A Day to Move on Prayer
Last week I wrote a post about the NFL and a Return to Prayer. The summary…I was amazed as I watched the NFL lead the nation in prayer for one of their own. It wasn’t about well-wishing or “good vibes”, it was a cry out to an all-powerful Creator and Healer. I ended by suggesting that we can let this be a cultural moment, a news cycle…or we can steward this with Holy Spirit.
This has been stirring in my heart. How do I, Nicole Poolman, steward a national moment? How do I use my tiny drop in the bucket to stir up the waters that so desperately need stirring?
What can one person do?
Two and half years ago I started working for Civil Righteousness. I remember my first MLK day with the organization. It was a call to prayer, a call to make Martin Luther King Jr. Day a day of prayer across our nation. As an organization we have repeated the same call to prayer every year.
Martin Luther King Jr. was a man of prayer who surrounded himself with people of prayer. In fact, I think that persistent prayers are one of the gifts of the African American Church to our world. The slaves held their secret prayer meetings, the black community under Jim Crow prayed as they were abused, and mourning mothers have prayed for their children in cities around the nation. Their prayers persisted and still persist.
It is not just the African American church that has known the power of prayer in hardship. I think of the underground church in places like China and the Middle East. The few times that I have gotten to pray with them their prayers have been fervent, soaked with both awareness to their neediness and yet confidence in Christ. They know the power of prayer and have seen God move mightily.
This is not to excuse the prayers of the Latino community, the First Nations/Native American community, the AAPI community…or majority culture in the United States. I am suggesting, what if we all came together in prayer? What if we reached out to people who didn’t look like us, act like us, vote like us…and come together in prayer? What if we all came together with our unique heritages and legacies and prayed for Jesus to be glorified among us?
I think it would look at lot like John 17:22-23, Revelation 7:9-10.
I think we would be transformed in the process.
I think our prayers and the Hearer of those prayers would move us to action.
I think that we would receive our own God given dreams to transform our corner of the world.
Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2023. Among many things, it is a day of prayer. Please move with Civil Righteousness in prayer tonight from 7:00-8:00pm Central. Join us live by following the zoom link below.