
March 16, 2022
Episode #137
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During this time of crisis in the nation of Ukraine, many Christians have been rightly moved to pray. David and Karen Mains offer very helpful suggestions on how to more precisely direct such prayers.
Episode Transcript
David: To get right to the point, here is our message for this visit reduced to a sentence. A complex problem such as what’s happening in Ukraine requires more than superficial prayers. I’ll repeat it. A complex problem such as what’s happening in Ukraine requires more than superficial prayers.
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David: The news regarding the war in Ukraine changes rapidly. By the time this podcast has been posted online for you to hear, some or all of what we say may be outdated.
Karen: And because that made, we’re still encouraging you to hear our thoughts about praying for Ukraine with an open mind.
Intro: Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife, noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.
David: To get right to the point, here is our message for this visit reduced to a sentence. A complex problem such as what’s happening in Ukraine requires more than superficial prayers. I’ll repeat it. A complex problem such as what’s happening in Ukraine requires more than superficial prayers.
Karen: So, let’s define what a superficial prayer might sound like.
David: Okay, you go ahead.
Karen: Well, I think that we all do this. We are moved and we toss a prayer up to the heavens saying, “Oh God, help her.”
David: Bless the Ukraine.
Karen: Bless the Union. Keep them safe. And that’s fine. But what we’re saying in this podcast is that those of us who are believers, who are moved deeply by the straits that are happening to the Ukrainian people in this Russian incursion and invasion, we need to do more than just send up those little telegraph prayers.
David: Yeah, shallow or?
Karen: Well, I’m not sure there’s shallow, but I think what we’re saying is it…
David: … minimal.
Karen: Minimal, yeah. And so, we need to set aside time to deliberately intercede. I’m going to take 15 minutes here. Then at the end of the day, I’m going to take another 15 minutes.
David: And maybe even pray with someone else.
Karen: And maybe pray with a spouse or with a friend. Say, we’re going to do this. Let’s meet regularly before the Lord and see what happens. And I think of that scripture, “…the effectual, fervent prayers of righteous people availeth much.”
So, that’s what we’re aiming to propose in this podcast, is that we need to be conducting ourselves in a way, setting time aside so that we really can concentrate on effectual fervent prayer.
David: I’m going to try to help people, Karen. Here’s what I did. I wrote down 12 different specifics, kind of topics as to praying for the Ukrainian situation.
Karen: And this is extremely helpful. And you now go through this list, but we’re asking each person who feels moved, who feels burdened, to go ahead and make a list that they feel that they can pray for and then to pray for it once or twice a day, then maybe with other people, pray that list.
David: Okay. The first thing on my list is praying for President Zelensky and his key leaders.
Karen: Right. This is a young man who has risen to a worldwide attention. He’s become a hero. His leadership qualities are unquestioned. I mean, it’s just remarkable. His background has ostensibly not prepared him for this. And something in his character has allowed him to step into it.
David: Yeah. And he’s become a worldwide hero.
Karen: He is an example of a worldwide leader.
David: And he’s not in that alone. His closest followers are right there with him in the middle of what is going on.
Karen: And they’re literally putting their lives on the line. He’s, as we all know, has refused to flee for his safety’s sake. And that of his family. They’re all staying there. And so that’s rallied as a coterie of leadership around him. And they are all staying there for the duration of this conflict.
David: I would say my prayers are, “Lord, keep him alive as possible. Let him have a long life. Let the fruit of his political ministry be something that is spectacular. Let him be an example to all.”
Karen: Well, and deep in his faith, I believe he’s Jewish, is he not?
David: Yes.
Karen: And that that faith position that he has, that belief in God, will be deepened and God will begin to really answer his prayers. And he’ll have that feeling of that supernatural sustenance.
David: Of the Lord’s hand on him.
Karen: Of the Lord’s hand on him. Yeah, good.
David: Yeah, let’s take another massive, massive story from what is going on in in the Ukrainian situation. That is all the refugees, literally millions of people, usually women, but with children as well. I think of ourselves possibly being in that situation.
