One morning recently I arose early, preparing to conduct ministry as a reserve chaplain and feeling a little sick from a cold, still dizzy from the medications for it.

I opened up Safari to survey my news sources and was hit, as badly as this virus hit me a few days ago, by the barrage of stories concerning the unrelenting economic problems of our nation and, indeed, of the world. The Chinese monetary situation, the American dollar crisis, the European debt condition and the Iranian despot, Ahmadinejad, blaming capitalism for global poverty! And all swirled together before me in the New York Times in such a way that not even my morning Starbucks could assuage my agitated feelings.

Then, mercifully, it hit me that I had opened up the newspaper—and the New York Times of all papers—before going to the Word of God for my early morning constitution.

I have been using a devotional gathering of Scriptures, as I often use a lectionary for my morning, mid day and evening consumption of manna, both in private and in family worship, called The Paraclete Psalter: A Book of Daily Prayer. The “lauds” reading for this morning began with Psalm 67 and it was the perfect, God-sent message for my heart:

The peoples praise you, O God; may all the peoples praise you. Then the land will yield its harvest, and God, our God, will bless us (Psalm 67:5-6).

The old pastoral master, Matthew Henry, wrote,

“The success of the gospel brings outward mercies with it; righteousness exalts a nation. The blessing of the Lord sweetens all our creature-comforts to us, and makes them comforts indeed.”

Ah, but that sweetening would come upon us today! And yet it can accord these Gospel promises embedded in this great Word.

In Psalm 67, the Psalmist cries out on behalf of the people who are languishing for lack of praise. “May the peoples praise you, O God.”

His heart beats not only for his local congregation, his own city as it were, but for the whole world for he says, “May all the peoples praise You.” This is truly a world missions Psalm. I went to sleep last night reading of the last days of the great missionary to the Indians, David Brainerd. His heart increasingly beat, not only for the Indians of the Susquehanna Valley and the Connecticut River valley, but also for those all over the world who did not know Christ. He was appalled that the affections of believers were so unconcerned, by virtue of lack of prayer for the world. He died thinking of the coming of the kingdom of God, and that the sufferings of man, which he had witnessed in the indigenous pagan societies here in North America, might be dispelled by the beauties of the truths of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Jonathan Edwards joined with this young man in his passion. Concerts of prayer began, linked to other parts of the world (even then), which lasted for seven years. Christians banded together to pray for revival that would propel the Gospel to the ends of the earth. Indeed, the first Great Awakening is linked to a dying 29-year-old Presbyterian evangelist with a consuming passion to see the nations, all of them, brought, happily and productively, under the Lordship of his Savior, Jesus Christ.

Today I read of a cabinet member who is leaving and a corporate giant collapsing, an economist’s pessimistic warnings about the state of things and yet another economist who is quite optimistic. Bring out the crystal balls!

Well, I have no expertise in economic markets per se, but anyone, even the simplest homemaker like my Aunt Eva that reared this orphan boy, knew that good things follow the glory of the Gospel. We knew that in our own lives on our own little hard-scrabble South Louisiana farm.

From Psalm 67, we can know that where the Gospel goes, God brings showers of blessings. Among those many blessings are truths that set men free. Among those blessings are the liberation of the human soul, of the construction of a human government and free enterprise, and the compassionate love of Christ that reflects the Gospel. The land itself “will yield its harvest” and “God will bless us.” Amen and amen!

Bring it on Lord! Bring it on for the world! Bring down despots that are strangling the life of their own people and let the Gospel of Jesus flow in like rivers of fresh, cleansing water!

I ask God to stir the Church up in the West to be concerned again for the conversion of the nations. Let us leverage everything we have, including our time and our prayers, to see that Christ is made Lord of this earth in our generation. And let us remember that the land here will yield its harvest as our true economic recovery is linked to repentance and revival.

God have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord let us rain down Gospel truths on our land that we may be all the more encouraged to use that wealth to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth.

Let’s join with Brainerd and Edwards in seeking God in concerts of prayer. It is planting time again. We need a Great Awakening in order to know true recovery.

Dr. Michael A. Milton is a long-time PCA pastor who is now serving as the President of Reformed Theological Seminary, Charlotte, N.C. This article first appeared in Dr. Milton’s blog, http://mikemilton.org/ and is used with his permission.