This past week, our entire nation has been called to prayer. The call culminated on Thursday with the 63rd annual National Day of Prayer. The theme for 2014 was One Voice, United in Prayer, emphasizing the need for individuals, corporately and individually, to place their faith in the unfailing character of their Creator, who is sovereign over all governments, authorities, and men. To further highlight the theme, the national committee organizing this day chose Romans 15:6 as the guiding Scripture for the year: “So that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” This year’s honorary chair was Anne Graham Lotz, who offered her own personal prayer for us as a nation.
You may find it online at https://nationaldayofprayer.org/about/national-prayer-by-anne-graham-lotz/.
I am calling us as a local church to continue in fervent prayer this week for our personal lives, our community, our nation, and our world. Because of that, we will be moving away from our series in the Book of James for one more week so that we might hear from one of the most powerful calls to prayer found in the Bible, Isaiah 55:6–7:
Seek the Lord while he may be found;
call on him while he is near.
Let the wicked forsake his ways
and the unrighteous his thoughts.
Let him turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them,
and to our God, for he will freely pardon.
Appropriately, after this week of prayer, our pastors and Ministry Council members are calling on us as a church family to pray about a matter that the Lord has placed deep into our hearts, i.e., the discipleship of our families and children. Those church people at LAC who have gone before us recognized early on that the facility in which the training of our children and families occurs is a high ministry priority. They made major sacrifices to build that ministry facility on Maple Street. Now, in 2014, we too have seen that the Maple Street facility is in deep need of restoration and renewal. On behalf of the LAC spiritual leadership, I call us to prayer and to action both about our “Restore and Renew the Maple Street Children’s Center” initiative and about many other issues facing our church and nation. We will, as Scripture says, “seek the Lord” and “call on him.”
To His Glory,
Dr. Greg Waybright
Senior Pastor