Karen: Well, I have to flee as older people.
David: Well, that’s really true. I forgot the older part of it.
Karen: Yeah.
David: In fact, a lot of the older people will talk about those who are still there, but they can’t even make such a journey. They’re just not able to do it. But all the complexity of the masses of people going into other countries, those countries trying to absorb them, to be gracious to them, to be helpful, what an absolute chaotic mess.
Karen: And I think one of the things that we can pray for are those humanitarian systems. I’ve worked a lot as a board member and then traveled around the world because of those contacts.
David: Yes, you have.
Karen: And I’ve been in refugee camps all over the world. And to set up the feeding programs, the systems that provide medical care, and there will be medical care for many of these people needed.
David: And just the care of all these children.
Karen: Housing, housing, shelter. You know, I mean, it’s just extraordinary. There are very touching stories that we’ve gotten over the news outlets of ordinary, average, caring citizens pulling up signs saying, “We can take eight people.”
I remember one couple who had driven three hours. I’m not even sure where they came from now. But there needs to be that kind of outpouring. And I think there has been a lot of that. A lot of these refugees are being taken into private homes. But we just need to pray that that continues.
David: Wow. Massive, massive concern. The Lord knows all these people individually.
Karen: By name. For those Ukrainians who are trapped in war zones, David, these bombs are falling around them.
David: When you say the aged, the older people, they’re not able to make that journey.
Karen: And they’ve sent their children on very often saying, “You go, flee to safety.” I mean, what a tearing thing. How would you like to leave your aged parents behind or just send your children and grandchildren across those conflicted zones? My Lord. I mean, this is an emotional disaster.
David: It’s not unwise to even pray for their safety.
Karen: Right.
David: As these people try to get out of this country.
Karen: Protect them. Let there be angelic protection that we can’t see, but that begins just around them in ways that’s almost supernatural.
David: I think that another major category, if I just add one more here, all these freedom fighters, you know. When you’re left, you know you’re outgunned, you know you’re outnumbered. You’re in a situation where you’re begging for help. And yet you say, I’m willing to put my life on the line for the sake of freedom.
Karen: This is our land, our country. We’re not going to be subsumed by another power here.
David: Freedom is such a longing in the hearts of people who don’t know what that’s like to live under a despotic situation. Yeah, we’ll give anything for freedom. Those are just basic categories that we can pray for. And whereas we feel quite overwhelmed by it all, the Lord is not overwhelmed. The Lord can say, “I’ll sort out. These are certain chosen people. I have invested myself in these individuals. I will see that they are safe.” And we’re praying that our prayers would cooperate with what God is doing.
Karen: I think we want to pray for leaders in the Ukrainian churches as well. They don’t get as much attention as far as the news is concerned, but they are true voices of God in their situations. You have the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, which is now being split between those who are Orthodox believers in Russia and those who are Orthodox believers in Ukraine.
David: It’s so confusing and difficult.
Karen: National public radio, to my surprise, actually did a focus on that dilemma over the air. I just happened to be in the car driving around and caught it. And I thought, “Oh, yes, we need to be praying for them.” I mean, this is gruesome to have your people of faith be divided in this situation and be confused. And once I’d given certain information through the news outlets and at the other side, another kind of information. So, we need to really pray for them.
David: Here’s a whole new category. I’m not sure exactly even what to term this, but in my mind, it’s “God, you be God.” I feel that when I pray, in fact, in these weeks that I’ve been praying for the Ukrainian situation, I say, “Lord, all through Scripture, you show yourself to be incredibly creative. You come up with solutions that I never would have thought of, and I couldn’t have pulled off.”
I’m going to give just two simple illustrations from Scripture. There are so many that I could have chosen from. This is from 1 Samuel. The Philistines have heard that Israel has assembled at Mitzvah and the rulers of the Philistines come up to attack them. Samuel, the judge, is their leader at the time and the people call to him and he is sacrificing a suckling lamb. And while he’s doing this, I’m reading now from the Bible. “While he was sacrificing the burnt offerings, the Philistines drew near to engage Israel in battle. But that day the Lord thundered with loud thunder against the Philistines and threw them into such a panic that they were routed before the Israelites and the men of Israel rushed out of Mitzvah and pursued the Philistines, slaughtering them along the way to appoint the little Beth Car.”
