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Thanks for accepting the Forty-Day Challenge to Save Our Nation. I have listed below a thought for each day of the forty-day challenge that I thought might be helpful to you.

1. The purpose of this movement is to stop American’s downward ethical and moral spiral and begin reversing this trend by recognizing that our hope lies in God’s good intentions toward His children. One of these good intentions is detailed in II Chronicles 7:14: “If my people, which are called by my name, will humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

• Meditate on this promise.

2. Once a person has decided to accept the Forty-Day Challenge to Save Our Nation, what exactly is he/she supposed to do each day? Obviously, there are numerous ways to approach the process of humbling ourselves, praying, seeking God’s face, and turning from our wicked ways.

• Ask God to show you a do-able time to fulfill your daily commitment.

3. I have found that my daily jog (now a walk) of about forty minutes is an excellent time to focus on the four elements of the conditional promise given us in II Chronicles 7:14: humbling myself, praying, seeking God’s face, and fleeing from my wicked ways. The first thing that I do on my daily walk is examine my heart for the following: feelings of pride, selfishness, and entitlement; desire for praise, notoriety, or fame; a need to build myself up; arrogance; boastfulness; etc. If I have fallen short in one or more of these areas, I ask God to forgive me and help me overcome my weaknesses. I ask Him to enable me to be sincerely humble as I go about my life and to seek His glory rather than my own.

• Ask God to define humility in a way that makes sense to you.

4. After humbling myself, the next thing that I do during my walk is to examine my heart to determine exactly what lies hidden in it and then compare that with what God requires of me. Once I recognize my sins (there always seems to be some sin lurking in my heart), I ask for forgiveness of each sin specifically.

• Ask the Father to reveal any sin in your life.

5. After praying for forgiveness of my transgressions, I then pray for our nation. I would like to say that I pray each day specifically for every subject pertaining to our nation’s moral and ethical downslide that comes to my mind, but that would not be the truth. I do, however, pray daily for some of them, and over a period of time, I eventually cover all of them that I am aware of.

• Pray for whatever God lays on your heart related to our nation.

6. After humbling myself before God and praying, the next thing that I do is to “seek His face.” I believe that seeking God’s face means being passionate about knowing God’s heart and mind, and desiring to hear from Him related to how I should conduct my life. I try to accomplish this by having an open heart and being sensitive to what He is saying to me. For me, it’s akin to tuning in a radio station — something technology has made obsolete, of course. I push out distraction, focusing on Him — and then, I’m there — in His presence. I worship Him, acknowledging freshly that He is God — sovereign, powerful, loving. Then I listen to see if He has anything to say to me. Sometimes He does and I take careful note.

• Tune in to God and worship Him.

7. My final step in the healing-our-land process that I address on my walks is “turning from my wicked ways.” I believe that this means that after humbling myself before God, admitting that I am a sinner, confessing my sins and asking for forgiveness of them, I must actually turn from these sins, i.e., abandon them.

• Ask God for strength to do this.

8. I sincerely believe that if a significant number of Christians will accept the Forty-Day Challenge to Save Our Nation and join forces to fulfill the conditions of His conditional promise detailed in II Chronicles 7:14, that He will indeed “heal our land.

• Picture a “healed land” and thank God for whatever you see, declaring your belief that He can and will bring it about.

9. Over the years, I have sadly watched our nation retreat from many of the positive values that were commonly accepted only a few decades ago, values that made this nation great, and to which I pray we will return. Many of the positive values that were ingrained in us — love of county, belief in a supreme being, support of our military, respect for authority, honesty, humility, a strong work ethic, a spirit of optimism, doing the right thing regardless of the consequences, treating all people with dignity and respect, belief in the sanctity of life, etc. — have gone by the wayside.

• Grieve with God over the loss of these and let Him lead you in confessing our role as Christian citizens in allowing such a state to develop and prosper.

