I’m sitting here on Inauguration Day, January 20^th, 2021 and I am scrolling through my Facebook memories, even though I have been trying to exit Facebook I still get the notifications letting me know that I have memories from years gone by.  Lo and behold, in my memories today, there is a reminder from President Trump’s Inauguration Day that talks about how we need to “not demonize the man even if we don’t agree with him, but to lift him up in prayer as the Bible says we should pray for our leaders each and every day.” I had posted this as a heartfelt message to those who were really struggling with the idea that Trump was, at that time, going to be the President of the United States. I had every good intention in saying what I said.  I was hoping to instill peace in those who believe in prayer; in those who believe that God is in control.  

Today, I found it very fitting that this post popped up because, ironically, I have been struggling with the idea of a Biden presidency.  This is because there was so much negative news exposed during the course of the last year regarding Biden and his people.  There was so much that didn’t line up, so much that isn’t easy to reconcile, and so much of it that many have been calling to convict Biden of the crimes he’s committed (which from what I have seen are many). A lot of people who support him would disagree with that because they don’t see the same news that I see…and that’s also part of the issue.  But that’s a larger discussion for another time.  My apprehension is not only provoked by the man himself and the things that he’s been accused of, but of the media portraying him differently than what he is and what video and audio clips have shown him to be.  So, basically, it’s almost the same issue we faced with Trump, just with different players, different circumstances, and everything flipped to favor the other side.  Both sides seeing a very different representation of the person they support. Again, a discussion for another time.

So, as this memory came up in my feed today, I was thinking to myself that I feel like the bottom has kind of dropped out of things.  I feel a little less than hopeful, but not for the reasons you might think.  I feel this way because I fear that any shred of hope that people who supported President Trump may have had, could now disappear.  If they were already clinging to faith very tentatively and God didn’t come through and wipe out all of the evil that’s been exposed, it will really call a lot into question.  For people whose faith is not solid, my prayer for today is two-fold; instead of feeling like nothing has been done, I pray that people would remember that the ultimate sacrifice was made for us by Jesus Christ.  No matter what happens, no matter who is president, He is still our King.  He is still on the throne.  We can’t see the point of it all right now; we can’t see the reason why all of this has been allowed to happen the way that it has.  Many of us have seen things, we’ve seen proof of some really terrible things that are happening out there, and it is very hard to shake those things from our consciousness.  We cannot understand why God would allow such things to take place and for the perpetrators of those things to be rewarded rather than punished.  And it is undoubtedly causing a great deal of confusion and frustration.

The tendency may be to think that if God is not punishing these things that maybe He really isn’t there like we thought He was.  For some reason we allow situations like this to erase every shred of proof that He is and always will be with us.  We allow this to make us forget (even if only for a brief period of time) all the times when He has helped us out of situations that were difficult, painful, and hurtful.  All the times when He has healed us, when He has provided for us and given us joy.  All of it is overshadowed because on a grand scale, these people we see seem to be getting away with murder, literally.  And it breaks our hearts because we think, “Well, God, I worry so much about the things that I do.  Am I being a good person? Am I upholding Your values? Am I doing the things that You would have me do?” and then we see these people killing babies, trafficking children, upholding an anti-family and anti-America agenda, and a host of other things that blatantly go against His principles.  We see these people moving into positions of power once again where they can exercise their influence over America and impose their laws to make this society more attractive to them and less attractive to people who follow Him.  We see people move into a position of power who uphold the opposite of what He asks us to uphold for the Kingdom and we think, “Does He no longer want to win in the end?  Did something change and maybe we didn’t get the update, because it really seems like we’re looking at a situation that’s hopeless and the faith that we have obviously isn’t strong enough to change anything. This is the mood that I feel is being experienced by many believers today as really as we witness these things.  We’re over here thinking, is evil really going to win?  Is He really giving them this much rope? If so, at what point is He going to jerk that rope back and begin to hand out judgment?  

So, for the first part of my prayer, I definitely want to encourage believers, no matter how difficult it is for you, to hang onto your faith and remember that God is in control.  He does have a plan even for everything that we’re seeing right now.  I want to encourage you to pray and pray with an eye toward this; this second thing.  I know that in our hearts and minds the only thing many of us can think about is that we need to convict Joe Biden.  We need to convict all of the people who are involved in all of these crimes that we’ve heard about against children, against humanity.  We need to clean house, we need to “drain the swamp,” we need to get rid of all of this evil.  I’m going to ask you to pray exactly that, but with a little different spin on the words “convict Joe Biden.”  I’m asking this because it occurred to me that what we’re looking for is not a literal conviction, like a criminal conviction.  What we should hope to have happen for these people is a conviction of the Spirit.  As Christians, and as people who have sinned, and who have gone through the period of understanding that sin and transitioning from that sin into the healing power of God and the grace of God and the mercy of God, we shouldn’t be calling for a criminal conviction as much as we should be calling for God’s spiritual conviction of these people.  