Karen: And we know these stories. I mean, I’m laughing, but you almost want to cry when you apply it to if God will work in this way in this conflicted situation right now.
David: Yeah, I don’t want to give God suggestions because he’s far more creative than I am. But Lord, if you put a snowstorm that stops the tanks for me. or rain like the dickens. That’s what it would be like.
Karen: Well, I think the prayer is that we can pray. This is not a bullet prayer like we talked about before. Show your hand. God show your hand in a way that…
David: Be who you are.
Karen: Be who you are that is undeniable. I mean, they can’t be explained by normal human causes. Just come up in your mighty power in a way in our current modern contemporary generation where those of you who are God followers say that was God’s work. There’s no other explanation for it.
David: Can I give one other illustration?
Karen: I’d love to hear another one.
David: Because this is incredibly creative. Ben-Hadad, the king of Haram mobilized his entire army and marched off and laid siege to Samaria. Samaria is the northern kingdom.
Karen: What book are you in now?
David: I’m in 2 Kings chapter 7. Actually, I guess I’m reading from 6 and then I’m going to get to 7 here. But with the siege, there’s a terrible famine all throughout Israel. In fact, one of the stories it gives here is that one woman says, “Help me because we ate my child yesterday.” Now she won’t give her child though we had bargained that we could stay alive that way. I mean, that’s awful.
Karen: It’s gruesome.
David: Anyway, I’m picking up the story. “Now there were four men with leprosy at the entrance of the city gate and they said to each other, ‘Why stay here until we die?’” And then they reasoned, stay here we die. If we go over to the camp with the attackers, we may die and maybe they’ll feed us. We don’t know. But four lepers. “At dusk, they got up and went to the camp where they reached the edge of the camp. Not a man was there for the Lord had caused the Armenians to hear the sound of chariots and horses and a great army so that they said to one another, ‘Look, the king of Israel has hired the Hittite and the Egyptian kings to attack us’. So, they got up and fled in the dusk and abandoned their tents and their horses and donkeys and they left the camp as it was and ran for their lives.”
It was a huge sound effect. In fact, these men with leprosy, four of them, they go in the camp. No one’s there. They eat, they see riches…
Karen: bury them..
David: …hide them so that they can go back and then they say, we’re kind of selfish. We should go back because they can’t eat anything back in Samaria. And they go back and tell them what they have seen and the people in Samaria, the Northern Kingdom, they say, “Oh, they’re tricking us. They’re hiding. And when we come out of our safety here, then they’re going to attack us.” “No, no, no, no, no, it’s real.”
So, they sent a couple of scouts out and realized what has happened in some incredible way that no one ever would have even conceived of on their own. God has acted on their behalf.
Now, that’s the kind of prayers I say, “God, you do something that just uphold your name and is so incredibly unique that nobody could doubt, even if now I’m going to introduce another area to pray for, even if the media gives it totally into normal things and has nothing to do with.”
Karen: … interprets and in a way that would be other than the spiritual way.
David: If they do, still people will know. They will know that God acted in a most marvelous way. That’s one of those categories. I pray God, be marvelous again. Show us your hand.
Now, I mentioned the media because I think, Karen, we need to be praying for the media. Those people, they’re over there right in the middle of everything that is going on. I know they have press on their clothes.
Karen: Yeah, but that doesn’t protect you from a bomb that falls in the house. Yeah, I think you’re right. We should pray for them. They’re journalists, to be in a studio reporting is not where they’re training or their background or maybe even their blood lust. You want to be in the action, but at the same time, they’re at hazard. I know they’re trying to be careful, but like we say, these bombs are falling. You can’t say it won’t hit my cameraman and myself as we’re conveying what’s happening on the field here.
David: I pray, “Lord, help them to be objective and to give the truth, help them not to sensationalize things.”
