Additional National Prayer Needs
Pray for our Military
The United States Navy is conducting training exercises with 20 other nations in Singapore meant to standardize training, tactics, and procedures for crisis situations. Called SEACAT, the Southeast Asia Cooperation and Training exercises are designed so the 20 other nations are able to cooperate if a crisis or illegal maritime activity occurs in the region.
The Coast Guard has purchased four additional Fast Response Cutters at a price tag of $65 million each. The new craft are scheduled to be completed between fall 2024 and summer 2025 and will be built in Louisiana.
Pray for U.S. military troops in Afghanistan as they assist in evacuating diplomats and civilians.
Pray for AMERICA’S FREEDOMS
A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit by a former Catholic school guidance counselor who broke her contract by entering a same-sex union which is a violation of church teaching. The court said the decision not to renew the person’s employment contract “goes to the heart of the church’s right to ‘select and control who will minister to the faithful.’”
Give thanks for the court’s decision that guards religious liberty.
Pray for AMERICA’S FOREIGN RELATIONS
Taliban leaders declared “the war is over” after taking control of Afghanistan nearly 20 years on from the militant group fleeing a U.S.-led coalition march into Kabul. Their declaration came after the Taliban seized the presidential palace Sunday, following the U.S. evacuation of the American Embassy. They also said the country would return to being called the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, a name it went by under a prior Taliban regime. Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani fled his country Sunday, and former President Hamid Karzai released a statement announcing the creation of a “coordination council” for the transfer of power.
The UN nuclear watchdog said in a report to member states that, despite western warnings that such work compromises talks on reviving the Iran nuclear deal, Iran has made progress in its work on enriched uranium metal.
Pray for U.S. officials as they strategize with allies in the Middle East. Pray for believers in Afghanistan and Iran as the regimes there increase in power.
Pray For AMERICA’S HEALTH AND WELL-BEING
“Being socially isolated, kept away from their friends, their school routines and extracurricular activities during the pandemic has proven to be difficult on youth,” said a lead researcher and assistant professor in the department of psychology at the University of Calgary in Canada. “An important consideration for keeping schools open should be the mental health and well-being of youth,” she added.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said she is struggling to communicate with Americans about COVID-19 and that she feels the mistrust of many citizens, although she has vowed to restore trust in the agency that has declined amid policy and federal response contradictions.
Pray for America’s health and political leaders as they continue to cope with the advancing Delta variant and other issues related to COVID-19.
Pray for AMERICA’S RELATIONSHIP WITH ISRAEL
Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz announced that a committee will convene this week to authorize new housing units in the unoccupied West Bank for both Jewish settlers and for Palestinians living in “Area C,” which is controlled by Israel. The committee will authorize 2,200 new housing units in West Bank settlements—900 of which are already in the final planning stage and ready for construction—while new permits would be issued for 1,000 units for Palestinians.
Deadly rocket and mortar fire on Israeli towns by Palestinian terror groups during the Gaza conflict in May constituted war crimes, Human Rights Watch charged. The group said it based its findings on witness interviews, site visits, an inspection of rocket remnants, and a review of video footage.
Pray for officials that seek a solution to bring peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
Pray for AMERICA’S ECONOMY
According to a survey conducted by the National Federation of Independent Businesses last month, small business owners across the U.S. have become less confident in the economic recovery as labor shortages remained an issue.
Inflation stayed high in July as the economy rebounds. Consumer prices rose 5.4 percent from a year earlier, the same annual rate as in June, evidence of some cooling in the economic recovery and especially as new strains of the virus infections reduce some business activity. The Consumer Price Index measures what consumers pay for goods and services, including groceries, clothing, restaurant meals, recreation, and vehicles.
Pray for American families as they deal with the impacts of an overheating, inflationary economy.
Pray for Goodness in America
A family in Ohio had a scare when they cleaned out their grandmother’s freezer, only to learn she had hidden $25,000 in cash inside the frozen vegetables. By the time the grandmother thought to warn her relatives not to throw out her savings, it was on the way to the landfill. They called the supervisor who was able to locate the driver before the load was dumped. He diverted the truck to a recycling center where ten workers searched through the contents on a tarmac and located the nest egg within ten minutes.
Pray with thanksgiving for hardworking Americans who are willing to go out of their way to help others.
Pray for America’s Media
The internal watchdog for the National Security Agency said it was launching an inquiry into allegations that the agency had improperly spied on a member of the American news media. They are looking at “NSA’s compliance with applicable legal authorities and agency policies and procedures regarding collection, analysis, reporting, and dissemination activities, including unmasking procedures, and whether any such actions were based upon improper consideration,” the Inspector General said.
Pray for U.S. agencies and America’s media as infringements upon freedom of speech and freedom of the press increase.
Pray for America’s Education
Experts are warning of a mental health “epidemic” for children amid Delta variant fears of the COVID-19 virus and the risk of having to stay with online learning. They say parents should be having conversations with their children to prepare them for the potential of returning to remote learning. They should also be sensitive to changes in their children with things like eating and sleeping patterns, combined with social withdrawal, which are the first signals that their children may need mental health counseling.
Oregon’s Governor Kate Brown signed a bill that drops the requirement that high school students prove proficiency in reading, writing, or math before graduating to “fully reflect what every student needs to thrive in the 21st century,” insisting that considering math and reading essential skills has been an unfair challenge for students who do not test well.
Pray for the mental health of America’s schoolchildren, and for educators deliberating the “equity” of not testing for basic learning accomplishments.
Pray for America’s Technology
A senior executive for Apple defended the company’s new software to fight child pornography after the plans raised concerns about an erosion of privacy on the iPhone, revealing greater detail about the safeguards to protect from abuse. He emphasized that the new system will be auditable, but conceded that the tech giant stumbled in last week’s unveiling of the new tools. “We feel very positive and strongly about what we’re doing,” he said.
Pray for U.S. regulators and tech firms who seek to strike a balance between privacy and protecting children.
Pray for Needs Across the States
Governor Tony Evers of Wisconsin vetoed several pieces of legislation aimed at reforming absentee voting laws that the legislature had passed. The bills would have imposed new restrictions on absentee voter registration, including an ID requirement and a limitation on the collection of absentee ballots more than two weeks out from an election. The vetoes were expected and there are not a sufficient number of votes to override them.
Thousands of people living in and near the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in southeastern Montana were ordered to evacuate ahead of a massive, wind-driven wildfire, a day sooner than they thought they might. “We’re all pretty worried,” one county sheriff said. “It’s jumping highways. It’s jumping streams. A paved road is about as good a fire line as we could ask for, and it’s going over that in spots.”
Pray for state legislators and governors concerned about voter safety and the elimination of voter fraud.
Pray for America’s Faith Community
“We’re not sober-minded. We are taking in so much. We have no self-control. We wake up and we just want to see what’s going on…
“Right now, there’s so much noise and information and entertainment. We are so drugged up. Our minds are so messed up … and in the Christian Church, we’ve become busier and busier. We try to scream louder and get more creative with the noise.
“I don’t know if it’s the pandemic or just getting away from America, but you come back and you realize, ‘Wow, every individual is super opinionated and super sure of themselves and they’re right and you’re wrong about everything. It’s this overwhelming flood of opinions that we have here in the West” “When I look at Scripture, I see how much God wants unity. This is why Christ died on the cross; to make the two one. And I see how Ephesians four says that we actually grieve the Spirit of God by our disunity. I really believe this is God’s desire.“ – Francis Chan, author, teacher, preacher.