10. I sometimes wonder what has happened to the country that I knew and loved. I never thought I would see a time in the United States when there was overt antagonism expressed toward Christianity and Christians. It is as if the people leading this charge are attempting to completely rid our nation of any reminders of God. This is a shock to me because I have always been told that our nation was established on Christian principles. It is a mystery to me why so many people hate a religion that is based on the principle of loving people. Furthermore, how is it possible that a certain segment of our country wants to change the definition of marriage? These people want the marriage of two people of the same gender to become legalized nationally. Unbelievably, these same-sex marriages have already been made legal in a few states. Another issue — one of the strangest movements afoot today — involves attempts to prohibit English being publicly recognized as the official language of our nation. I am at a loss to understand the rationale for this position, since English has always — since our nation’s beginning — been recognized as the language we speak in the United States. Bizarre! Finally, one of the most heartbreaking issues that face us today is the thirty-five plus years’ legalization of abortion. Some of the supporters of this stance are not satisfied with early-term abortions being legal, but are also pushing for late-term abortions to become permissible upon request.

• Pray for persecuted Christians in America. Pray for those on the forefront of the battle against legalizing gay marriage and against tolerating late-term abortions.

11. I was recently reading in the eighteenth and nineteenth chapters of Genesis about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and was struck by some of the striking similarities between the depravity of these cities and the current moral condition of the United States. The sister cities of Sodom and Gomorrah had become unbelievably wicked, guilty of many of the sins that are currently practiced in our nation.

• Ask for His forgiveness for our country; ask for His mercy for us all.

12. When Abraham learned that God was going to destroy Sodom, he pleaded with God to spare it, asking Him if He planned to sweep away the righteous along with the wicked. Abraham then asked God if He would spare Sodom if there were only fifty righteous men residing in the city. God agreed to do so. After thinking about this for a while, Abraham considered that there might not be fifty righteous, leading him to ask God if He would refrain from destroying the city if there were only forty righteous men living there. Once again God agreed to his request. Abraham continued to lower the required number of righteous men until it became a mere ten. For the fifth time, God agreed to spare Sodom if there were only ten righteous men to be found there. Unfortunately for Sodom, God determined that there were not even ten righteous men in the city and subsequently rained down sulfur and destroyed it. God did, however, remember His conversation with Abraham and brought Lot, Lot’s wife and their two daughters out of the doomed city before He demolished it. The point of this story is that God sometimes withholds judgment on a nation that is openly wicked in its ways if there are righteous men in residence. The question is do we have enough righteous people in the United States to cause Him to spare us our deserved judgment?

• Pray for all who have accepted this commitment and for those who will do so, that we would all prove to faithful to His call.

13. Recently, while listening to a television news anchor go on and on about the downward moral and ethical spiral of our country, I was dismayed to hear him conclude that we had better get used to this trend and even expect worse because there is really nothing that we, as individual citizens, can do about it. He stated that the political party in control has the power to determine the direction of the country and that the only hope for change is to vote certain individuals out of their positions of power. He concluded his tirade by declaring that we have to “put up with the status quo” until we have the next election. As a Christian, the news pundit’s comments didn’t sit well with me because I know that the God that I believe in is mighty and in control of everything that happens on Earth.

• Pray that God will encourage His people — that we will put our hope in Him, not merely trusting in circumstances when they are good and cowering in anxiety when they are not.

14. Proverbs 21:1 says that, “The King’s heart is in the hand of the Lord; He directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases.” This suggests that God is in control of the lives and actions of our national leaders — our President, Senators, Congressmen, Governors, etc. — directing them to do whatever He pleases, even if they do not acknowledge Him. If He so chooses, He can change the hearts of these individuals, causing them to do a complete about-face and make decisions based on what is best for the citizens of our country rather than on what is the most politically expedient for themselves.

• Ask God to change the hearts and direct the thinking in the minds of our leaders.

