Shortly after Dallas Seminary was founded in 1924, it almost folded. It came to the point of bankruptcy. All the creditors were ready to foreclose at twelve noon on a particular day. That morning, the founders of the school met in the president’s office to pray that God would provide. In that prayer meeting was Harry Ironside. When it was his turn to pray, he said in his refreshingly candid way, “Lord we know that the cattle on a thousand hills are Thine. Please sell some of them and send us the money.”
Just about that time, a tall Texan in boots and an open-collar shirt strolled into the business office. “Howdy!” he said to the secretary. “I just sold two carloads of cattle over in Fort Worth. I’ve been trying to make a business deal go through, but it just won’t work. I feel God wants me to give this money to the seminary. I don’t know if you need it or not, but here’s the check,” and he handed it over.
The secretary took the check and, knowing something of the critical nature of the hour, went to the door of the prayer meeting and timidly tapped. Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer, the founder and president of the school, answered the door and took the check from her hand. When he looked at the amount, it was for the exact sum of the debt. Then he recognized the name on the check as that of the cattleman. Turning to Dr. Ironside, he said, “Harry, God sold the cattle.”
Today we are being asked to spend some time seeking the Lord in humble prayer for ourselves and our nation.
President Abraham Lincoln wrote this in 1863 calling the nation to prayer.
“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!”
Will you Believe? Shall we pray!
Pastor Bob Kopeny 
Yes! We need to pray, as I personally feel we have gone the way of ancient Israel, neglecting the one who gave us our peace, freedom, wealth and most of all salvation. We as a nation are making the same mistakes, sacrificing our children to the God of Abortion, and thumbing our nose at God’s word with same sex marriage. Not to many the many other snubs that we have performed. I guess we too think we became great on our own strength and intellect. Pray that the judgement on this nation be short and that we get back to where we came from.
Prayer is everything! I have seen the power of prayer in my women’s Bible study. Many prayers have been answered over the past six years that we have been consistently praying for one another. If God can accomplish so much through our personal prayers for ourselves and our loved ones – how much more can He, might He, accomplish if we all pray as a nation!