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This Thursday, May 7th, is the National Day of Prayer. There are all kinds of worthy prayer initiatives surrounding this important day, but the most well known are the rallies and events sponsored by the National Day of Prayer Task Force, headed up this year by Shirley Dobson and Beth Moore.

Truly, this year’s prayer event is one of the most important, following right on the heels of President Obama’s First 100 Days – 100 days filled with appointments and legislation in direct opposition to the very tenants upon which our country was founded. Perhaps our biggest prayer should be that our current president would recognize the state of our country and its need for God, like his predecessor, Abraham Lincoln, who, through this proclamation, founded the National Day of Prayer (and fasting).

This week, let’s join together as never before by focusing on the following scripture from Jeremiah, and praying the excerpt below from Lincoln’s proclamation, for our President and our country.

SCRIPTURE FOCUS

Voices are heard high on the windswept mountains,
the weeping and pleading of Israel’s people.
For they have chosen crooked paths
and have forgotten the Lord their God.

“My wayward children,” says the Lord,
“come back to me, and I will heal your wayward hearts.”

“Yes, we’re coming,” the people reply, “for you are the Lord our God.”
Jeremiah 3:21-22 NLT

Father God,
“We have been the
recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten [You] God. We have forgotten [Your] gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.

.
Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to [You] God that made us!
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It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before [You] the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”

Believing You will change one heart for many, we pray in the MIGHTY, LIFE-GIVING NAME OF JESUS CHRIST, Amen.