15. I believe that we can stop our country’s downward spiral and begin a reverse trend by recognizing that our hope lies in God’s good intentions toward His children. One of these good intentions is detailed in II Chronicles 7:14: “If my people, which are called by my name, will humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” By “my people,” I believe God means people who know Him, who enjoy a relationship with Him. I think that He is saying that if we Christians humble ourselves and pray and seek His face and abandon habits and ways which are evil, then He will forgive us and RESTORE OUR LAND! What surprises me here is that He doesn’t talk about what nonbelievers should do — just those of us who call ourselves “Christians.” To me, this means if we — we Christians — obey this command, God will restore our land, benefiting both Christians and non-Christians.

• Focus on the love and mercy and power of God to do whatever He wills — and tell Him again of your desire to be counted faithful.

16. I realize that some people believe that when God mentions “My people” in II Chronicles 7:14, He is talking about the people of Israel at a specific point in history rather than believers of our age. I also am aware that some individuals think that God’s promise to “heal their land,” is only meant for the literal nation of Israel. It is true that this conditional promise from God was given first to the people of Israel, but I believe that it is also relevant for us today. If we followed the line of logic that reserves this promise to the Hebrew people of ancient time, then we would have to consider whether any of the promises from God detailed in the Old Testament are apropos to today’s society. I just don’t think that we can pick and choose the relevancy of specific aspects of the Covenants that God has made with us in the Old Testament. We either believe that all of God’s promises are valid to our current lives or that they are not. I choose to believe that they are.

• Ask that God would speak to you clearly of His love for you and His commitment to His people in America.

17. After recognizing that II Chronicles 7:14 is a promise that God has made to Christians, my first thoughts involve speculating on what would happen if a significant number of believers were motivated to examine their lives and follow God’s instructions, expecting him subsequently to “heal our land.” Can we actually make a difference? By acting on His promise, can we expect God actually to change the direction in which our country is currently headed?

• Pray again for yourself as you seek to fulfill this commitment and for others doing the same.

18. I wholeheartedly believe that II Chronicles 7:14 is a conditional promise from God and that if we, as believers, band together and adhere to its directives, He will forgive us our grievous national sins and ultimately “heal our land.” If thousands of believers joined together in a covenant to embrace the conditions of this promise from God and sincerely adjusted their lives to incorporate its truths, I truly believe He would “heal our land” in a miraculous manner.

• Pray for a “healed” nation. Visualize it and pray over what you envision.

19. I am convinced that there is strength in numbers related to prayer. I say this realizing that God is our strength and constitutes a majority. I do, however, believe that He promises to manifest His strength on Earth through a body of believers joined together in prayer. In this case, the body of believers would be those joining forces in prayer to effect healing in our land. I believe that when believers are genuinely united in prayer, there is unlimited potential for the Holy Spirit to bring change to the hearts of the pray-ers and then in the world at large, in response to our prayers.

• Pray that God will effect change in the lives of all of us involved in this endeavor.

20. If we do, indeed, believe that God’s promise to heal our land is relevant for today, how do we go about realizing it? As I mentioned earlier, II Chronicles 7:14 states that we can receive this promise if we (personally and as a group) do the following: humble ourselves, pray, seek His face, and turn from our wicked ways.

• Pray over your turning from whatever bad habit or sin that God has revealed to you.

21. To humble ourselves before God, I believe that we need to follow Jesus’ example of humility. In Philippians 2:7-9, it says, “But [Jesus] made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death — even death on a cross. Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name above every name.” This scripture describes how Jesus came into the world without regard to having his personal rights (as the Son of God) recognized, focused instead on hearing from God and subsequently responding to the needs of people around Him. He gave up personal comfort, emphasis on leisure and recreation, and the right to spend his time and resources on meeting personal desires, rejecting any opportunity to compromise and achieve his goals outside the will of God. Instead He lived a life of genuine humility — knowing who He was, but giving up the rights that were attached to being that person. We too have position with God — we are the “apple of His eye” and are “precious in His sight,” but we can choose to put aside our obsession with self-fulfillment and self-satisfaction to seek and do the will of our God.

