Let God Arise!

IN AMER ICA’ S INNER CI T I ES

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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 (Gen. 32.24-32). Like Jehoshaphat, we have no strength against the rulers of this present darkness and spiritual forces gathered to destroy America’s inner cities, nor do we know what to do, but our eyes are on the Lord (2 Chron. 20.12). We are convinced that one day God will give the cities of this world to his Son (including America’s inner cities!), which are merely one significant part of the inheritance the Father has been pleased to give to the Risen Lord (Ps. 2.8). Knowing that our Lord Jesus must reign until all of his enemies are placed under his feet (1 Cor. 15.24-28), we will neither doubt his intentions nor be impatient in the timing of his answers. God will respond to us, in his own time and in his own way. As we leave our gathering to scatter again in our particular