A Prayer for Our Nation

To say that our nation is divided today is an understatement. There is a great deal of division with the American people holding to starkly different ideologies and worldviews. Our nation once upheld Christianity as the standard and valued God, His Word, and family above all else.  Today, by and large, it is secular humanism, a.k.a. godless individualism, that is promulgated and propagated. As the adage goes, you reap what you sow, and as history reveals, when a nation honors God and upholds His Word it is a blessed nation, but when a nation shifts its focus to honoring the creation above the creator, e.g. worshiping the self rather than the God of universe, it plummets and self-destructs. Our nation certainly appears to be on the path to self-destruction as innocent children are murdered daily, the throwing away of plastic straws is far more of a concern than the rampant disposing of marriages, and America’s sexual debauchery is not far removed from that of Sodom and Gomorrah. Furthermore, our government continues to wage war against itself and places partisan politics above the people, and certainly above God.

So what do we do? Do we simply sit back and watch as the U.S. slowly sinks like the Titanic into the cold icy waters of the North Atlantic? Not at all! We return to our first love. We repent. We pray. We speak up in love. We honor and glorify God.

A couple of months ago I had the blessed opportunity of sitting down and speaking with my district’s state representative Jason Wentworth. Before meeting with him I knew very little about him (I had only lived in Clare for little less than a year). However, I was very pleased to find out that he represented our district as a man of faith and conviction. I am thankful to God for Representative Wentworth. He is a man who loves God, his family, his state, and his nation. It is my endeavor to pray for him regularly, and I would ask that you do the same. As a result of our meeting, Rep. Wentworth’s office reached out to me several weeks ago and asked if I would be willing to give the invocation before the Michigan House session on December 12 (yesterday). I gladly agreed. However, due to the House mostly wrapping things up on Wednesday (12/11) they did not meet yesterday. As a result, I was not able to give the invocation that I wrote for that occasion. While it is likely that I will get another opportunity to do so, I still wanted to share that prayer with you all here in this blog post. For while I have prayed this prayer many times in recent days, I hope that we could all pray it together. That we would pray this prayer for our state and our nation.

O Great and merciful Heavenly Father, blessed Son, and eternal Holy Spirit, we thank You for bestowing upon us Your great grace. Help us O Lord to be humbled by your majesty and directed by Your sovereign hand. We ask O Lord that You would forgive us our transgressions and that You would be glorified in our thoughts, our words, and our actions. Lord, we thank You for Your continued provision and we ask that You would bless both our state and our nation. Please Father, we further request that You would guide and direct our hearts, and lead us in the path of righteousness. May our state’s and our nation’s leaders, recognize, as did our founding fathers, that we are a people in desperate need to die to self and to live as Christ. To recognize that apart from receiving and believing the gospel of Jesus Christ we are hopeless and lost. Lord, may we, as did the United States Congress of 1854, declare that, “The great, vital, and conservative element in our system is the belief of our people in the pure doctrines and the divine truths of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” Father, please forgive us for ever having deviated from Your clear, infallible, inerrant, authoritative, and objective Word. And Lord help us once more to cherish life and to see Your gift of children as being far more important and valuable than one’s personal preferences, comforts, and life ambitions. Father, help us to uphold Your model of marriage and family as revealed in Your Holy Word (the Bible), and Lord may You forgive us for ever having strayed from that clear standard. Lord, Your Word declares that “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.” Father, I pray that our Nation would see just how ubiquitous sin has become in our land, that we would be broken by it and turn from sin, repent of our ways, and fix our hearts and our praise upon the only one who is worthy and deserving of such worship, You: our Holy, righteous, sovereign, and Triune creator. Lord, you declare in Your Word, “If my people who are called by my name 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.” Humble our hearts O Lord, may we be a people who rejoice in You always, who pray to You without ceasing, and have a heart of thankfulness in all circumstances. Please God, heal our land, unite our people under You, and be glorified in this place. We pray these things in the precious name of our matchless Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. 

I would strongly encourage you all to be praying for our state’s and our nation’s legislators.  Reach out to them and encourage them in the Lord. Share with them that the Gospel of Jesus Christ matters above all things. That God’s Word matters. That God-honoring marriages matter. That children of all ages and stages of development matter. That family matters. God can stop this ship from sinking if we humble ourselves just as God’s Word says. If we pray and seek His face and turn from our wicked ways, He will be faithful to His Word to hear from heaven, forgive our sin, and heal our land.

All Glory and Honor be to our gracious Heavenly Father, the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit that guides and directs His people.