television program, says that he has seen dozens of Jewish Americans profess faith in Jesus in recent months during evangelistic events in New York and California. Last summer in Brighton Beach, NY, nearly 400 Russian Jews attended an evangelistic meeting billed as a lecture on the paranormal. People were healed, including a wheel chair bound woman who had not been able to walk for 5 years. There was a move of the Spirit and almost the entire group stood up to make public professions of Messiah. Later, at a similar meeting in California, roughly 30 Jews professed faith in Chirst. “In my opinion this is unprecedented in America,” Roth says. He has ministered among Jewish communities in the Soviet Union for more than 15 years. During a trip to Israel last year, he said roughly 50 elderly Holocaust survivors professed faith in Christ during two meetings he held there. "Again, by Israeli standards, this is an unprecedented thing," Roth said. He believes the meetings mark a "change in the atmosphere" of Jewish evangelism. "I took those two meetings as signs that blindness was coming off the eyes of the Jewish people," he said.