How shall we continue to pray for the pandemic crisis?

Since Wuhan/China announced a lockdown on 2020 January 23, after a week of “confusion”. The rest of the world, including the Christian community, was watching and wondered what has happened to China. The Christian community responded with prayer when the WHO named the corona virus as Convid-19 on February 11 and announced the spread of the virus as pandemic on March 12, and after US government declared a national emergency on March 13.

We prayed because the threat of the convid-19 is at our door step. Christians around the world, for the first time, united in prayer against the spread of virus. We searched the scripture to find appropriate texts and analogies to help ourselves to pray more earnestly. We turned to Psalms for comfort and assurance that God is in charge. But we must take closer look at the content of our prayers and on what the world has learnt from this pandemic, before we could continue to pray.

How did we pray? Let me sum up from what I heard and read in the following;

·      “No evil shall befall you, nor shall any plague come near your dwelling” (Psalm 91.10).

·      We are all protected by the blood of Jesus

·      We claim victory in the name of Jesus

·      We command the virus to go away

·      You, the evil one is behind the virus, and so we command you, to stop using the virus to kill us.

Three months have gone by and the pandemic still around us and killing more people every day (307,108 death as of today). God did not answer our prayers by removing the virus from us. Does God want it to stay a bit longer? If indeed God wants it to stay with us a bit longer, perhaps God has a purpose in allowing that to happen, then we may have to alter our prayer.  Have we been presumptuous in our claim of victory? Have we mistaken Satan being the culprit who is using the virus to harm us? Satan is a mighty angel created by God but he is not allowed to do anything as he likes. Satan still occupies the mighty position in the angelic realm. Even Michael, the arch angel of God, dare not slander him but gave him the right honour (Jude 1.9), have we not made a mistake by belittling him and commanding him to do things for us? Have we mistaken the virus as the enemy? Is the virus part of the creation of God? So far, none of the prayers seem to acknowledge it as a creation of God and therefore glorify God.

What has the world learnt from this pandemic and we don’t? Let me list some of them in the following;

1.     Convid-19 has made all the nations to go on their knees and humbled the most powerful countries.

2.     It put the global economy to a standstill and caused the rich poorer and poverty swept through every nation.

3.     The world is more unstable than before because the shifting of the world power and the repositioning of world order has sped up while the nations are caught unprepared.

4.     America for the first time fighting a war against an invisible enemy in her own land and lost more lives than during the WW2 and Vietnam war. The POTUS employs the “wag the dog” strategy to divert attention from his own failure by blaming others.

5.     This led to a war of words between the 5 English speaking countries or the 5 EYES and China. This coincides with the election in November 3 and Trump is seeking reelection and his campaigning message is simply “The pandemic crisis is the fault of China”!

6.     Scientists confirm that Convid-19 is natural and is part of nature. It has been with us at least for the past 10 years and it might continue to stay with us for a long time. Only vaccine could prevent an infection and the world needs a vaccine to put the pandemic to a stop.

How shall we continue to pray? From the above observation, there appears to be an invisible objective with the coming of the pandemic and perhaps we should pray for it to come true;

1.     We give glory to God for his sovereign control of the creation. We praise him for the spreading of the gospel during this pandemic.

2.     We pray for the church. “We know that all things work for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to his purpose” (Rom.8.28). All things must include the pandemic. God has given us faith, hope and love to battle trials in this world. Peter said about the faith, ^“In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed.” (1 Peter 1.7)

3.     We pray for many to come to Jesus Christ with repentance. Though the world has been humbled by the convid-19, but we pray for more to turn to God like king Nebuchadnezzar.

4.     We pray for the leaders of the nations that they may learn a valuable lesson from this pandemic and prepare themselves for the unpredicted and unexpected disasters, and that they may always have the people in their hearts.

5.     We pray for a genuine working together among the nations to battle on in this pandemic.

6.     We pray for the stability of the world politics and the smooth transition of the world leadership and the change in the world order.

7.     We pray for the American evangelicals who are strongly behind the POTUS Donald Trump. Pray that they may correct him when he is not doing the right thing.

8.     We pray that Trump will handle the pandemic crisis well in his own country. Pray that he will put the people before his own reelection. Pray that he will not resort to starting a war to divert attention from his lagging behind in his campaign. This would be a disaster for the world if he resorts to that.

9.     We pray for patience for everyone while we carry out the lockdown order or MCO.

10.  We pray for the medical staffs who serve in the frontline to save lives. Pray for police and soldiers who carry out their duty to maintain orderliness in the society. Pray for those who work on the vaccine in the labs.

Maranatha!