Selah Saturday
August 21, 2021
God of Our Fathers
By Daniel C. Roberts
From war’s alarms, from deadly pestilence, be Thy strong arm our ever-sure defense.
This past week, my friends and I gathered on Zoom for an impromptu prayer meeting. Specifically, we prayed for Afghanistan and that God would bring peace to the land and healing to its people.
All day I had felt a burden to pray, and while I knew what to pray for and I know how to pray, the words just weren’t coming out. Thank goodness the Holy Spirit intercedes on my behalf when I do not know what to pray (Romans 8:26-27)!
Before our prayer meeting, I opened my Bible to the Book of Psalms. I love how the Psalms express such a wide range of emotions. They give me the words to say when I want to pray but don’t know what to say. And so, I turned to the Psalms and the Lord directed me to chapters 9 and 10. We opened the meeting by not just reading those two psalms, but praying them. I encourage you to take a moment to do the same—to pray these psalms in both lament and praise to the Lord.
Later in the week, as I was selecting hymns for this Sunday’s service, I came across “God of Our Fathers.” My eyes were immediately drawn to verse 3 which says,
From war’s alarms, from deadly pestilence,
be Thy strong arm our ever-sure defense;
Thy true religion in our hearts increase;
Thy bounteous goodness nourish us in peace.
That verse is so relatable to our present situation, isn’t it? After all, we’ve got alarms of war and deadly pestilence (Afghanistan, COVID-19, etc.). I felt this verse really hit home as I read it. We must constantly put our faith and hope in the Lord. When times are hard, he should be our main source of comfort and strength.
“God of Our Fathers” is an American patriotic hymn. It was originally written for the centennial celebration of Independence Day. But one of the great things about this hymn is that it is not specifically American, so it can be sung by or in reference to any nation.
Some church members are wary of singing such patriotic hymns in worship services, as they should be. We want the focus of our worship to be on God, not our country. I have recently come to the conviction that we should not sing patriotic hymns as part of a worship service if it puts America first and God as an “afterthought.”
“God of Our Fathers” does not do that, however. God is very much at the forefront of this hymn.
This hymn puts God first and is constantly addressed to Him as a prayer for the nation, without reference to American superiority. The second and third stanzas allude to a nation’s need for God’s law and guidance to maintain peace.(https://hymnary.org/text/god_of_our_fathers_whose_almighty_hand)
Like how the Psalms can be prayed and not just read, so too can hymns be prayed and not just sung. “God of Our Fathers” can be sung as a prayer for the nations, a prayer for peace, a prayer for strength and protection, and a prayer for God’s Word to be obeyed.
In case you were wondering, yes, I am going to be playing this hymn on Sunday. If you come to our in-person service and stick around long enough you’ll hear it 😉 In the meantime, please pray for peace in our world and for God to be glorified in every situation. And pray also that our Christian brothers and sisters will stand strong in the face of persecution.
The LORD is King for ever and ever; the nations will perish from his land.
You, LORD, hear the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them, and you listen to their cry,
defending the fatherless and the oppressed, so that mere earthly mortals
will never again strike terror.
Psalm 10:16-18
