A Prayer for a Nation in Rebellion

We confess our national sins and entreat Your forgiveness. We confess our arrogance. We confess our selfishness. We confess that we have broken – and continue to break – the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God. We have rejected Your laws, embraced our own fallen impulses and called them laws.

We confess that we, the Church, have abdicated our duty to care for those who cannot care for themselves. We have surrendered this sacred calling to Caesar – to a woefully ill-equipped and wholly inept federal fiefdom.

Kyrie Eleison (Lord, have mercy).

We confess that we have shed blood en masse. The blood of the innocents runs in our streets. We have violated Your commandments. We have slaughtered tens-of-millions of Your children – woven together by Your perfect hands – and called this evil “choice.”

Kyrie Eleison.

We confess that we have perverted Your design for human sexuality. We have taken sins that You deem “abominable” and called them “equality.” We have mocked marriage, spurred divorce, scorned purity, glorified promiscuity, sexualized our children, belittled our stay-at-home mothers, stunted natural reproduction and called it all “liberation.”

Kyrie Eleison.

Your word tells us that “the wages of sin is death.” Indeed, as died many once mighty, hard-fallen nations before us, justice demands that we reap a yield most destructive.

And we may yet.

Even still, we implore You to suspend sentence. For these and manifold sins, hitherto unnamed, of both act and omission – individual and corporate – we beg your forgiveness, Lord Jesus.

Because, though we are not, You yet remain faithful. You have promised: “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.” (2 Chronicles 7:14)

America was called by Your Holy Name.

Though the hour is late, we now fall to our face, humble ourselves, pray and seek Your face.

Lord, though our public policy may lag behind, we, nonetheless, turn from our wicked ways.
Hear us from heaven, Oh Lord.

Forgive us our sins.

Please heal our land.

We declare, once again, America’s dependence upon You, King Jesus.

Kyrie Eleison.

Image: Betende Hände. Bleistift und Kohle auf Velin; source: http://www.bassenge.com/; author: Otto Greiner (1869–1916); public domain /copyright expired