Scripture to Pray for US 

and for us (church)

Abiding in God includes repentance:

Pray for our nation, for the church, for ourselves.

2 Chronicles 7:12-14 "Then the LORD appeared to Solomon in the night and said to him: “I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice. When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people,  if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land."   

"Behold the kindness and severity of God" (Rom 11:22). "It is Gods kindness and mercy that leads us to repentance" (Rom 4:2). "Lord have mercy on me" (Luke 18:13).

Is it difficult for us to humble ourselves and receive forgiveness or confess sin? Ask God for the grace we need grace each moment.

It is God's Grace working in us (not just an old experience but a present and ongoing effect in our lives and relationships that enables us to accept one another and ourselves in all our brokenness and sin and be transformed together.

For prayer and meditation:

1. We are watchmen for God and responsible to speak and warn the people He tells us are in danger: Ezekiel 3:16-21

Pray for those in authority that we may live godly peaceful lives and all men be saved 1 Timothy 2:1-8

2. We can follow these examples of Corporate and representative repentance by just reading these Scriptures: Daniel 9:3-19 and Nehemiah 1:4-11

3. Judgment can be averted. A famine was ended by the leader hearing God and making restitution for sin after seeking God 2 Sam 21:1-21.   So we pray and ask God to guide our leaders to do justice and mercy and humbly keep covenant. Judgment can at least be postponed by righteous leaders renewing covenant: 2 Kings 21:11-13 (read the whole story in ch 21 and 22).

4. Ezekiel 16:48-50; 59-63 although they were prideful and selfish the Lord kept covenant with Israel and atoned for all their sins. So it is not “IF GOD.” it is “IF MY PEOPLE”... God so loved the world he gave His Son, so He is well able to SAVE our nation.

-PD

Another day of memorial I 

think it proper to remember:

On June 1, 1865, Senator Charles Sumner commented on what is now considered the most famous speech by President Abraham Lincoln. In his eulogy on the slain president, he called it a "monumental act."  He said Lincoln was mistaken that "the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here."   Rather, the Bostonian remarked, "The world noted at once what he said, and will never cease to remember it. The battle itself was less important than the speech."

November 19, 1863, Gettysburg Address

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.