Dear Heavenly Father God -
Lord, our country needs you. We are lost and we need to find our way home.
We need you... not to deliver to us a certain candidate to win, but regardless of which candidate wins.
A weapon has formed against the constitution of The United States of America. A faction of our government wants to destroy what our founding fathers formed us on. We inhabit a disparate country of thought. Two alternate realities living side by side each insisting they are right, moral, and just. Don't let the weapon prosper God.
Father, we have sinned against you. We have allowed behavior and mindsets to become an accepted part of our moral fabric and you find it abhorrent. We do not deserve your grace or mercy. But we are pleading for it and standing on your beautiful word.
Romans 8: There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus... For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
This is the promise for believers: that no matter what we do, and no matter what happens, we cannot be removed from your love or from Christ. You don't abandon us because we don't reach the mark. Being in Christ is a permanent thing.
And this doesn't mean we do whatever we want and sin as much as we can because we don't have to worry about it, but it does mean that we have to know that when we fail and in our addiction and sickness and depravity, when we aren't living rightly, we are still in Christ; we still have the affection of you, Father. You will still call us sons and daughters. Thank you for not condemning us, Lord.
This is what helps people, especially believers, who are stuck in sin and feel like they are repulsive to you. To know the way home.
In the film "Heart of Man" it is said:
"The way home every single time is this: after our worst failure, after we are convinced this time we have gone too far and destroyed too much, we must believe who God says we are. We are not defined by our erratic behaviors but by something so much deeper, infinitely strong, and constant. We are a new creature—Christ in us. We don't have to find our way back into His love; we never left it. We will never become less, or more, of Christ in us. And today, after our worst failure, we are as fully loved, adored, and actually as righteous as the very first moment we believed. When we find ourselves risking to trust this way of seeing, the power of the lie begins to vanish, and that increasing confidence in who we really are becomes the bedrock that will break our shame and addiction and sin, so we get to live free for the rest of our lives."
Freedom found in you God, is the ultimate freedom. We claim to be "land of the free" but are we, Lord? Free from what? Free to do what? It seems that kind of freedom mindset has ushered in egregious acts of immorality, disbelief in you, and hardened hearts to living in your will. We have traded in our freedom from sin to freedom in sin. We have abandoned the king of the universe to be our own kings, making our own rules and being controlled by our selfish desires. Father helps us to see as a nation that there is no freedom apart from you. Forgive us our sins and help us to forgive those who have sinned against our democracy. In God we trust to deliver us.
God, I understand that everyone wants Jesus on their political side. In fact, I find it heartening that Jesus is still the endorsement that both Democrats and Republicans want! But there are immense costs being paid when politicians and pundits claim Jesus for their own side. I cannot help but think that the Apostle Paul had a word of rebuke to America and its attempt to invoke the memory of Jesus to support its politics: “You happily put up with whatever anyone tells you, even if they preach a different Jesus than the one we preach, or a different kind of Spirit than the one you received, or a different kind of gospel than the one you believed.” (2 Corinthians 11:4-5).
Rev. Michael Bird said: "It is far more likely that Jesus, historical man and exalted Lord, does not neatly fit into any side of the political spectrum. The Jew from Nazareth cuts across traditional political lines. No party owns him — as if the Lord of the cosmos could be owned. Jesus does not answer to political super PACs and cannot be made to utter political endorsements on cue.
Jesus cannot be mapped onto, let alone owned, by the American political divide.
For people who are serious about following Jesus and how to live out their faith in him, it is not a question as to whether Jesus believes in our politics; rather, the real question has to be whether we believe in Jesus and in his kingdom as a challenge to our politics." Help us change our politics, Father.
Lord, God come. While I know you don't feel welcome here...Come! Save us from ourselves. Save us from the enemy. Defeat evil and make your righteousness reign. Bring Love. Joy. Peace. Patience. Kindness. Goodness. Faithfulness. Gentleness. Self Control. Bring it abundantly and bring it swiftly. And help us be the light, illuminating for all to see the way home.
In Jesus' apolitical, matchless name....Amen.
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