COVID-19 and Prayer – guest post by David Cloud, courtesy of Way of Life Literature
“Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not” (Jeremiah 33:3).
“For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him” (2 Chronicles 16:9).
“And call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me” (Psalm 50:15).
“ Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name. He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him” (Psalm 91:14-15).
“The LORD is nigh unto all them that call upon him, to all that call upon him in truth” (Psalm 145:18).
“Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us” (Ephesians 3:20).
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In light of these great promises and the encouragement that God Himself gives to His people that they might pray in faith and expect real answers, I pray that panic will subside, that good reason will reign, that government leaders will have wisdom and not be driven by panic-mongers, that God will protect our president, that God will be merciful to an undeserving people, and that many be confronted with their mortality and turn to Jesus Christ.
I also pray that the coronavirus will dissipate like fog in the sunshine by the end of April and that all of the doomsayers will be proven wrong. They won’t acknowledge that it was an answer to prayer and will doubtless take credit, but those who pray will know what happened and will rejoice in God’s great mercy and power.
For God’s people, difficult times call for prayer rather than panic. We have glorious promises, such as Romans 5:3-11 and 8:28. That’s why Proverbs says, “The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bold as a lion.” We aren’t foolish, but we are bold, because “God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7).
Prayer in God’s will changes things. It’s God’s eternal plan that it be so. The God who answered Hezekiah’s prayer for deliverance from the fearful might of Assyria is still alive and still in the prayer answering business.
I would urge each born again child of God to take some special time to pray about this situation, and to keeping praying day-by-day until we have deliverance.
God has told us to pray for those who are in authority, “that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty” (1 Timothy 2:1-2). That is exactly what we need! If God has specifically instructed His people to pray for this, is He not ready to answer? President Trump called for a national day of prayer last week. I wonder how many Bible-believing churches prayed? God doesn’t hear the prayers of those who come to Him in any other way than through the blood atonement of Jesus Christ. “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time” (1 Timothy 2:5-6).
The day of the Lord has not yet come. It will come soon enough and the pestilences and other judgments will be unprecedented (Matthew 24:3-31).
As for prayer for leaders, the Bible teaches us that the governments are in God’s hands and that He can and does lead unsaved men. The prophet Daniel said, “… he removeth kings, and setteth up kings: he giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding” (Da. 2:21).
Let’s do some real praying, brethren, in these panic times. How is your prayer life? Let’s use this occasion to raise the temperature of our prayer lives to a higher level. Do you have a daily prayer closet when you do some real intercessory prayer before the throne of grace? Do you have family altars when the family really prays together? Do you have active prayer partners? Does your church have real prayer meetings when the people actually pray together? This has become a rarity, and it is high time to get back to prayer.
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Distributed by Way of Life Literature’s Fundamental Baptist Information Service, a service for Fundamental Baptists and other fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. Established in 1974, Way of Life Literature is a fundamental Baptist preaching and publishing ministry based in Bethel Baptist Church, London, Ontario, of which Wilbert Unger is the founding Pastor. Brother Cloud lives in South Asia where he has been a church planting missionary since 1979.