[b]A Prayer Summons To American Christians! [i]by Sarah Foulkes Moore (1890-1973)
America stands at the crossroads! It is either revival or the dissolving of the church, the home and the government.
History records that in time of crisis in America in the past, God has moved to avert catastrophe overtaking His people. In such crises hours, He has found some who would work with Him in bringing new mercies to His people. In every national crisis in the past God has found some who would stand in the gap and make up the hedge against the adversary. Upon them God has moved by arousing them to a deep sense of need, which in turn has moved them to intercede for His intervention.
The world and the Church are in a mighty conflict. The spiritual warfare is intensifying. The powers of darkness are massing for the last awful struggle. The church has a powerful weapon with which to fight. If she will but take to her knees she will be victorious.
The need is for godly intercessors in every church and in every American home and community. More than any other need is that for men and women of prayer and faith who will stand in the gap and stay the frightful spirits of lawlessness, immorality, infidelity and corruption which are swarming over the land.
"I sought for a man among them, that should stand in the gap before Me, for the land, that I should not destroy it," declares the Lord to Ezekiel, "but I found none" (Ezekiel 22:30).
This was the pitiful condition in Israel. No one could be found to stand in the gap for the land, hence it was destroyed. Can it be in this hour of chaos and crisis more dire, that there is no man or woman in your community or in your church who will stand in the gap? Is there no man or women who, seeing the peril, will give himself or herself continually to wrestling by prayer against principalities, against the rulers of darkness, against spiritual wickedness in high places? (Ephesians 6:12).
The greatest need in every church, in every community, and in every home, is for a prayer leadership that will stir the people of God to prayer. Talking about the conditions, bewailing the need of America for a spiritual awakening is not enough. The most difficult thing to do is to get men and women to pray. This is not a day when people readily pray. Few men and women will actually pray. The greatest spiritual need in America is for a praying leadership who will bring the preachers and the Church back to prayer.
True Prayer Is Warfare!
True prayer means the expenditures of serious devotion of time, heart, and soul that the flesh does not like. To get under the burden of prayer is too strenuous a labor for our present-day, pleasure-loving, ease-indulging membership and ministry. Too much hardship is involved. The children of Zion today do not like the "solemn feast garments" of weeping, mourning and fasting that enables Zion to bring forth.
"Woe," pronounced the prophet, "to them that are at ease in Zion" (Amos 6:1).
God help Zion to travail at this crisis end-of-the-age hour! God help us to see the need and necessity of prayer and God help us to meet conditions! The all-important need is for men and women whose hearts are right with God to make prayer a supreme passion of the hour--men and women whose supreme labor for God and country is to cry, "Spare thy people, O Lord, and give not thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them" (Joel 2:17).
Summon The Prayer Forces!
To pray is the greatest thing we can do to save America and avert national chaos and crisis. There are plenty of preachers and writers who deal eloquently with the need of revival, but not many there are who will at this catastrophic hour give themselves to the necessity of prayer. There is one chief battle ground in the nation today, and that is the battleground of prayer. The prayer forces must be summoned. The Church must mobilize on her knees. Christians everywhere must be put to praying.
Revival comes in answer to the heart cries of God’s people. The most insistent and urgent pleas, the most fervent exhortations need be sounded forth at this hour to put the saints everywhere to praying.
"Sound an alarm in my holy mountain...for the day of the Lord cometh...Gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders...Let the ministers of the Lord weep...then will the Lord pity His people...And He will cause to come down for you the rain, the former and the latter rain in the first month, and the floors shall be full of wheat, and the fats shall overflow with wine and oil, and I will restore...I will pour My Spirit on all flesh...whosoever shall call on the Name of the Lord shall be saved" (Joel 2:1-32).