6th of March 2014 - A Day of National Prayer!

When last have you heard of a President of any country who in response to calamity calls his nation to prayer?

President Hifikepunye Pohamba has dared to do this, against the background of media ridicule and cajoling .

Namibia is currently in the grip of a spate of angry men who kill their girlfriends, and it is continuing. This morning’s newspaper (The Namibian 05/03/2014) reports of yet again another such murder. A man stabbed his girlfriend to death in cold blood while her children were watching. This is incident number 10 since the beginning of the year !

Our president is concerned, and so should we. I have done some analysis of the ‘angry Namibian man syndrome’ in my last blog post.

There are historical precedents for calling a nation to prayer such as was the case in the days of John Wesley , the famous Methodist Preacher who tells us in his journal of a deliverance in 1756. The king of England called for a day of solemn prayer and fasting because of a threatened invasion by France.

Wesley wrote: “The fast was a glorious day, such as London has scarce seen since the restoration. Every church in the city was more than full, and a solemn seriousness sat on every face. Surely God heareth prayer, and there will yet be a lengthening of our tranquility. He added later in a footnote: “Humility was turned into national rejoicing for the threatened invasion by the French was averted.”

Below also  find an example of a proclamation and a call to national prayer and fasting in 1863 by Abraham Lincoln, the president of the USA. 

If you are in Windhoek , please feel free to join us  on THURSDAY , 6^th March 2014  for  an hour of prayer at Eastside Baptist Church  between 18h00 and 19h00  as  we intercede  with the church at large  for our nation .

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By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation

Whereas the Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing the supreme authority and just government of Almighty God in all the affairs of men and of nations, has by a resolution requested the President to designate and set apart a day for national prayer and humiliation; and

Whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord;

And, insomuch as we know that by His divine law nations, like individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.

It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.

Now, therefore, in compliance with the request, and fully concurring in the views of the Senate, I do by this my proclamation designate and set apart Thursday, the 30th day of April, 1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting, and prayer. And I do hereby request all the people to abstain on that day from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to unite at their several places of public worship and their respective homes in keeping the day holy to the Lord and devoted to the humble discharge of the religious duties proper to that solemn occasion.

All this being done in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the divine teachings that the united cry of the nation will be heard on high and answered with blessings no less than the pardon of our national sins and the restoration of our now divided and suffering country to its former happy condition of unity and peace. In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this 30th day of March, A. D. 1863, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-seventh.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:

WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State .