National Day of Prayer
May 5, 2011

We are so very blessed and grateful today to live in a country that has set aside this day to pray to our Father in heaven for His guidance, and protection and blessing.

We are also blessed and grateful to be here at Stewart Home School where prayer is the very first thing on our agenda as we gather together.

We know that it is God who directs us. We know that it is God who is the only true source of security and protection.

And we also know that it is God who is the giver of every blessing. He is the source of all that is good.

We are created by God.

We are sustained by Him.

And we gather as a nation and as a school today to pray to Him and to acknowledge Him for everything that He has done for us.

People all over our country are praying with us.

The Bible promises us that if a nation will humble itself, turn from its wicked ways and pray, God will hear us and heal our land.

Our land has been wounded by tornadoes and floods. It has also been wounded by hatred and violence. We are wounded by our enemies and we are wounded by ourselves.

We have followed too much the desires of our own hearts, our selfishness and greed has wounded us.

We have failed to love our neighbors as ourselves and that has wounded us.

We need God to hear our confession and we need His forgiveness. We need His help to change so that we will truly be His people, following His commands and living according to His will.

If we say we have no sin we are not telling ourselves the truth. And we cannot ask God to bless us or America if we do not obey Him and if we do not with sincere hearts turn from our wicked ways.

The Bill of Rights of our country declares that all of us are created equal; it recognizes the rights of every human being to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That is why the American flag is hanging between the two center columns of our Main Building. We believe that each of you deserves to have those rights.

But we cannot pursue our own happiness or our own liberty at the expense of our fellow man.

Our lives are given to us by a loving God who commanded us to love one another.

We are each of us created in His image.

Our God is love. And when we proclaim next week, as our Family Weekend theme, that “All You Need Is Love”, we are really saying, “All You Need Is God”! We know that may sound simple to some, but it is true.

We know there is evil in this world.

We know Usama Bin Laden was evil.

We just prayed together that God will deliver us from evil.

The terrorists of this world are evil. They kill and destroy.

All of God’s people today are praying together that God will deliver us from such evil and that He will protect and bless the brave men and women of our military forces who risk their lives to do just that.

We are also praying for our leaders. We pray that they will seek God’s guidance for every decision – before they make them.

We also pray that we will work hard to get out of debt and stay out of debt. The Bible tells us to lend to others and to be generous but it also tells us not to borrow and never to steal.

God’s will and His ways are always for our good. They are always right. They are always merciful. And we, too, are to be merciful just as we have been shown mercy.

As we pray to God today, we must remember that He tells us to be holy – just as He is holy. It is a holy thing for us to live together as brothers and sisters with God as our Father.

I love that today is exactly one week before Family Weekend.

Family Weekend is one big celebration of God’s love here.

As we come together one week before it all begins, we pray that our families will feel God’s love when they are here. We pray they will know that it is God who directs Stewart Home School. And we pray they will see that we have wonderful lives with liberty and all of the many pursuits of happiness because of our Creator God who loves us and who sent His Son Jesus so that we can know Him.

Our prayer today is that we will glorify our Father in heaven every day.

Today we heard the words of our beautiful song, “I pray for you; you pray for me; I need You, I need You to survive.” We do need God in order to survive and we need each other too.

Every day and every night your families are praying for us. For over 118 years of our school’s history the prayers of our families have gone up to God and we have been blessed. We are so grateful for their prayers. We pray for them, too. We pray they will have save travel as they come to us next week and we pray, as we always do, that God will bless us.

Let us pray:

Our Father in heaven,
Bless us as we seek Your kingdom here.
We pray that Your will is done here at Stewart Home School. Send Your Holy Spirit to guard and guide us in every way.

We love You, Lord.

In Jesus’ name I pray.

Amen.