Lodi News-Sentinel

Prayer is needed in a time of changing culture

- PASTOR FRANK NOLTON

Editor: The U.S. is in chaos. The political divide is getting deeper, racial tensions are getting hotter, and anger among the masses is starting to resemble anarchy. Morally, the free fall into the abyss is accelerati­ng — transgende­r bathroom bills, the hookup culture, millions of women marching for the right to murder their unborn babies, euthanasia being legalized as is recreation­al marijuana use, and now, Disney’s newest “kid-friendly” film, “Beauty and the Beast,” will have a gay themed component. Indeed, God’s moral absolutes on human sexuality and the sanctity of life have been brazenly and defiantly ignored.

And the church has tried desperatel­y to come up with answers on how to reach the culture. We’ve tried the “assimilati­on” route — to dress like “them,” talk like “them,” and put on an air of “cool.” However, society just laughed at us and ignored us. Additional­ly, we’ve tried the technology route by adopting Facebook, Twitter, Smartphone apps, YouTube, etc. But with so much informatio­n on the internet, we’ve just become another site to look at and then forget, or people can create their own self-made spirituali­ty as they combine biblical Christiani­ty with other false teachings found on the web.

In our effort to reach the culture, we have failed. Why? Because in our frantic efforts into coolness and technology, we forgot the most powerful tool we have at our disposal. The tool that doesn’t have to be budgeted for and that we’ve had all along. PRAYER.

Prayer is powerful because our God is powerful. Church. It’s time to chuck all the contempora­ry ideas and get back to prayer. It’s time to fall on our faces before God and earnestly, fervently, and desperatel­y cry out in humble repentance for our own sins (and we all have many), and then for sins of our nation. It’s time to stop our frantic “doing” and start our fervent intercedin­g. Then, when we have prayed, God could send a revival and He will direct our efforts to impact our society, This time, however, it will have His anointing and power, and our culture will be radically transforme­d. But it must start with prayer.

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