Sean C. Morgan
Sweet Home Christians gathered Wednesday night to join others around the country in the 53rd Annual National Day of Prayer for the community and the nation.
“I’m so thankful we have a nation who’s founders were in God,” River of Life Pastor Gary Hooley said. “I think that’s why we have a nation.? Many of our presidents have asked us to pray, especially in time of war or times of crisis.”
But Christians do not need war or crisis to pray, Pastor Hooley said. They can pray any time.
“Regardless of the direction of our nation ? we make a choice now that we will stand and pray to God,” Pastor Hooley said. Prayers are honored in the heavens, and “we pray because it’s the highest privilege.”
Community and church leaders led a congregation that filled Hillside Fellowship’s sanctuary in prayers for national leaders, the military, educators, the church, the community and Sweet Home Emergency Ministries (SHEM), families and the media and entertainment industries.
Michael Ingram urged people to pray for their city council and other local leaders, the president, military leaders and soldiers “that put themselves in harms way for us.”
Sweet Home High School teacher Dustin Nichol started teaching about six years ago. He learned that each student comes with a different attitude, background and belief system. Somehow teachers are expected to teach and maintain high moral standards in a day and age when specific values are considered right for some but not for others.
Some teachers, hopefully not in Sweet Home, teach subject matters that would make some persons blush, even when taught with neutrality, Nichol said. Child development classes talk about contraceptives and a little about abortion options in a “scientific” approach, but if the teacher could talk about morality too, behavior could be improved. Political correctness also affects educators.
At Sweet Home High School, he has seen teachers helping students in many ways whether just saying hello to a student or listening to a student who just lost a family member Nichol said.
The main tool teachers have is to set an example to students, Nichol said. “Pray that teachers would give a moral and ethical example to the students they come into contact with every day.”
St. Helen’s Catholic Church Deacon Skip Malone talked about the diversity and the unity of the group gathered for prayer that night, urging prayer for the church.
“We can have too much of either,” Malone said. Too much diversity breaks down groups while too much unity can make a group stiff and unable to do anything.
“Our churches today are being split apart by issues of abortion, marriage, homosexuality, stem cell research,” Malone said, and at the same time, some 47 percent of the population, mostly on the west and east coasts, is unchurched.
He asked how young people can be expected to go into churches with the squabbling.
“The Bible,” Malone said. “The necessary things that we need in life are in that book. We need to agree on what they are.”
In other areas, “we are losing our rights as Christians all throughout the world,” Malone said. In Canada, some parts of the Bible can be considered hate crimes because of how it deals with homosexuality.
SHEM needs prayer, executive director Rebecca McClaskey said, detailing the difficulties facing the organization.
SHEM is operating in a deficit, McClaskey said. It is unable to meet its overhead costs. Church donations are down by 50 percent.
“We need more volunteers willing to give examples of Christ’s love,” McClaskey said. “I need each of you to return to your churches and advocate for SHEM.”
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Sweet Home Ward Bishop Bruce Workman urged prayer for the preservation of the family.
“I learned at the knee of my parents that my strength comes from my heavenly father,” Bishop Workman said. As an adult, he and his wife deal with their own children, teaching them to look to God and read from the Scriptures on a daily basis.
“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it,” Bishop Workman quoted from Proverbs. “The family is the basic unit of society. We must pray that families stay intact and be safeguarded that we can keep our society clean, pure and directed as God would have us. I am a firm believer in prayer. I have seen it change lives.”
Nancy Ellis of St. Helen’s Catholic Church highlight hope in answered prayer that is opening doors in Hollywood.
“I come tonight with a message of hope,” Ellis said. “Jesus Christ, God is in control.”
God is taking control of the entertainment media to get His message out, Ellis said. Some time ago, a group she is involved with received a prayer request about a movie Mel Gibson was making, spending $30 million of his own money.
No one would agree to show this movie, “The Passion of Jesus the Christ,” Ellis said. “Even Mel Gibson, with all of his celebrity ? couldn’t get one single distributor to show his movie. We began to pray.”
Later Ellis received an email saying, “praise God, he has found a distributor.”
Gibson had found a distributor for 400 theaters and could announce an opening day, Ash Wednesday.
“He (God) was directing this whole thing,” Ellis said. More and more people came on board. Another filmmaker, from Portland, had been unable to get interest in his movie on the life of an obscure saint, Terise, who wrote “The Autobiography of a Soul.” Since Gibson’s movie, that filmmaker is now getting interest from the motion picture industry, and his movie is set to open in October.
Religious material is now acceptable for movies, Ellis said. “Now isn’t God good? It is through prayer how God can reach down into our puny world ? and bring us hope in our darkened world.”