This month, we are focusing our prayer on John Littel, the Secretary of Health and Human Resources, and his mighty team. Multiple agencies fall under Secretary Littel’s leadership. 

• Virginia Department of Health (VDH)
• Department of Social Services (DSS)
• Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services (DBHDS)
• Department of Medical Assistance Services (DMAS)
• Department of Health Professionals (DHP)
• Department of Aging & Rehabilitative Services (DARS)
• Department of the Deaf & Hard of Hearing (VDDHH)
• Department of the Blind and Vision Impaired (DBVI)
• Virginia Board for People with Disabilities (VBPD)
• Office of Children Services (OCS)
• Virginia Foundation for Health Youth (VFHY)
• Assistive Technology Loan Fund Authority (ATLFA)

We ask for prayers to strengthen Right Help Right Now, an initiative whose purpose is to reorganize the behavioral health system in a way that prioritizes people over processes and education, prevention, and treatment over incarceration, hopelessness, and death. Right Help Right Now supports Virginians before, during, and after a behavioral health crisis occurs. Secretary Littel and his team work to ensure that same-day care is delivered through mobile crisis units and crisis centers to reduce overcrowding at emergency centers. By doing so, there will be less strain on law enforcement, who can instead better serve the communities where they are needed.   

Especially pray for relief from the scourge of deadly drugs and notably fentanyl, which are killing so many Virginians and wreaking violence and havoc on families and communities.

Let us pray for unity where the enemy would like to see division. Pray that any schemes or plans that threaten to disrupt this unity and cohesion of our team fail. Pray for wisdom always with thoughts, policies, and actions.

The First Lady of Virginia asks that the It Only Takes One message around the dangers of fentanyl penetrate parents and caregivers in Roanoke (and beyond) so that they will cover the youth with encouragement and protection as well as that the budget negotiations underway result in the allocation of funding to priorities in keeping with the will of the Lord.

HUMILITY AS A KEY TO PRAYER 

If a fellow believer asked today, What is the most important thing for my prayer life? I would be hard-pressed to come up with something more important than this one key: humility before God. 

We see in Scripture that humility before the Lord is essential to having our prayers answered. 

Second Chronicles 7:14 says, If My people who 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 heal their land. First, humility, then prayer. David said in Psalm 34:6, This poor man cried out, and the Lord heard him. He referred to himself as spiritually poor in light of God’s holiness. 

The prophet Daniel knelt three times per day to pray. Kneeling is a gesture of humility before God. In the parable Jesus gave of the pharisee and publican who went to pray, we see the religious pharisee praying in pride and loftiness and the publican sinner praying in humility. God did not hear the proud religious one, but He heard the humble sinner. He went home justified.

The Bible says that Jesus prostrated Himself in prayer before the Father. That same wonderful Savior, our Teacher, and our example declared to His disciples in Matthew 11:29, …learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart.

For our prayer life to be effective, we must come before God, recognize who He is, and understand that we can do nothing of ourselves. When we are weak, He is strong. We must come before Him, recognizing He is all-powerful, all-sufficient, and all-knowing, and we are not.

We must pray with true, genuine humility before the Lord. E. M. Bounds wrote, Our prayers must be set low, before they can ever rise high. Our prayers must have much of the dust on them before they can ever have much of the glory of the skies in them.

Humility is so often an overlooked key to prayer in many circles today. If we look back at the men and women of history who accomplished great things for God and changed the world for His glory, who had great effect in their prayer life, we see humility before God. 

Humility is not something that Scripture says is a good thing to consider. Instead, humility before God is a command. 

1 Peter 5:6 commands us, Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God… We are told to humble ourselves before the Lord. 

Recognize who He is and who we are. Humility is an essential key to our prayer life.