Practical Steps related to prayer:

• Pray faithfully in secret and grow in your prayer life by reading God’s written revealed Word and responding with heartfelt praise, sincere thanks, and bold-and-specific petitions for Christ’s church, candidates, and other civil magistrates.

• If you are a pastor pray faithfully and regularly in your Lord’s Day worship services for our state, our nation and the nations.

• As a local church (again with the approval of your local pastor(s)) consider sending a letter or small gift to your elected officials. Include a clear gospel presentation, and let them know you are praying for them. Remember the world, the flesh, and the devil is the three-fold enemy of every human soul (even if they don’t know it or acknowledge it).

• Humbly lead in repenting of our sins. Christians at different periods of history have noted how God often brings judgement through civil magistrates upon a people who are sinning as individuals in the same particular manner. For example, Zach Conover recently argued abortion is a national sin. Before you disagree by protesting, “Wait I am pro-life, and I have not had an abortion or ever encouraged one!” consider Zach’s argument, and realize how many of us have embraced love of comfort and love of wealth over consistently recognizing abortion for what it truly is.

Many times, even if we are pro-life and vote a certain way, we are apathetic or allow many who are dead wrong (who profess the name of Christ) to mock God and act like this is an agree-to-disagree matter on a basic biblical and moral matter. So prayerfully repent of indifference to this grave injustice and others and flee to Christ in prayer, asking Him for wisdom, strength, forgiveness, and resolve to glorify Him with more integrity.

• Pray with the realization God is working even in ways you may not realize.  John Calvin noted a “wicked king is the Lord’s wrath upon the earth”. He went on to say “a wicked prince is the Lord’s scourge to punish the sins of the people.” Though a verdict by an earthly (and just) government is not our only or final judgment, it can serve purpose. This earthly government may be a preview for some and a reminder (albeit imperfectly and often fallibly) that sins and injustices and evils will be punished. As Christians, let us be those who bear witness to these civil magistrates by reminding them of their God-given duty as God’s servants to praise good and punish evil—mnot the opposite (Romans 13:4; 1 Peter 2:14).

• With the approval of the pastors/elders of your local church family, contact brother in Christ and evangelist Juan Riesco to learn more about going to Chicago on a prayer walk. This is a way to push back on the culture of death with a life-giving time of worship and prayer calling upon the Lord. I know Juan would love to meet you and coordinate this with you to the praise of our worthy God’s glory!
• Stay informed about what is happening around our state, nation, and world; it can help us pray more specifically (see more ways to stay informed below).

• Know who is running for political office to be our representatives; this is vital for our witness.

• Know what the most pressing issues are; it can also help us know what to ask our Lord for in our prayers.

• Pray for specific bills, elected officials, and other civil magistrates at your other weekly gatherings (small groups, prayer meetings, Bible studies, or just when you and church members are out for lunch). Pray for citizens of the United States who are instrumental part of our constitutional republic. Pray also for the elected local, state, and national officials by name. Remember they are mere men. Those elected to serve are not your betters or superiors, despite what they might think or society might sell us to believe.

• Pray for consistent courage to act on biblical convictions with grace and truth, love and wisdom no matter the cost. While we should glorify God by honoring others appropriately, and we should give no unnecessary offense, in our post-truth and dishonest world, the truth will offend, no matter how lovingly it is said. People will hate you as they hated our perfect Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (John 15:18).

• If you are a pastor and the midweek prayer meeting is something you gave up because not enough people were coming and people seem to lose interest, please bring it back ASAP only if you attend for a while. Please!

• If you are a pastor or a church member with your pastor(s) approval, send your local elected officials a card and a gift with verses from God’s Word letting them know you are praying for them. This may not and often will not mean you agree with their policies or worldview. But allow God’s Word to work and bless those and pray for those who oppose the Lord’s work.

• Respectfully ask your pastor(s) to organize and lead a prayer meeting and then urge other fellow church members to show up (and actually show up yourself!)

• Gather with a few Christians in your neighborhood and pray for our state, nation, and the world. Print names of candidates and elected officials, regardless of party or platform, and pray biblical prayers that honor God.

• Try to host a prayer event at your public library, praying for our state, our nation, and the nations. There are public libraries and contrary to what many elitist leftists would try and intimidate you into believing you are part of the public.

