We Need God's Help

The problems of our complex world, from the local level to the national and international levels, are so great that human wisdom will not solve them.

We need supernatural intervention.  We need God’s help.

Leaders at all levels need to pray.  Mayors and council members need to pray for their cities.  Governors and state legislators need to pray for their state.  Members of the U.S. Congress and leaders in the executive branch need to pray for the nation.  Leaders in the judicial branch of government need to honor and pray to the God who created them and who gave us this great nation.

No matter what level of leadership you are involved in, your group or organization needs prayer.

Leaders who are wise, pray and read the Bible.  In fact, some 3,000 years ago, the palmist wrote these eternal words:

Those who are wise will take all this to heart; they will see in our history the faithful love of the Lord.  -Psalm 107:43

Abraham Lincoln was a man of faith and prayer.  He once said,

I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.  My own wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for that day.

The most important thing in life is our connection with God, our Creator.

Prayer is that connection.  Prayer is communication.  It is the way we speak to God, and the way He speaks to us.

Prayer—communicating with God—is the greatest privilege imaginable.  Have you ever considered that you have immediate access to the most powerful Person in the universe?  And yet prayer is often an afterthought or simply an item to check off our list of “spiritual duties”.  Why is that?

You not only have the ear of the greatest Person in the universe, but you have been given the privilege of being used of God to help change the lives of individuals and nations.  God has literally made available to you His vast reservoir of power, wisdom, love, and grace, if only you are willing to believe, trust, and obey Him.  Will you?

A dramatic example of prayer power is with the former Soviet Union.  Our mighty God used intercessory prayer to change an entire empire.

I was only a young man in 1947, when God put it on my heart to pray for the former Soviet Union.  I don’t know why.  I had never even been there.  It was just something the Lord put on my heart, in His wisdom and sovereignty.  I prayed for that nation for decades, without ever seeing any results.

Then in the 1980’s, President Mikhail Gorbachev was riding the crest of popularity and great power as head of the atheistic Soviet Union.  But President Gorbachev was only a man, and the Bible says,

The king’s heart is like a stream of water directed by the Lord; He turns it wherever He pleases.  -Proverbs 21:1

Our representative living in the Soviet Union at the time, Dan Peterson, was teaching in a very prestigious school for the children of ambassadors from various countries.  Dan communicated with my wife Vonette and me that we should organize a 24-hour, 30-day prayer vigil and encourage Christians all over the world to pray for the liberation of the Soviet Union.  Vonette was then chairman of the international Lusanne intercessory prayer committee, a Billy Graham ministry to millions.  She sent out a plea to Christian leaders representing many millions of people all over the world, to pray that God would do something dramatic to liberate the people in the Soviet empire during that 30-day period.

Russia had previously known 900 years of Christianity, but approximately 70 years had been under the oppressive, anti-God communists.  We felt strongly led by the Holy Spirit to pray that the people of the Soviet Union would be liberated out of their bondage.

Then with incredible timing, one of the most dramatic answers to prayer I have ever observed happened before our eyes.  On the very first working day following the 30 days of prayer, miracle of miracles, President Gorbachev announced new freedoms through what was called Glasnost (openness) and Perestroika (restructuring).  That was the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union and the beginning of religious freedom to a nation of about 293 million people at that time.  There has since been an explosion of the gospel in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union through Campus Crusade for Christ and hundreds of other ministries.

Many people prayed, including President Reagan, who, in remarks at the Brandenburg Gate, West Berlin, Germany on July 12, 1987, publicly demanded of the leader of the former Soviet Union “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”  But it could have been the added prayer of just one weak, humble, little prayer warrior that turned the tide and made the difference.  God often orchestrates prayer, involving many people.  But if one person had failed to pray, the results may not have been the same.

God’s word commands us to “Keep praying” (1 Thessalonians 5:17).  We can be in an attitude of prayer every moment of the day, certainly not always talking ourselves, but always open to His thoughts and guidance.

Let us keep on praying, and as the great evangelist Charles Spurgeon said, let us pray

"boldly and…continuously with all (our) might."

Let us believe and expect results, record and communicate the results, and offer praise and thanksgiving to our wonderful Lord.

By Bill Bright

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