• Ask God what you need to “lay aside” in order to follow Jesus’ example.

22. It is a pleasant surprise to receive unexpected recognition for some type of accomplishment. On the other hand, it can be devastating to anticipate getting an award and then not receive it. In Luke 14:10 is says, “But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when you host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all your fellow guests. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” I think that the point of this verse is if we humble ourselves as Jesus did, He will exalt us. I believe that He is telling us in the verse that humility is a great virtue while self-seeking and pride will only result in embarrassing downfalls.

• Ask God to show you a specific way in your own life that you can “take the lowest place.”

23. After thinking on the previously mentioned verses, I try to honestly examine my heart (during each day of my forty-day period of commitment) for the following: feelings of pride, selfishness, and entitlement; desire for praise, notoriety, and fame; a need to build myself up; arrogance, boastfulness, self-centeredness; etc. If I have fallen short in one or more of these areas, I ask God to forgive me and help me overcome my weaknesses. I ask Him to enable me to be sincerely humble as I go about my life and to seek His glory and not my own.

• Ask God whose Kingdom you’re trying to build. Then let Him love you.

24. I think that it is important to realize that pride is an essential part of our inherited Adamic nature (originating from Satan). With this in mind, I believe that we must depend on the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit to acquire humility. In order to do this, we must acknowledge that there is nothing good in ourselves, except as we are servants to God (Mark 10:18). In other words, we must let our natural selves die in order to become vessels to glorify God (Romans 7:18).

• Ask the Holy Spirit to show you this truth in a fresh way.

25. After humility, come the other parts — praying, seeking His face, and turning from our wicked ways, of the conditional promise mentioned in II Chronicles 7:14. These are, in my mind, intertwined. God says that pride is the very root of all sin. Proverbs 16:18 says that “pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.” Until we recognize this and agree with God about it, then repent of our sins before Him, we can’t truly enjoy His presence or experience his favor. Proverbs 22:4 states that “humility and the fear of the Lord bring wealth and honor and life.” Isaiah 59: 1-2 says that “surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear.” It goes on to explain that our “iniquities have separated [us] from God; [our] sins have hidden His face from [us], so that He will not hear.” These verses reveal God’s promised rewards for humility and point out our need to ask Him for forgiveness of our sins.

• Confess any sins God brings to mind, then let His forgiveness and cleansing wash over you.

26. It is part of our sinful nature to think we are more righteous that we really are. At a minimum, many of us think that we are not as bad as a number of people that we know and that this some somehow entitles us to enjoy favor with the Lord, as if He “graded on a curve.” God, however, has warned us of the consequences of the sin of self-righteousness. The bottom line is that because of our sinful nature, none of us are righteous. According to Romans 2:10, “… there is no one righteous, not even one.” We all have sin in our lives and need to go to God in prayer daily with a contrite heart to ask for forgiveness not only of our iniquities but also of that despicable part of us that causes us to commit them.

• Realize freshly that it’s not just what you’ve done, but who you are that makes you incompatible with God — that is, until you accept the gift of Jesus. Thank God for that gift.

27. How do we determine what things in our lives are displeasing to God? We can do this through prayer and reading the Bible, asking the Holy Spirit to reveal those things in ourselves that we need to get rid of. We need to honestly determine exactly what lies hidden in our own hearts and compare that to what God requires of us.

• Ask God to reveal what is hidden in your heart. One way to do that is to look at what comes out of your mouth. (“Out of the heart, the mouth speaketh.”)

28. Unless we humble ourselves, recognize our own sin, then ask for forgiveness, I don’t think that God will hear our prayers. If we don’t do this, our prayers are merely religious ritual with no real effect. We might as well not have prayed. When we rely on our own minds to solve problems, then our prayers are going to be insincere and ineffective. God, however, loves those who humbly pray to Him and cry out for help, people who desire to hear and are eager to respond to any directive they understand.

• Ask Him to make your daily time with Him part of a real and growing relationship.

