“The good man is perished out of the earth: and there is none upright among men …” (Micah 7:2)
Bad men can pass for good men when life is good. But when trouble and distress is upon a land, seemingly good people can become very evil. They feel compelled to react to the distressing environment they are in, because after all, “something needs to be done.”
God has always lamented at the dearth of truly godly men He could find in the earth. “The best of them is as a brier: the most upright is sharper than a thorn hedge …” (Micah 7:4) The world suffers because those in charge rule by their own instincts, emotions, and minds. Our cry in such a day should be: “Help, LORD; for the godly man ceaseth; for the faithful fail from among the children of men.” (Ps. 12:1)
The first thing God calls us to do when there is trouble in the land is to pray. “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land” (2 Chron. 7:14). True prayer invokes and involves God. It acknowledges that without Him and His direction all we can do is make a bad situation worse.
Prayer should be our first resort, not our last. Multitudes perish daily, as sheep without a shepherd. When Jesus saw the magnitude of the problem, before anything else, He called on His disciples to pray. “Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest” (Mt. 9:38)
How accustomed are we to humbling ourselves and going to God in prayer when we are faced with a distressing situation? Prayer is a habit, developed in humble hearts, who know they are but men, and not God. They and they alone become part of the solution, not part of the problem.