Dr. Tony Evans, pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas, recently blessed his viewers with a New Year's prayer shortly after addressing the need for unity within the church.
In a special video message, the megachurch pastor and bestselling author said, "We are wishing you and your loved ones to have a blessed year despite all the challenges that you are, or will, face...we believe that God is bigger than them all."
Dr. Evans then launches into an encouraging prayer for his "viewers and friends."
"We thank you...for those who walk with us through your word," he prayed. "I pray that you will give them a blessed new year..some things will be up, and some will be down-- but cover them, regardless of the particular situation they face, and give them a special sense of Your presence this New Year."
He concludes, "Thank You for how You will meet everyone personally and individually and address their deepest challenges, and give them unspeakable joy this New Year...You've kept us alive to be in the year, so we're trusting you to see us through it."
Dr. Evans' message came a week after releasing a video in which he talked about the role of the church in regards to racial reconciliation.
"In order to impact our society, we need to first model unity in the church," the "Kingdom Man" author said in a video message filmed at the National Civil Rights Museum, the site where civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr. was gunned down nearly 50 years ago.
He added that U.S. society is still reeling from the effects of historical racial injuries and prejudices because Christian churches have yet to wholly unite under God to tackle those issues.
"When I heard Martin Luther King's speech, 'I Have a Dream,' I reflected on the fact that much of the success of that movement was driven by the unity of the church," says Evans. "Whole communities were changed, laws were changed, the way the government functioned, all changed because the church came together in unity to call for God's view of justice to be implemented in a segregated America, in an unjust society."
The Oak Cliff Bible Church pastor goes on to call on Christians to consider that until churches "become the Kingdom Church, then we will not see the kind of cultural transformation and effect that is being represented by the Civil Rights Museum."
"We can never get around to being one nation under God if we can't even get around to being one Church under God," he insists. A unified nation will never be realized, says Evans, until there is a unified church. When that happens, "watch what God does for the nation."
