At noon, we take a moment to bow on this 2016 National Day of Prayer, and have asked Pastor John Kirkwood of Grace Gospel Fellowship in Bensenville to lead us to our Heavenly Father's throne in prayer:
Father of lights, Giver of gifts, we kneel on the hallowed ground of our forefathers who brought us out of the abyss and with treasure and blood established us in this wonderful land full of blessing and opportunity.
And though we have been, “the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven,” we have once again rendered Lincoln’s gentle rebuke prophetic, as, “Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.”
With bent knee, Lord, we seek audience before you today, in awe of the forbearance that you have shown a nation that has forsaken you. May the light of your love, expressed in the person and work of your Son, soften our hardened heart that we may seek the riches of your grace. Cause our distractions to shrink, Father, so that we are not blind to cardinal virtue nor mesmerized by the glitter of the now.
And whether America experiences another Great Awakening, Lord, or slips into a slumber for which we never wake, let our progeny be warned away from the siren killers of carnal apathy and wanton excess.
Father, with a broken heart we pray in behalf of our 112 unborn neighbors who died today in Illinois, sacrificed on the altar of convenience. May all those involved in the “hidden holocaust” be broken in submission to the glorious truth of our charter that cries out, “All men are created equal” and are endowed by their Creator with the inalienable Right to Life!”
May “We His People” learn the power of forgiveness, and experience the reality of the broken made whole. May we be a community of love and support to comfort the torn and to inspire the wounded to offer their tragedy in offering to you.
And to the children of Chicago who, shaped by a city grown cold, have lost all hope, let not our hearts be so indifferent that we pass by another’s pain, silent bystanders to grave injustice.
Let us not allow government to push us off the path that you have called your children to walk. Let us rise up in witness and condemn any system that values life only in proportion to the votes that it can secure.
We pray for those who are in positions of influence, Father, that they turn away from “the Prince of this world” and once again seek out the divine remedy to all earthly malady. May America be great again because America is once again, good.
Father, rouse those foolish, dim souls who swear an oath of fealty on your Word only to trample the very documents they avow to uphold. May those who don the robe be convicted by your Spirit – may judge and clergy, professor, governor, and president, all bow to the entreaties of the King of the Universe. And may we as a people lead from our dinner table as we seek to raise the next generation of American heroes.
Let the people of the Land of Lincoln call upon the Divine Oracle to convict the cold heart of the predator, to crush the stone heart of the indifferent, to comfort the broken heart of the disfigured, and to embolden the fearful heart of the silent. And if tomorrow sees the brethren driven from cathedral to catacomb, then may our voices rise in witness and in prayer to an even greater degree than that hostility which commands our silence.
May we never forget that in every generation, whether we occupy state house or out-house, whether we reside in penthouse, ghetto, or gulag, there is but one calling for the child of God – The Just Shall Live by Faith.
May it be, Lord. May it ever be so.
Finally, Almighty Father, we petition you to give us the desires of your heart and to amplify our voice in its proclamation. May our words and our actions be the heartbeat of Jesus Christ the Righteous.
For the Glory of the Father, and in the power of the Spirit, and by the name of our most precious Lord Jesus Christ, Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honor, and power, and might, be unto He who sits upon the throne, and unto the Lamb, forever and ever.
Amen
Amen.