Karen: It doesn’t need to be sensational.
David: No, it’s incredible. The dramatic events there unfold.
Karen: I think that is a great way to pray because it’s so easy to see one side and not attempt to understand the deeper root causes of things. That’s truly a means of educating your viewing public is to not only tell the obvious story or one side of the story, but to go deeper for the background, the history, the causes that educated inform.
David: Let me give another category here, the whole Russian side.
Karen: Yes.
David: I think that there are Russians opposed to the war. I’ve been praying for them. I’m trying to say, well, would it be like to say, we’re not being told the truth? And if you demonstrate even in the simplest way with a sign “15 years in jail.” So that’s a difficult thing. There are going to be Russian mothers whose sons, they’re into the thousands of casualties of the Russian troop.
Karen: I think that’s a good prayer because in a totalitarian system, the news that’s reported is only allowed by that totalitarian system. And they’ve closed down as far as we can tell from our view of the media, the means by which the Russian people can get the other side of the story. But we do live in a world where social media plays a huge part of the things we know and the things that were told that are not true. So, you have to work your way through it all. But we need to pray that there would be those systems that would open up so the Russian population would know what really is happening.
David: Of the 150,000 troops say that have gone in there, there have to be some believers.
Karen: Yeah, a lot of believers, I’m imagining.
David: There have to be soldiers who are Russian, who are torn by what is going on. So, “Lord be with those people in those difficult situations.” I haven’t said anything yet about praying in terms of our country for the president. What a terribly difficult role he is in.
Karen: How does America and the NATO-related nations respond to this? I mean, we all know this could be the beginning of a Third World War. That is in the back of all of our minds. It’s easy for these sorts of passions to spread.
I think what’s interesting though, David, is you and I have been distressed about the divide that there is in our political system. Not working together or taking extreme sides, but in some ways, this is united, the Congress of the United States. They are all appalled and speaking out as such.
So, let’s pray that they will turn that unanimity, that unity to good effect and that there will be lasting lessons that come out of this that says, why are we acting the way that we act? We have, of course, different political parties, but we also have common cause. Let’s work as much as we can on common cause.
And I think it’s been great to see that unanimity. We’re tired as Americans. I’m tired as an American. I can’t speak for all Americans, of course, of the disclaimers and the divides and the ranker. And it’s no way to run a country. We’re going to have to come together. And I think that disasters like this often are the very things that do bring us together.
David: Having talked about praying for the other NATO countries, this is very difficult for them, especially the countries that are adjacent to Ukraine.
Karen: Well, just the European countries, because they’ve lived through the Second World War, where they still have live memories of what it did in the ruin at cause.
David: I think it’s easier, if that’s possible, it’s easier to pray with someone else than to pray alone.
Karen: Well, there’s an accountability with that. So, you and I have said we need to be spending so much time, 15 minutes a day meeting in prayer, not just you are praying at your study and me praying in my room but joining together and saying “We are really going to make a covenant that we pray for Ukraine going through this list that we’ve developed.” And we would suggest that those who are listening to us, who are concerned, whose hearts are burdened for what’s happening, do the same sort of thing. You don’t have to do exactly what we do but make a regular appointment with someone in your family, a friend, a praying friend. A lot of people have praying cells.
David: Do it by phone, if that’s helpful to you.
Karen: Do it by phone, if you have to do it that way. And then have a list that you should be praying for, and you go down through that list.
David: Well, we’ve not covered the topic, but we’ve certainly explored it. And I trust that we’ve been helpful. I’m going to make that key sentence, knowing one more time, and then we’ll come to the close of our time together.
But a complex problem such as what’s happening in Ukraine requires more than superficial prayers.
This is the time for God’s people to come together and tell him where they are in their feelings, where they are in their wishes, and where they are in terms of being subjects of His kingdom.
Karen: I agree.
Outro: You’ve been listening to the Before We Go Podcast. And if you would like to write to us, please send us an email at the following address, hosts@beforewego.show. That’s all-lower-case letters, hosts@beforewego.show.
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