A Prayer For Wisdom In Opposing Issues

 

 

Jehovah God, eternal and everlasting, we have just come through a week of mixed emotions.  We have elected our first non-white president in nearly  225 years, a giant step for a country founded by Europeans.  At the same time we have witnessed large numbers of people march in angry protest against the approval of a Constitutional change declaring marriage to be a union of a man and a woman.

 

Father, it is easy for us, who supported the proposition, to condemn such action and to call down hell’s fire upon them for not accepting the decision of the majority, but for those who saw it as a restriction of their liberty it is unacceptable and a call to civil disobedience.  Heavenly Father, it hurts to see such a large group of people condemning the church for failing to understand the issue, as we who accept the Bible, understand it.  We feel compelled to follow the teaching of the Holy Scriptures in which we read that it is Your intention: “For a man to leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and they shall be one flesh.”  We remember our Savior quoting this truth when discussing marriage.

 

What can we learn from the passion of those who opposed the proposition and are so bitter with its passing? Are we partly responsible for them labeling us as moralists and even bigoted in our stance?  Did we fail to promote it as being part of our faith and if we did were we fearful that it would become a faith issue?   Were we more concerned about being right than we were about sharing our faith in love with those who opposed us?

 

Father, we confess that we are  fearful that defining marriage “as a union between two people” will become a teaching in our public schools.  Are we so fearful that the teaching of Scripture concerning marriage cannot stand up against a redefinition by the secular world?   The church faced a similar question nearly 150 years ago when creationists won the battle to teach creationism in our public schools.  As distasteful as it is, for us to define “marriage as a union of two people,” let us seek not by the ballot box, but by our devotion to the Scriptures to convince others that marriage is a sacred union between a man and a woman.   Let us recommit ourselves to a bold stand for the Christian faith and what we believe.  Let the world’s definition of marriage be recognized as just that, the worlds, and let the Christian definition be just that, the teaching of the Bible.

 

Father, forgive us if we have failed You in our desire to legislate belief in Your truths and in so doing have turned many against the Gospel which alone can save one from sin.  Forgive us for failing to believe that Your truth, which can make the blind to see and the deaf to hear, can change the hearts of those who believe.  

 

This we pray in the name of Jesus.  Amen.