Our Guest: Cynthia Scott
Cynthia Scott is an author and passionate prayer leader who spent many years helping mobilize believers to seek God and pray for our nation. She leads a daily prayer call and is the author of Celebrating God, Our Founder at America’s 250th Birthday. It explores the ways God’s hand has been at work throughout our nation’s history. She also has a deep desire to help believers recognize God’s activity and respond in faith and prayer.
Key Thoughts and Scriptures:
- Sometimes we’re so focused on our plans, expectations, or even our worries that we overlook the quiet ways God is moving.
John 5:19 NIV Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.
“God is always at work around you. Your task is to see where He’s working and join Him.” – Henry Blackaby
- The question is whether we have eyes to see it and hearts willing to respond.
James 1:27 NIV Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
- Cynthia met Jesus afresh in the workplace. God does not just encounter us in our home life.
- Everything is a platform for ministry.
- Don’t just give God second best. Make sure you’re giving God your best.
Judges 4-5 NIV Deborah’s Story
- God has many roles for us as women and He’s very creative in how He leads us to fulfill those roles.
- And they’re different roles at different times too.
“Spiritual leadership is moving people onto God’s agenda.” – Henry Blackaby
- God gives grace for a season, a particular work or a particular ministry. But when He’s ready to lead into something new, that grace lifts.
- Sometimes it’s hard for us to let go of what we’ve been doing in the past.
God led Cynthia to the importance of prayer.
- A great move of God is the most important thing that can happen in a society.
- Prayer always precedes that.
- A solemn assembly is when the leaders, either political or spiritual in a city, call the people together to repent.
Joel NIV …Blow the trumpet in Zion, declare a holy fast, call a sacred assembly…
- “Where is this, Lord, in the scriptures?”
- If we go to His word and find something similar, it gives us a starting point for what He’s saying in this instance.
- God can do anything He wants through your life. Just surrender to Him.
- Cynthia didn’t realize that God was preparing her for something new during her difficult times.
- “This is just God’s season for me. I’m sticking with Him.”
- In times that could be discouraging, she fed her mind with the Word of God and with encouragement.
Psalm 1 NIV …whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season…
- Those seasons you think are just waiting seasons, they’re really not, they’re seasons of preparation.
The Lord laid it on Cynthia’s heart to pray for the nation out of its history.
- God’s hand has been on our nation back to its inception.
- The more Cynthia researched, the more she realized that God Himself was our founder.
- George Whitefield brought unity among Christians, which brought unity among the colonists in the fight for freedom.
- God doesn’t get the credit He deserves for this nation.
- And we really are an exceptional nation. However, we’re not a nation without sin.
- Many people pray, but they don’t often think to pray for the nation.
Revelation 3:8 NIV …I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut…
- Cynthia had the idea to focus on celebrating God first for America’s 250th anniversary.
- She was sent by God. So she had everything she needed.
- It wasn’t about her or the book, but about Him.
- God is never late, but He’s not often early.
- He has a purpose to call us back to Himself.
- The prayers in Cynthia’s book reflect the history about God’s hand in the founding of America.
- Our whole educational system started with the colleges to train pastors and the at-home training on the Bible.
- When we see God leading us, it’s not always an easy path.
- But when God directs our steps, there’s joy, zeal, and passion.
- During the Revolutionary War, we prayed as a nation. We need to get back to that.
- Prayer begets action, God’s and ours.
- It’s a requirement that we obey Him. Obedience brings blessing.
Deuteronomy 28:1-14 NIV Blessings for Obedience
Cynthia’s desire is to hear God’s voice and see what He’s doing and join Him in it.
- When we’re praying, God’s speaking to us just as much as we’re speaking to Him.
- God already knows what we need. We need to hear what He wants.
Genesis 12:1 NIV The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.
- The question is, would you have done it?
- Cynthia thought to herself, “If I’m going to take my relationship with God seriously, I need to put Him first. And if I’m going to put Him first, I need to put Him first in my day.”
- There is a time to be in His presence and then there’s a time to get out of His presence, and go do the thing He’s called us to do.
- In the study of the scriptures and in prayer, we get to know God.
- Faith is a personal relationship with God.
- God never contradicts His Word.
- There are times when God will say specifically what will happen, but you will have to wait on Him to provide all the circumstances for that to happen.
- Sometimes He gives you little assignments that are unusual.
- In some cases, we get to see the results of those acts of obedience. And in other cases, we don’t. But we should be obedient nevertheless.
- The Lord sometimes holds us back until a certain moment.
- When we pray, we should always pray in conjunction with the Word so that we’re praying it in conjunction with His will.
- Push through the doubt.
- God picks unlikely people to do His work.
Matthew 19:26 NIV …“With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
Deborah’s Story
- Deborah was called into service in a man’s world where the leaders in Israel were only men.
- She rose to the occasion and didn’t let anybody else define who God wanted her to be or what the role was.
John 4:1-42 NKJV The Samaritan Woman at the Well
- She was a sinful person like we all are. And yet God loved her.
- He went out of His way to find her.
- Then God used her to bring a whole town to revival.
- Right from the beginning women have played a prominent role in all of God’s plans and Satan tries to twist that so women get offended with God, but it’s not true. God has always loved and used women.
Cynthia reminds us that God’s always at work and He is inviting us to do it.
- He doesn’t need us. But He wants us.
- But if we don’t do our part, something is missing. Every person matters.
- God has a role for every one of us and for the fullness of His purposes to be fulfilled. We all need to step into it.
Ephesians 2:10 EHV For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared in advance so that we would walk in them.
- God’s already prepared works for each of us to step into. We simply need to listen to His voice and walk in the direction of His leading.
Isaiah 30:21 NIV Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”
Psalm 23:3 NKJV …He leads me in the paths of righteousness…
Ephesians 1:17-18 NIV I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people,
1 Thessalonians 5:24 NIV The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.
Links:
- Fellowship of Companies for Christ
- Decision America
- George Whitefield
- Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference
- Alexis de Tocqueville
- Embracing God’s New Move: Stories of Faith
Books:
- Celebrating God, Our Founder, at America’s 250th Birthday by Cynthia Scott
- Experiencing God by Henry Blackaby
- Called to Be God’s Leader by Henry Blackaby
- The Light and the Glory by Peter Marshall and David Manuel
- 100 Bible Verses That Made America by Robert Morgan
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