Foundations for Christian Mission, Student Workbook, SW04

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F O U N D A T I O N S F O R C H R I S T I A N M I S S I O N

Let God Arise! (continued)

Affirmation and Acknowledgment

The final two dimensions of a Let God Arise! prayer concert, Affirmation and Acknowledgment respectively, allow for the giving of testimonies and final prayers which affirm God’s truth about himself and his intention to win the city. While we affirm the cruel oppression and persistent evil of the city, we likewise affirm the hope of the city’s salvation, as in the case with Nineveh of the book of Jonah, Assyria’s dark capital of violence, which God pardoned. In his forgiveness of their transgression and his relenting of judgment of that dark city, we see God’s deep love for lost and rebellious humankind, and his willingness to relent from judgment of even the most wicked city if its inhabitants merely humble themselves before him. If God would deliver the thousands-filled Nineveh of biblical time, surely we can affirm that the same God can deliver the tens of millions-filled NewYork, or the dozens of millons-filled Mexico City! The analogy is biblical and persuasive; God Almighty responds to the cries of the broken, the contrite, and the penitent (Ps. 34.18). During the Affirmation session, we affirm to God in prayer and to each other in testimony what the Lord has spoken to us during our time of seeking and entreating the Lord. We affirm the eternal love of a God who sent his only Son for our redemption (John 3.16), and we remind one another of God’s historical action to respond when his people, called by his name, humble themselves, pray, seek his face, and repent from their wicked way of self-preoccupation, self-indulgence, and self-reliance (2 Chron. 7.14). God works in response to his people crying out to him in their affliction, brokenness, and neediness before him (Deut. 26.5-10). We leave our session of Affirmation with a finale of prayers where we Acknowledge the veracity (truthfulness) and sovereignty of God. We covenant together to wait on the Lord, to look for his coming, to him who alone can strengthen our hearts (Ps. 27.14). Though we may grow weary in our praying, we are assured that we will prevail with God, for we are praying according to his will and to his heart (Isa. 40.28-31). We will not doubt or give up or lose heart (James 1.5; Gal. 6.9). If we start to intercede, we may be tempted to falter but, like the widow who pestered the judge until he responded on her behalf, we remind each other that we must beg God for action until he responds (Luke 18.1-8). Our hearts are fixed, and we are determined, like the patriarch Jacob, to wrestle with God, to implore him, to lay hold of him and not let him go until he blesses us