A National Prayer

We believe in prayer by the power of the Holy Spirit as the most powerful force in bonding people and God in successful relationships. A NATIONAL PRAYER, for example, is a 7-part confession of human shortcomings in America . As Americans, we pray to God for healing and spiritual renewal. Prayer awakens the conscience to become more conscientious in our relationship with God.

Dear God and Father:

Jesus commanded us to pray in his name. Let your Holy Spirit guide us in everything you want done. Help us with confession and commitment, strengthen our faith and keep us united.

You have made us a nation of peers, rich in resources, and overflowing with talent. We decided to change all that.

And now many unresolved ills are tearing us apart, straining the social fabric. We have acted willfully and tarnished our opportunities to excel in service to you. At times we are even harsh toward our own kind and ourselves. You have given us humanity, yet we manage to treat family and strangers less than humane.

While you expect of us faithfulness and obedience to your will and the purpose of our creation, we have been busily building our own empires in a society of institutions. On these we depend to take care of us.

We have exchanged the attributes of equality for all human beings-individual rights and personal obligations-in favor of a system of collective agents in our institutions. They are no substitutes, even though we believed these to be better qualified to handle our relationship with you and the relationships with one another.

We let ourselves become saturated with information based on the bottom line of selling papers and air time, and we have neglected searching and listening to your Word.

We have become complacent when financial opportunists deal away our economic independence, and we silently watch as they also flounder the fiscal autonomy of our children. Their new vocabulary of LBOs and event crisis does not restore the resources lost, jobs destroyed, and the higher cost of goods and service as we, as your stewards, must pay for this sham.

We export our manufacturing and import foreign investments. We do nothing to prevent the prospects of our children becoming servants of foreign masters in their own land.

We have relegated trust in you to a meaningless imprint on money, but as money decays, so will we, unless we change and return to you.

These are crucial times. We cry out to you to awaken a slumbering giant. Renew our spirit and help us to seek the only peace of value, your peace, where the human spirit is at peace with you and one another in a world of uncharted space to allow for the expansion of tolerance, compassion, and the blessing of your promise to take care of us.

O Lord , our God, act with haste and save us. Be once again our refuge and strength, for you are our God, and we are your people. Prepare for us your way to transform challenges into opportunities so that toward the end your name is glorified in a new era in America , the ERA OF FAITH.

In Jesus' name we pray: Your kingdom come. Your will be done. Amen.