“Pray for America” is an oft repeated refrain reverberating throughout our country and churches. It’s easy to see why prayer is being called for, but hard to know what exactly we’re to pray. Are we to pray for God to smile upon our God-forsaking nation with His good favor? Are we to pray for God to bless America, in spite of the fact that America has turned its back on God? Are we to pray for God to make America great again, despite the fact that we have rejected God’s Son and the great salvation God has wrought for us Christ, a sin for which the Bible promises inescapable judgement (Hebrews 2:3)?
Are you aware of the fact that the Bible teaches nations can pass a point of no return with God? As God told Jeremiah, there comes a time when it’s too late to pray for one’s own country (Jeremiah 7:16; 11:14; 14:11). No wonder Jeremiah was called the weeping prophet.
For years, I’ve been preaching with tear-filled eyes and a broken heart that our county has passed a point of no return with God. For instance, the Scripture teaches that a true sign of spiritual reprobation—that God has given up on a people and given them over to their reprobate minds—is the acceptance and advocacy of homosexuality (Romans 1:26-32). If this Scripture is true, then, our nation, a nation that not only accepts and advocates homosexuality, but has enshrined same-sex marriage in its laws, is definitely reprobate and past the point of no return with God.
As unpopular and unnerving as it is to say; the simple truth is: It is too late to pray for America! We can still pray for the salvation of Americans, but no longer for the salvation of America. We can also pray, as my son Michael recently suggested to me, for a divine stay of execution for our nation. In other words, we can ask God to graciously grant us a little more time to preach the Gospel to our countrymen before His inevitable judgment, which is obviously already occurring, completed obliterates our country.
A post like this one always generates complaints about the little or downright lack of hope it offers. Yet, to lodge such complaints is to complain of the absence of hope apart from Christ. There is no such thing as hope apart from Christ, not for you, your family, or your country. The Bible teaches that all who reject Jesus Christ are in this world without God and without hope (Ephesians 2:12). This is just as true for a Christ-rejecting people or nation as it is for a Christ-rejecting person.
If you are looking for hope in these despairing times, you need to look to Christ, who alone is our only hope of glory (Colossians 1:17). As Paul taught Titus, we, as Christians, need to be “looking for that blessed hope,” which is the soon and “glorious appearing of [our] great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13). With John the Revelator, we too need to say, “Even so come Lord Jesus” (Revelation 22:20). Truly, this prayer of John’s and last prayer of the Bible should be our daily prayer in these dark and despairing days!
Rather than clinging to hope against hope for our country, you and I need to be offering hope to our countrymen, by offering them the Good News (Gospel) of Jesus Christ. It’s not some temporal hope, but an eternal one that Christ has commissioned us to preach to the world. Furthermore, this eternal hope is not found in a hoped for future of some temporal earthly kingdom, but in the promise of an eternal and heavenly kingdom, which will one day usurp and transcend all earthly kingdoms. This hoped for kingdom, which will be unbounded in its dimensions, unending in its duration, and definite in its establishment, will come with the coming again of its eternal King, Jesus Christ, who will rule and reign forever (Isaiah 9:7)! It is this coming consummate event that is the Christian’s blessed hope and for which Christ has commissioned us to prepare the world by preaching, as He did, “The time has come; the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:15).