Clovis, Portales take part in National Day of Prayer

May 2—Sistar Yancy, one of the organizers of Thursday's National Day of Prayer in Clovis, has her thoughts with the United States of America.

"I'm praying for our nation," Yancy said. "We need it badly."

Yancy's group, Christian Believers, are leading the Clovis event, which began more than a decade ago.

"We started in 2012. Tammy Waters organized it and passed it on to Sabrina Farmer and Sabrina passed it on to me," Yancy said.

Yancy believes "only prayer can change the situations and circumstances that we have now."

"The killing and the shooting, we have so many things that are going on," she said.

Yancy said she knows "without a doubt what God can do."

She added her feelings about National Day of Prayer may be summed up from a passage from the book of James in the Bible.

"Confess your trespasses to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed," Yancy read from her Bible. "The effectual fervent prayer of the righteous man availeth as much."

Yancy said her personal feelings about the National Day of Prayer comes from another passage from the Bible.

"It's from Phillipians 4:6," Yancy said as she read again from her Bible. "Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your request be known unto God.

"Although all is known to him he wants to hear us asking for it," Yancy said.

Rick Wilcher is with the Portales Ministerial Alliance, the group helping to organize the Portales National Day of Prayer event. He is also pastor of Floyd Baptist Church in Floyd.

"Prayer is very powerful," Wilcher said. "God taught us to pray, we talk to him and he talks to us. It's very important to pray on behalf of our nation."

One of the exciting things about National Day of Prayer for Wilcher is "we set aside our differences and come together and cry out to Creator on behalf of our nation."

Wilcher said there is a method to the format of a National Day of Prayer event.

"We pray the seven points of prayer," Wilcher said. "Family, the church, business and workplace, education, the military, our government and we pray for the arts, entertainment and media."

Wilcher said The House of Prayer of Portales is leading the event.

Jon Forrest, pastor of Clovis' First Christian Church, will be praying the country gets back to what he believes is the USA's roots.

"Our nation started as a God-honoring country," Forrest said. "We need to get back to that."

Forrest sees the National Day of Prayer as a way to "unify the effort of praying for the country, the spiritual needs and the unity of our nation and pray we get our act together, that God would just intervene and bring us back to where we used to be."

Forrest believes people have a misconception of what prayer is.

"People think that prayer is asking for things," Forrest said. "Prayer is more about our relationship with God, what is in our hearts. He knows what's in our hearts but he wants us to express it to him anyway."

Forrest said in the Old Testament, when the Israelites got away from God, he would allow them to go through punishment. But when they prayed to him he responded and would rescue them from their predicament.

"It's kind of cyclical because people are fickle," Forrest said.

Bonetta Hutson is pastor of Living Word Church of God of Clovis. She plans on being at Thursday's event.

"It is a time that everybody across the United States, no matter the denomination, get together to pray for their communities , their state, and their nation, the USA," Hutson said of National Day of Prayer. "It is wonderful to see people here in Clovis get together and pray over every aspect of our community, that we would seek unity."

Hutson describes the prayers as "unscripted."

"They are prayers from everyone's hearts," Hutson said.