National Day of Prayer

Prayer ... America's Hope. That's this year's focus for the National Day of Prayer. I couldn't agree more. We don't need to put our hope in man or in or government or in anything else that will fail us. We need to put it in the only pure and faultless man out there ... Jesus Christ.

Gather around the kitchen table tonight and pray ... pray for your family ... for our nation ... for our President ... that each person at each level of government would fear the LORD or that the LORD would put someone in that slot that does.

The son of a member of our Bible Study leaves today for training and then Iraq. Please pray for Danny's safety and Godly influence and provision in every task he has. Please continue to pray for our military and the sacrifice they are making to allow us the freedom we have. Thank you.

As I need to get back to work, let me leave you with this proclamation. It's amazing to research the writings/documents of some of our presidents. In the midst of the chaos our country was in, President Lincoln understood. We need to understand as well. There is so much to comment on in this writing but I will leave it for you to read...

By the President of the United States of America.

A Proclamation.

Whereas, the Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing the Supreme
Authority and just Government of Almighty God, in all the affairs of men and of
nations, has, by a resolution, requested the President to designate and set
apart a day for National prayer and humiliation.

And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own 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 all history, that those nations only are blessed whose
God is The Lord.

And, Insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are
subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly
fear that 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? We have been the recipients
of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years,
in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no
other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten
the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and
strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our
hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and
virtue of our own. 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!

It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess
our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness. Now, therefore, in
compliance with the request, and fully concurring in the views of the Senate, I do,
by this my proclamation, designate and set apart Thursday, the 30th day of April,
1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting and prayer. And I do hereby
request all the People to abstain, on that day, from their ordinary secular pursuits,
and to unite, at their several places of public worship and their respective homes,
in keeping the day holy to The Lord, and devoted to the humble discharge of the
religious duties proper to that solemn occasion.

All this being done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope
authorized by the Divine teachings, that the united cry of the Nation will be heard
on high, and answered with blessings, no less than the pardon of our national
sins, and the restoration of our now divided and suffering Country, to its former
happy condition of unity and peace.

In witness thereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the
United States to be affixed. Done at the City of Washington, this thirtieth day of
March, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and
of the Independence of the United States the eighty seventh.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln
William H. Seward, Secretary of State.