• Very helpful tools for informing our prayers include: The IFI Special Local Voter Guides, the IFA endorsement guide, the IFI Voter Voice tool, where you can put in your zip code and see who your elected officials are (and pray for them or message them by name). Other tools that are helpful to stay informed here in Illinois include: Wirepoints, Illinois Policy Institute. Praying for our nation, consider checking out: World Magazine (also good for news across the nations). Other ways to pray in an informed way for our brothers and sisters in Christ and their local churches as well as their civil magistrates across the nations are by talking to your local church’s missionaries (as appropriate and safe to do so) and getting free updates and free magazines from Heart Cry Missionary Society and Voice of the Martyrs.

• With fellow Christians or on your own read some of the many short, (in many cases free), excellent resources on prayer to help you grow in this vital discipline (a few examples are: Martin Luther’s A Simple Way to Pray, J.C. Ryle’s A Call to Prayer, David MacIntyre’s The Hidden Life of Prayer, John Broadus’s The Lord’s Prayer, John Bunyan’s Prayer, Donald Whitney’s Praying The Bible, The Prayer-Obedience Relationship by Dr. Bing Hunter, Tim Barnett’s What We Need to Learn About Prayer from the Early Church.

Don’t delay, beloved brother or beloved sister!

Pray, pray, pray and then pray more to our worthy, living-and-active almighty God and merciful Father in heaven! Cry out to Him and call upon Him confidently, knowing that all your labor in the Lord—including your labors in prayer—are never ever in vain (1 Cor. 15:58).

A Prayer for Our State, Our Nation and the Nations

 Almighty God and merciful Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,

There is none like you. You are always worthy to be praised, and you alone are sovereign. You alone can kill both body and soul in hell; you are the one we should fear above all. We confess our lack of fearing and trusting in you when it comes to the challenges facing our state and our nation and our world.

We ask for those running for local, state, and national office to fear you above all, for we know that fearing you is the beginning of wisdom.

Please grant candidates and those already elected to office deep humility and fear of you first and foremost, God. For those who have not bowed the knee to King Jesus, we pray that they would do so before it is too late.

We grieve and hate the evil injustice of preborn-baby murder, though not nearly as much as you do. We thank you that you will punish all evil with your perfect justice and that vengeance is yours, and you will repay.

Yet help us, O Lord, even in this fallen world to be citizens who are responsible and faithful, who fear you and care about righteousness in our laws and courts and across our land and eager to promote what is good and true and right. Where candidates’ and elected officials’ plans agree with your ways and your wisdom and your righteousness, may their plans succeed. But where they disagree with you and distort your wisdom and goodness, your beauty and design, may their plans utterly fail and come undone.

Thank you for the freedoms we enjoy in this nation. We truly grieve the injustices and evils of love of money, or bribery and corruption and miscarriages all across this country.  We entrust to you the open-border crisis and pray for officials to do their jobs and perform their God-given duties without fear or shame.

Please abolish abortion across this land, and expose those who would harm and deceive children. Strengthen every biblical marriage. Help the next generation of children—young girls and boys to fear you and turn away from evil and are zealous for your glory, your grace, your gospel, your kingdom, and the good deeds that honor you. Bring reform and revival built on repentance.

We are sorry for our apathy toward rules and rulers, regulations, and politics in general. We are also sorry for—at other times—putting too much hope in the political process or in a candidate or an official or a system of government. Forgive us for our pride and our lack of love for our neighbors. We confess we do not love as we should, and we need your Spirit to help us not to give in to sinful worry and fear.

May your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. May our neighbor-citizens, far from you without hope and without Christ, turn to you in humble repentance and saving trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. May our churches be marked by a love of truth and love, grace and wisdom and prayer to the praise of your name. Amen.

What is it, then, that makes prayerlessness such a great sin? At first it is looked upon merely as a weakness. There is so much talk about lack of time and all sorts of distractions that the deep guilt of the situation is not recognized.

Let it be our honest desire that, for the future, the sin of prayerlessness may be to us truly sinful. Consider 1. What a reproach it is to God There is the holy and most glorious God who invites us to come to him, to hold converse with him, to ask from him such things as we need, and to experience what a blessing there is in fellowship with him. He has created him we might find our highest glory and salvation.

What use do we make of this heavenly privilege? How many there are who take only five minutes for prayer! They say that they have no time and that the heart desire for prayer is lacking; they do not know how to spend half an hour with God!

It is not that they absolutely do not pray; they pray every day – but they have no joy in prayer, as a token of communion with God which shows that God is everything to them. If a friend comes to visit them, they have time, they make time, even at the cost of sacrifice, for the sake of enjoying converse with him. Yes, they have time for everything that really interests them. (Murray, Andrew. The Andrew Murray Collection: 21 Classic Works.)