29. After we pray for forgiveness of our personal transgressions, I believe it is appropriate for us to pray specifically for our nation. There are many subjects that we should consider praying for including these: our President, Vice President, Senators, Congressmen, the Supreme Court, our local leaders, our military, our troops’ families, our country’s economy, racial relations, the war against terrorism, forgiveness for our nation’s straying from God’s commandments and moral standards, and finally, forgiveness for pursuing a path toward pride, lust, and godlessness, a path that many of our countrymen have chosen to follow and others of us have chosen to ignore. These are all worthy issues that I believe should be included in our daily prayers for our country.

• Pray for our nation — in whatever way God signals you to do.

30. I think Billy Graham touched the core issues of the problems we are facing in the United States in a prayer that he once offered for our nation. His prayer was as follows: “Our Father and Our God, We praise You for Your goodness to our nation, giving us blessing far beyond what we deserve. Yet we know all is not right with America. We deeply need a moral and spiritual renewal to help us meet the many problems that we face. Convict us of sin. Help us to turn to You in repentance and faith. Set our feet on the path of righteousness and peace. We pray for our nation’s leaders. Give them the wisdom to know what is right, and the courage to do it. You have said, ‘Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.’ May this be a new era for America, as we humble ourselves and acknowledge You alone as our Savior and Lord. This we pray in Your holy name, Amen.” Amen, indeed!

• Pray for us as Believers in God and for our nation, that we would acknowledge Him once again for who He is — the Creator and Sovereign, Almighty God of the Universe!

31. I would like to encourage all of us to pray daily for our country. I am aware of the fact that some people don’t believe praying for the same thing day after day is the right thing to do. Some individuals believe that if one has enough faith, there is no reason for him/her to pray for something over and over. I would have to disagree with such a belief because of what the scripture says in Luke 18. Here, Jesus told the disciples a parable about a persistent widow to illustrate how they should always “pray and not give up.” The parable tells of a widow who repeatedly requested a judge to grant her justice over her adversary. The judge, who neither feared God nor cared about man, eventually gave her what she wanted just to keep her from wearing him out with her repeated requests. Jesus concluded by sayi“And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones who cry out to him day and night?” The implication, of course, is that God responds to persistent faith.

• Determine to be persistent and pray once again for our nation — specifically for those issues heavy on your heart.

32. I would like to encourage us to pray daily for our country and to keep a prayer journal of these requests. I know that most of us have very busy schedules, making it difficult to find time to write down daily petitions to God. I will say, however, that anyone who does this will find it very rewarding. It is gratifying to review one’s journal and see when God has chosen to answer specific prayers.

• Reflect on answers to prayer you have seen in your life and praise and worship God who loves you.

33. After we humble ourselves before God and pray, the next step is to “seek God’s face.” As a child, I used to wonder exactly what our pastor meant when he said we should “seek God’s face.” Later in life, I have come to believe that it means being passionate about knowing God’s heart and mind. We should desire to hear from Him related to how we should conduct our lives. I believe that God wants a heart-to-heart relationship with every believer. He desires intimacy with us. With this in mind, I think that we should seek fellowship with Him through reading the Bible, through prayer, and in worship. If we are not sincere in our efforts to “seek His face,” our endeavors in having our land healed according to II Chronicle 7:14 will be in vain.

• Consider intimacy with God — sharing your secrets confidently with the one who thoroughly understands and adores you. Then consider that He has secrets to share with you. Try listening.

34. When we honestly seek God’s face, I believe we will see His holiness and love. I think that once we are aware of this, we will suddenly be convicted of our wicked ways and the prideful attitudes that we posses. The contrast in our spirits and God’s will become painfully apparent to us. We will become acutely aware of His love for us despite our sinful ways.

• The closer black gets to white, the blacker it seems. This truth translates spiritually into a deeper awareness of what God has actually done for us — and makes us that more thankful. Thank Him.

