Prayer for the Nations: Spirit of Prayer 2 track 7

Prayer for the Nations Music by Linda Louisa Entwistle Lord Jesus, the crowd cheered Your triumphal entry into Jerusalem, but You wept; for You knew that countless souls would lose their lives as the result of the nation rejecting the hour of her visitation. Unaware of the centrality of Your desire to prepare them for eternity, the people quickly turned when Jesus failed to meet their immediate expectations. How do we ourselves respond when You do not appear to meet our hopes and dreams? Help us be willing to come to You on Your terms, not on ours – and so avoid falling into bitterness in a land where so few pay anything more than lip service to the King of Kings. Lord, we remember how earnestly You worked to rescue Germany from the Nazi tyranny enabling her to take her place once more among the nations – and how You helped America and South Africa emerge beyond the lure of the racist call. We celebrate Your grace and truth that have achieved so much, and ask for nations still skewed in the thrall of long held feuds, to have the grace to move on from conflicts past; fulfilling through forgiveness their God-given call. Redemptive One, we offer you the weight of our own temptations to bitterness as an offering on behalf of wider issues – where severe deadlocks have gripped and divided, and situations risk being whisked into something infinitely combustible. We give you the flashpoints around the world, and pray, “Intervene by Your mercy and defuse”, lest we ignore all safety limits, and descend into another bout of senseless blood letting: from the Archduke’s assassination, through the killing fields and holocausts to the lethal civil wars that ravage so many regions. And as we pray, we ask that You will release us too from the wilderness of time and energy that every trace of bitterness represents. Arise and show Your mercy and Your power as we gather round Your throne to present our cry. Lift the weak, humble the proud, unblock the stalled and deadlocked as Your Spirit sends seismic shocks to overturn wrong ways of thinking and usher in the new.