Two words have been on my heart all week, beginning with church Sunday morning at Tulakes (the impoverished area where I work at a food pantry), in my quiet moments at work, and then continuing through this awful weekend of sorrow.
CRY OUT!
As in GOD, WE CRY OUT TO YOU corporately as a church body…help us…deliver us…break chains. Do something new in this community. Bring daddies home. Resurrect the family unit. Change the structure of this place.Bring such light into this neighborhood that it will drive out the darkness.
CRY OUT!!
As in GOD, I CRY OUT TO YOU personally…convict me…show me my sin…change my heart. Don’t let me pray for anyone else to be different until I am. Make my heart new. Call me to a new understanding of who you are and what relationship with you looks like. Break my heart with the things that break yours. Let me see people as you see them. Let me thirst for your word just like I do a glass of water. Overwhelm me with your spirit. Challenge me. Correct me. Change me.
And now, this weekend, once again those two words are playing over and over…
CRY OUT!!!
As in GOD, HAVE MERCY ON US as a nation. We are broken. We are divided. We are in pain. WE CRY OUT TO YOU…forgive us of our anger, our division, our reactionary attitudes, our need to be right over our need to show love. Remind us that we are called to lay down our lives, not to take the lives of others.
Remove the bitterness we feel toward our brothers. Give us eyes to see and ears to hear the cries of those who are not just like we are.
WE CRY OUT TO YOU GOD and we bind the enemy in the name of Jesus. Stop him dead in his tracks. Destroy any plans he has for this nation.
Spirit of Confusion…GO!
Spirit of Deceit…GO!
Spirit of Oppression…GO!
Spirit of Anger…LEAVE!
You are not wanted. You have no authority here. You are a defeated foe.
WE CRY OUT together, as a country…MAKE US NEW. Help us find common ground and unite us in purpose. Bind us together and clean our wounds. Bring change and hope and healing even in the midst of these tragedies. What satan meant for evil, turn around and use for good. Convict us to reach our hand out to the ones we are afraid of and to offer grace to those we differ with. Burden us to CRY OUT to you, to return to you, to recognize you. You are the one true GOD. The only one who knows us inside and out…the one who loves us most. Help us to see that and to see each other with your eyes.
We CRY OUT GOD, in unison…and with the authority of Jesus.
AMEN!
Those words are still running through my head…will you join me in CRYING OUT for our neighborhoods, our nation and our world?
Just . . . wow! A wonderful message which we all should take to heart and then ACT on the leading God provides.