If we are truly Christians, if we are truly like Jesus, and we are truly interested in seeing change, the thing that’s going to change us the most, the thing that’s going to change this world the most, is not yet another arrest, another conviction, another trial, another punishment by man.  The thing that will change them the most is conviction by God, conviction in the Spirit that troubles the heart to the point where it must change.  A conviction of the Spirit that reaches in and extracts every ounce of sin from that person’s soul and flings it as far away from that person as possible.  If we truly want change, that’s the conviction we need to be praying for the most right now.

Do I feel that justice needs to be served? Absolutely! Do I feel that for all of these people who have suffered, for all of these children who are still suffering, and all of the unborn babies and everything that we cry for and we pray for each and every night, do I feel that we need to be outraged and angry and frustrated at everything that’s been going on and has been allowed to go on unchecked?  Absolutely!  But I think the reason that we didn’t see a move from God on this in the way that we had all hoped to see it, is because we were calling for the wrong kind of conviction.  In prayer, we cannot pray for the destruction of another human being.  We have to remember that no matter how hateful, he or she is still a child of God.  No matter how destructive he or she is, they are still a child of God.   No matter how vile and evil their actions are or how biblically wrong we see that person behaving, they are still a child of God.  

I’m not saying or by any means preaching tolerance of sin or saying that we need to forgive and forget and allow it to continue.  I’m saying that in our minds and in our hearts, the best thing we can do to heal that person and keep them from doing more damage to other people is to pray for their conviction.  We should pray for the conviction of the Holy Spirit to set in, because there is no greater healing that can take place than when the Holy Spirit begins to work in the body and mind and spirit of someone who has been controlled by demons and who has been allowed to run unchecked in that demonic spirit.  There is no stronger attack on the devil than having one of his demons turn away from him and toward God.  

So, those are the two things that I feel today in my spirit.  I feel we need to pray diligently and fervently for this.  I think it is very important that we don’t let our anger and our frustration, and our fear control us.   And that we remember whose children we are, and we remember what He’s taught us over the years, over the course of our own sin.  Our lives were never perfect and still aren’t, no matter how good we may think we have become.  It isn’t possible for us to be perfect, not in this world.  There are too many influences and too many things to corrupt us and it’s too difficult for us to be anything other than human.  That’s what He created us to be and that’s why He had to send Jesus.  That’s why He had to sacrifice His Son for us.  Because as the flawed human beings that He made us to be, we are not capable of being as good as He is, but we must be capable of wanting to be.  In order to do that we’d better hope that someone out there besides just us is praying for those demonic spirits to leave us alone.  We’d better hope that someone, some strong, praying Christian is out there praying that the demonic spirits aren’t permitted to harm us or influence us.   And we need to do the same for others.  

So, don’t lose hope. Continue to pray for strength, continue to pray for your faith to be lifted and bolstered by God and by His love and mercy and grace.  Remember where you’ve been with Him.  Remember that we are not perfect, and we need prayer constantly.  And if we need prayer constantly, then those who are committing grievous sins such as hurting others or being permissive and allowing others to hurt others and pushing the agenda that creates a culture where hurting others is normal and okay, they need prayer twice as much as we do. Don’t forget to pray for yourself, to pray for your strength and peace.  And then pray for our leaders no matter who they are, even if we don’t want to accept them as our leaders. We have to pray for the people that are in power that they may be convicted of the Holy Spirit and that they may see what is wrong with the things they’ve been doing and let their hearts be changed so that they can bring light from the position of power that they’ve been given instead of continuing to help the darkness set in.  I believe that if we all make a concerted effort to pray in that direction, we will get the conviction that we seek and the one that we receive; the one that we see in our own hearts and in theirs will make a much bigger difference than filling all the jails in the world.  

I pray that this message finds you in a place of peace and strength and that you will move forward with what I’ve asked you to do here and that we will all do our best to bring the light.

I’m praying for all of us, in Jesus’ name. 

Amen

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