Focusing on the more important thing

I have a picture in my prayer binder of a solitary Special Forces soldier, flanked on his left and on his right by two fighters of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. It’s a photo I scanned from the cover of the book The Hunt for Bin Laden by Robin Moore, about the toppling of the Taliban in 2001. Under the picture I placed a quote from the governor of a province in Afghanistan that was under Northern Alliance control. He said, in a question to a US Special Forces soldier sent to his area by the Defense Department, “Where are all your men? You have come alone? How can you help us defeat our enemy with only one man? The Russians sent tens of thousands…Bush sends us one…What kind of men are these Green Berets that will come alone?”…and then a note, in parentheses: “Fewer than 100 American soldiers were on the ground when Kabul fell.”

Since the 2000 election, my wife and I have been engaged with another couple in a weekly prayer meeting. Over this time, we’ve found that prayer, and the ministry of intercession for individuals, for the church, for our communities, for the nation and the world, is a bit like being part of God’s “Special Forces” – as God trains in the nature of effective prayer, and in using His weapons, we’ve come to realize that we don’t need tens of thousands to punch through to victory, but hundreds, scores, maybe even just a handful. I pulled a quote from the 2004 book A Table in the Presence by Lt. Carey Cash, a chaplain with the first Marine battalion which crossed into Iraq in 2003: “More things are wrought by prayer than this world ever knows of. — Alfred Lord Tennyson.” The spiritual significance of this is something we’re learning. And then there’s this:

I’ve probably watched the movie “Patton” about a dozen times. There’s a scene in the movie where Patton orders up a “weather prayer” to clear the snow storm so the troops can receive air cover during the Battle of the Bulge. The event actually happened, and was related in an article in an Army publication in 1951 by Patton’s Third Army chaplain, James O’Neill. In the 1951 article, then-General O’Neill wrote,

“Those who pray do more for the world than those who fight; and if the world goes from bad to worse, it is because there are more battles than prayers. ‘Hands lifted up,’ said Bosuet, ’smash more battalions than hands that strike.’ Gideon of Bible fame was least in his father’s house. He came from Israel’s smallest tribe. But he was a mighty man of valor. His strength lay not in his military might, but in his recognition of God’s proper claims upon his life. He reduced his Army from thirty-two thousand to three hundred men lest the people of Israel would think that their valor had saved them. We have no intention to reduce our vast striking force. But we must urge, instruct, and indoctrinate every fighting man to pray as well as fight. In Gideon’s day, and in our own, [the] spiritually alert…carry the burdens and bring the victories.”

To repeat the comment of General O’Neill, Patton’s chaplain, “The spiritually alert…carry the burdens and bring the victories.” We’re finding this to be true whether the battlefield is in Iraq, or in America, or in our home community, or in the personal lives of the people we know. Persistent prayer is a recognition that God is sovereign in even political affairs. The spiritually alert – not a party, not a President – carry the burdens and bring the victories. It’s long past time that this became the dominant perspective of Christian voters.