A Portland Pastor Preaches on Prayer

I love Portland.  I visited the city for a very short time and fell in love with it.  You can imagine, then, how delighted I was to hear that our visiting pastor was from Portland.  He was going to talk to us about prayer.  The pastor told us the story of the Israelites' rebellion against God in wanting an earthly king like the nations around them.  Samuel was the priest at the time, and he was disheartened by the peoples' rebellion and foolishness.  He said to them, as they complained to him, "As for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by failing to pray for you."  (1 Samuel 12:23.)  Our nation is in rebellion right now; social upheaval and turmoil is everywhere.  Sin and foolishness have overtaken cities.  As Christians, we are called priests (1 Peter 2:9), so we absolutely must pray for our nation-pray for peace and justice.