In 1863 President Lincoln designated April 30th as a day of national humiliation, fasting, and prayer. What follows is a portion of his proclamation on that occasion:
“It is the duty of nations, as well as of men, who owe their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime truth announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by a history that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord. The awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people. 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. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has grown, but we have forgotten God.”
Everyone knows that we as a nation are in deep need of a real turn around. It will not come with our next election or judicial appointment but only when God moves in a special way again. He will do that when His people take their responsibility to be salt and light seriously and when they put the purposes of the Kingdom before all other things. One at a time as we win our friends and neighbors over to the truth of Christ’s claims we will see the revival we all desire so much. Just like the early church who acted on their new found faith and changed their world, may we be part of His redemptive plan.
Blessings,
Rick