Category: Politics

Conviction, and conviction alone, is why I am writing today. Truth be told, I was hesitant in putting this post together. Even more truthfully, I’ve been putting it off for months. There are two reasons for this:

First, I felt like this post didn’t APPLY to our blog’s content.

While everything we do as a family we seek to do to the glory of God, this blog is not technically religious in nature nor is it political in content (can I get an “amen”). This is a homesteading, homeschooling, holiday fun, nature-loving journal where I post pictures of vibrant tomatoes and the hands of our children exploring God’s beautiful creation one miracle at a time. And yet . . . as I was preparing the content for this post, it occurred to me that really it does indeed apply to Our Holistic Homestead. In fact, it applies to every aspect of our lives.

I was struck by this thought: if Jesus Christ is our life’s salvation, if God’s will is our life’s vision, if communing with the Holy Spirit is our life’s breath, if prayer is our life’s hope . . .

Then today’s offering actually applies to and transcends every genre, subject, focus, and activity.

Second, I was concerned that I myself didn’t QUALIFY to write it.

I was in attendance at a prayer retreat a year ago. Ironically, I was hosting it. Yes, I found myself an unlikely host when after the first five uninterrupted minutes of prayer I discovered my mind was already wandering. It occurred to me that first day of the retreat that in spite of my being a Christian for most of my life, I had failed to devote myself to a true practice of prayer. Yes, I prayed. Little prayers like “God help me” or “God keep them safe, please dear Lord,” or even whopping half-minute prayers over the kids at bedtime or in times of distress. Yet, I had never in my life dedicated myself to an hour of prayer, let alone a half day of abiding with the Holy Spirit.

Josh and the kids returned home following the women’s prayer retreat, and I told them that I had been convicted that we needed to change the way we approached our faith as a family, particularly when it came to prayer. As always, my little tribe was instantly on board. We began praying as a family . . . beyond simply blessing the food at dinnertime and the kids’ foreheads at bedtime. Recently, we’ve begun encouraging our kids to pray on their own as well, in the morning, at bedtime, and as a part of our Sabbath together. We’ve also been consciously setting aside time for repentance and taking communion together.

The results of this new devotion to prayer have been profound. Our entire family has been increasingly motivated to devote even more toward prayer. And so, a few months ago, I prepared a six-week prayer study. First, I looked up every verse in the Bible I could find about prayer and then began sorting them into the following categories as they emerged:

Ok, so it went longer than six weeks. Every time I opened my Bible to study prayer, I found more and more for us to learn and implement together. Each week’s study greatly expanded our understanding and practice of prayer.

One particular week’s study, however, actually stopped us in our tracks.

It was “Pray for one another week” and one of our passages we read aloud was 1st Timothy 2: 1-2 which instructs us to “pray on behalf of all men” as is the wording in NASB, or “all people” as the NIV translates. The verse continues on to specify who is included in “all people” listing “kings” and “authorities” specifically. Josh and I looked at each other with the same “oops” expression. Although we had both encountered this verse before (probably many times) and had undoubtedly tucked it away in some deep cavern of our minds, we were sobered with the realization that neither of us had ever practiced praying for our government, our politicians, our president (especially when we didn’t care a fig for them) and we’d certainly never done so together.

Our family gathering was quiet a moment, which is rare for us. Josh and I considered how much we, as a *collective* Christian culture and community, stress, obsess, rant, rave, debate, even curse the people in authority over us.

We observe the relentless discussing of political dysfunction as we shake our heads and throw up our hands.

We shake our heads but fail to bow them. We throw up our hands but fail to fold or raise them.

Again, this is our personal experience and our perception of the collective Christian culture. We know there are true prayer warriors out there. We even know a handful of them. Perhaps one of you is reading this right now, and if so, thank you dearly! But we have found that the vast majority (ourselves included) listen to it all, talk about it all, debate and argue about it all, stress and worry over it all . . . before or instead of surrendering it all to God. And that is something our family has set out to change.

Yes. I am unqualified to write a call to prayer for our nation. What I am learning, however, is that it doesn’t matter, because prayer isn’t about the qualifications of the one praying or even the one writing about prayer. We are all unqualified. That is why we need to pray.

And so . . .

Calling all God-fearing men, women, and children who believe in the power of prayer! We invite you to: join our family in creating a new habit of prayer for our nation; praying on behalf of all people, including its citizens, authorities, and rulers.

It is our prayer that you will unite your supplications with ours; that every God-fearing Christian reading this will join hands with us, bend knees with us, bow heads with us, and pray for God’s mercies toward us . . .

toward our families . . .

toward our communities . . .

toward our land . . .

toward our nation.

Thank you for reading, thank you for sharing, thank you for praying!

Love, ~Candace Arden