What joy for the nation whose God is the Lord, whose people he has chosen as his inheritance. The Lord looks down from heaven and sees the whole human race. From his throne he observes all who live on the earth. He made their hearts, so he understands everything they do. The best-equipped army cannot save a king, nor is great strength enough to save a warrior. Don’t count on your warhorse to give you victory— for all its strength, it cannot save you. But the Lord watches over those who fear him, those who rely on his unfailing love. He rescues them from death and keeps them alive in times of famine. We put our hope in the Lord. He is our help and our shield. In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name. Let your unfailing love surround us, Lord, for our hope is in you alone. - Psalms 33:12-22 NLT Father, we founded this nation on the belief that worship of you was important enough to move to a land where we could be free to do it in a way that was pleasing to you. It was a belief so strong that we weaved it into the fabric of our government. We fought those who tried to keep us from practicing those beliefs and we fought with each other in order to make sure the right to those beliefs were afforded to "all men". We grew under the blessing of being a nation that believed in and worshiped you. But we are no longer that nation. We haved cast worship of you aside and instead worship singers, actors, athletes, television, movies, cars, homes, and money. We work hard all week and play harder on the weekend and never give you a thought except when we are in trouble, and then we try to treat you like some cosmic genie that will make everything right. We rarely ask for your guidance and even then only accept it if it points in the direction we were already headed. We have abandoned to the government the widows and orphans that you told us to care for. If we go to church on Sunday, we spend the rest of the week lying, cheating, and backbiting to get ahead at work. We are a nation that cries foul when hundreds of foreigners are killed by their own government but sit silently as millions of children, children you created, are killed here at home. We turn our heads when confronted with poverty and injustice while trying to get to our comfortable homes that we believed we have “earned”. Our pride knows no bounds. We no longer recognize anything as a gift, everything is earned. We shake our fist at the world as we proclaim “God Bless the USA”. Worst of all, we sit in church and decry the fact that a handful of Jews and Romans crucified your Son only to walk out into the world and trample his crucified body with our own actions...And we dare to ask you to continue to bless us? Thankfully, you are not like us and this is not the first time you have dealt with people such as us. You once told another nation founded on the worship of you, “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 sins, and heal their land.” This Independence Day, Father, we declare our DEPENDENCE on you. We confess that we have sinned against you. We have broken every law that you have given us. We suffer from pride and greed and allow others to rot while we satisfy ourselves. Blood is on all of our hands. We have abandoned our consienses for money and pleasure. We are where we are as a nation because we have abandoned the true worship of you. Like everything else we don’t want to do, we pay money to someone to worship you for us. Our leaders proclaim that we are no longer a Christian nation and they are right. Not because of their proclomation but because of our own laziness when it comes to spreading the good news of your Son. We are afraid to defend our beliefs because our faith has followed our conviction out the door. We have turned away from you and you have allowed us to do so and now we are lost. So we ask for your forgiveness Father. And as we ask we depend on you to strengthen us as we turn away from the sin that has lead us so far from you. We have seen the error of our sin and want desperately to return to the place where we had fellowship with you, guidance from you, and blessing because of you. We ask that you strengthen those who would lead us in your name and that you would touch the hearts of those who do not. We ask that you would allow the Holy Spirit to sweep across this land and soften hearts that are hard, open eyes that are blind. Make us again a nation that is a light to the world, not because of might, but because the gospel is proclaimed, portrayed, and cherished. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.
Posted on: Thu, 04 Jul 2013 11:59:10 +0000
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