35. The final step in the healing-our-land process is to “turn from our wicked ways.” I believe turning from our wicked ways means that after humbling ourselves before God, admitting that we are sinners, confessing our sins and asking for forgiveness of them, we must actually turn from our sins. I think that God is asking us not to return to the sins that He has forgiven us.

• Ask God for practical steps to take to turn away from some habit or practice of your life that He has put His finger on in your spirit.

36. I wish that I could say that once I had received forgiveness from God for a particular sin, I never again committed that transgression. Unfortunately, like all of us, I have inherited the sin nature that Adam and Eve brought into this world and sometimes commit the same sins repeatedly. I can relate to what Paul said in Romans 7:15-20, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.” I believe that repentance occurs at a given point in time, but based on my own experience, I also believe that repenting of a particular sin is a process, one that is incomplete until we are sorry enough to quit, whatever it is we’ve been convicted of.

• Ask God to make you sorry enough to once and for all leave a certain sin behind.

37. Despite the fact that I am guilty of repeating certain sins, I believe that the Holy Spirit present in me causes me to feel remorse for doing so. Like Paul, I don’t want to keep doing them but there seems to be a sin nature somewhere deep inside of me that causes me to continue this pattern. I pray daily for forgiveness of these transgressions and trust that God will help me overcome them.

• Pray for overcoming victory for yourself and others in the Kingdom.

38. I share this information (about sin in my life) because I think it is important for us to realize that we, as believers, are all sinners and far from perfect, but by the grace of God, we can be forgiven. I do think that it is essential that we continue to strive to conduct our lives as Jesus did, despite the fact that we will never reach His sinless perfection. As difficult as it is, I try examine myself daily (while on my walk) to determine if I have indeed fled from my wicked ways. If I determine that I am continuing to commit a particular sin on a daily basis, I ask for God’s forgiveness and strength to stop. We will never be sinless, but I think it is quite reasonable to believe that, as we walk in intimacy with Him, we will sin less and less.

• Ask Him to show you where you have already experienced victory in some area of your life and have forgotten it. Praise Him when He shows you!

39. What does God mean in II Chronicles 7:14 when he says he will heal our land? I can’t say that I know exactly what a “healed land” would look like. I do, however, believe that God will heal our land of spiritual apathy and opposition, stirring up an awakening among both believers and ultimately nonbelievers and restoring His favor on our nation. I believe that if we, as believers, will fulfill the conditions of the promise that He has set forth in II Chronicles 7:14, He will provide these blessings and unimaginable others to our United States. I believe that despite the unbelievable moral and ethical downslide that our nation has suffered, God will keep His promise.

• Plead with God to heal our land.

40. I think that God is waiting for us — for Christians — to humble ourselves, pray, seek His face, and abandon our wicked ways. I believe that God is willing to withhold the judgment on our nation (much like He was willing to do for Sodom and Gomorrah) if we prove to have an element of sincerely righteous people. I feel that we do indeed at this point have a significant number of righteous people in the United States and that if we join together in appropriating His conditional promise, humbling ourselves, praying, seeking His Face and turning from our wicked ways, He will indeed “heal our land.” I challenge believers — including myself — to join forces with other Christians in a movement to fulfill the conditions of this promise from God. The future of our nation may depend on our willingness to fulfill the conditions and claim this promise that God has given to us.

• Ask God again to speak to you about humility and seeking His face and forsaking sin.

Parting Thought:

I would like to conclude by expressing my sincere thanks to you for participating in this movement. I hope that you will be led to continue applying (on a daily basis) the four conditions of God’s promise that are detailed in II Chronicles 7:14, even after completing the forty-day challenge.

Questions/Scheduling of Speaking Engagements

If you have any questions or are interested in scheduling me to speak in your area, my contact information is listed below. You can also sign up to accept the Forty-Day Challenge.

Bill Elder
Founder of the Save Our Nation Movement
Email: mailer1@bill-elder.com
Blog: Bill Elder’s Books
Twitter: SaveOurNation
Facebook: Save Our Nation

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