{"id":450,"date":"2010-05-06T11:22:23","date_gmt":"2010-05-06T11:22:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/prayerplainandsimple\/2010\/05\/just-pray-on-the-national-day-of-prayer.html"},"modified":"2014-04-22T13:58:27","modified_gmt":"2014-04-22T17:58:27","slug":"just-pray-on-the-national-day-of-prayer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/2010\/05\/just-pray-on-the-national-day-of-prayer.html","title":{"rendered":"Just Pray on the National Day of Prayer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This morning, I saw several Facebook status update about prayer because today is the National Day of Prayer. Everyone is encouraging each other to pray on this day which I think is a beautiful thing since leading up to today I felt as though there were factions of our nation doing anything but. There has been great controversy surrounding the National Day of Prayer and whether it violates the separation of church and state. People have been disinvited, groups have staged protests and everyone in general has been very argumentative, but very few people have assumed the correct position, the posture of prayer.<\/p>\n<p>We shouldn&#8217;t just focus on prayer today because it is the National Day of Prayer. Everyday is a national day of prayer because our nation needs it. We shouldn&#8217;t look upon today as a particularly special day because man has set it in place as a day of prayer. God has set everyday as a day of prayer. Everyday there are millions of us in this nation who pray, a dispensation of those people are all praying to the same God, and a dispensation of that dispensation are praying on one accord to that same God. All we could ever hope for on this earth is for our prayers to be heard by God. But in order for them to be heard, we have to humble ourselves and turn from our own wicked ways, then He will hear from us. In order for them to be heard, we have to stop talking so much, arguing so much, focusing on being right so much and just pray.<\/p>\n<p>So today and every day that God wakes us up and gives us the breath of life, we should take the opportunity to humble ourselves before Him, turn from our wicked, self-serving ways and pray, then God will hear from heaven, forgive our sins and heal our land. Today is the day we should learn to stop talking about prayer, because if the past few weeks have been any indication, it hasn&#8217;t made things any better. Today we just pray and know prayer doesn&#8217;t just change things, it changes people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This morning, I saw several Facebook status update about prayer because today is the National Day of Prayer. Everyone is encouraging each other to pray on this day which I think is a beautiful thing since leading up to today I felt as though there were factions of our nation doing anything but. There has&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,22,20,3,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-god","category-news","category-politics","category-prayer","category-praying"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Just Pray on the National Day of Prayer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, nofollow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Just Pray on the National Day of Prayer\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This morning, I saw several Facebook status update about prayer because today is the National Day of Prayer. Everyone is encouraging each other to pray on this day which I think is a beautiful thing since leading up to today I felt as though there were factions of our nation doing anything but. There has&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/2010\/05\/just-pray-on-the-national-day-of-prayer.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Prayer, Plain and Simple\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-05-06T11:22:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-04-22T17:58:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"nsymmonds\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Just Pray on the National Day of Prayer","robots":{"index":"noindex","follow":"nofollow"},"og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Just Pray on the National Day of Prayer","og_description":"This morning, I saw several Facebook status update about prayer because today is the National Day of Prayer. Everyone is encouraging each other to pray on this day which I think is a beautiful thing since leading up to today I felt as though there were factions of our nation doing anything but. There has&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/2010\/05\/just-pray-on-the-national-day-of-prayer.html","og_site_name":"Prayer, Plain and Simple","article_published_time":"2010-05-06T11:22:23+00:00","article_modified_time":"2014-04-22T17:58:27+00:00","author":"nsymmonds","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/2010\/05\/just-pray-on-the-national-day-of-prayer.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/2010\/05\/just-pray-on-the-national-day-of-prayer.html","name":"Just Pray on the National Day of Prayer","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-05-06T11:22:23+00:00","dateModified":"2014-04-22T17:58:27+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/2010\/05\/just-pray-on-the-national-day-of-prayer.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/2010\/05\/just-pray-on-the-national-day-of-prayer.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/2010\/05\/just-pray-on-the-national-day-of-prayer.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Just Pray on the National Day of Prayer"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/","name":"Prayer, Plain and Simple","description":"Prayer, Daily Prayer, Simple Prayers, Quick Prayers, Prayer Requests","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2","name":"nsymmonds","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","caption":"nsymmonds"},"description":"Nicole Symmonds is Beliefnet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Prayer editor and also covers Christianity. A New Yorker by birth but a Floridian by tenure, Nicole graduated from Florida A&M University with a B.S. in Public Relations and a minor in Sociology. She moved to NY to pursue a career in journalism which started at In Style magazine. There she learned the ropes of magazine reporting, researching, and writing\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand became exponentially more stylish. But what seemed like a deep interest in fashion and entertainment would soon be revealed as merely the vehicle that moved her closer to discovering her purpose, writing and covering matters of the Christian faith. While in her purpose-driven vehicle she can be found traveling between Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens for life, work and worship, respectively. From fashion to faith and the journey isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t over yet\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/author\/nsymmonds"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=450"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1143,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450\/revisions\/1143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}