O, Jesus, we come to You as Commander in chief of the Heavenly hosts, the mighty innumerable, invisible armies operating at your command throughout your universe. We plead your promise When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will raise up a standard against him (Is. 59:19). Release your Heavenly hosts to come against the moral and spiritual darkness. Lord, you have seen how your people in our land have failed in prayer, grown cold, disobeyed, and resorted to “cheap grace” (trying to justify sin in our lives rather than seeking your grace to cleanse us from sin).You warned us that in our backsliding Satan would come as a thief to steal and kill and destroy (John 10:10, KJV). Consequently, the evil one has targeted our land for rendering us spiritually dead, morally bankrupt, and politically corrupt.
We pray You will release your invisible armies into the heavens above every community in our nation to dispel the evil forces of darkness that have chloroformed the Church and poisoned the minds of our national leadership. We have dismissed God from the public square, deviated from the principles of our founding fathers, and destroyed the faith of our younger generation.
O, Lord, lay it upon the hearts of spiritual leaders to call for Solemn Assemblies—national, denominational, congregational, and citywide gatherings for serious heart-searching before the Lord, repentance, hours of prayer and fasting, periods of reading Scriptures, exhorting believers to confess their sins, acknowledge their sins of judging and criticizing, backbiting and insulting others, worldliness, lust, greed, pride, unbelief, not giving attention to prayer, worship, tithing, witnessing, good works, helping others in need, attitudes that divide and destroy fellowship, failing to attend the means of grace, gossiping, holding grudges, failing to witness to tell others about Christ and His love to save, forgive, and give hope and freedom to live in holiness and spiritual power.
O, God, forgive our unbiblical home life—husbands and wives quarreling, ignoring the training of children in matters of spirituality, personal habits, sexual conduct, financial responsibility, work ethics, and personal responsibility. We need your forgiveness as parents for trying to transfer our responsibilities to pastors, teachers, and others. Forgive our materialistic priorities, and help us to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness (Matt. 6:33).
Lord, we want to believe your promise for revival and meet the conditions you require: If my people who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and heal their land (II Chron. 7:14). Do forgive our pride. Please teach us to pray. May we seek your face before we seek anything else or anyone else’s favor. And do, Lord, give us a spirit of repentance—help us pray as did the Psalmist: Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin …wash me and I shall be whiter than snow…Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me (Ps. 51:1, 7, 10-11).
O God, forgive our sin of refusing to heed your call to be filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18), to bear the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Gal. 5:22-23) and to live by the Spirit (Gal. 5:16). Forgive us for trying to live holy, resist temptation, and grow spiritually on our own strength and knowledge, without relying on our indwelling Holy Spirit to help us. We have failed miserably to be holy, but give us willing hearts and sincere commitments to live a holy life daily by looking to You for the strength we need to do this. Forgive our neglect of your Word.
Lord Jesus, during the early period of your Church, You felt its loss of a passionate love for You, its compromise with the spirit of Jezebel, its self-deception— claiming to be alive but dead—and its sickening mediocrity. Please, Lord, pray the Father to
help the messengers (pastors, evangelists, prophets) have an ear to hear what the Spirit says to the churches today! Like Ephesus, we must have your convicting presence to reveal that we too have forsaken our first love. Help us remember how far we have fallen and repent and return to renewed life in the Spirit! Please, Lord, pray the Father to help us repent of our yielding to the spirit of Jezebel, the false prophetess who influenced many of God’s people to worship Baal. Like Thyatira, many churches in our land today, even those who call themselves evangelicals, have fallen in love with the world. Give us an ear to hear your call to repentance, and help us to come out from the world and be separate and touch not the unclean thing. Please, Lord, come on your people with the Spirit of light that will reveal our delusions—like Sardis, we have contrived a reputation of being alive, but we are dead. We are dead and don’t know it. We are sleepwalking, and think we are awake. Come, Holy Spirit, help us wake up and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for You are grieved by our compromise.
Please, Lord, shake us with your revelation as You did Laodicea, and convict us with the truth that we are neither cold nor hot, making us realize You are sick of our mediocrity and apathy. Send holy fire and set us ablaze for your glory and blessing!
O God, I believe You are searching through the ranks of the millions of professing Christians here in America at this hour seeking, as You did in Ezekiel’s time, people who will build up the wall and stand before you on behalf of the land so you will not have to destroy America! Dear Lord, come upon ten more millions of us who will set apart special times each day for heart-searching, fasting, repentance, and surrendering to You for a new filling of the Holy Spirit. Help us realize that there are two parts to the equation of the revival we seek—the power to give it on your part and the preparation on our part to receive it. Help us understand that You hold your people accountable to comply with your conditions for sending a supernatural spiritual awakening. Forgive our presumption of sending up meaningless requests for revival in the land while we go on in our selfish, fleshly, worldly lives and hardly notice that our churches grow colder and colder in worship while our nation grows bolder and bolder in sin.
O God, help us respond sincerely to the Spirit’s call back to the Upper Room of prayer and fasting for another effusion of the Holy Spirit which you have promised for these last days. May we realize the gap (the distance between what God has called us to be and where we actually are) has widened dangerously over the decades. Please, Lord, give more of us a vision of your aching heart and call us to share your burden to send the fresh winds and fresh fires of Pentecost upon your people. May your churches and the nation know, even as the people knew on Mount Carmel after Elijah’s prayer, that
The Lord—He is God! The Lord—He is God! (I Kings 18:39)
Please, Lord! Bring back a God-consciousness to our land, a fear of our Creator, the One who sent His Son to die an atoning death for our sins and called us to believe in Jesus Christ for our salvation and who has given us His Holy Spirit to cleanse our hearts and empower us to live holy lives and raise our children to know Jesus, and to pray for righteousness to characterize our churches, our communities, and our nation.
Lord Jesus, I’m convinced that as long as you delay your Second Coming, we must not give up on the possibility of personal renewals, congregational revivals, community awakenings, and a mighty historic national revival.
Come, Holy Spirit. Cleanse, fill, and anoint us for sacrificial intercession until your Holy Spirit can flow unhindered and ungrieved through our believing, burning hearts in sacrificial praying for a dead church and a lost world. Baptize us with a bold faith to declare to the world that a mighty spiritual awakening is on its way and that we must prepare to meet our God. O God, keep us praying and believing until revival comes!
Oh, that you would tear the heavens open and come down—at your Presence the mountains would melt as fire sets brushwood alight, as fire causes water to boil —to make known your name to your enemies and make the nations tremble at your Presence, working unexpected miracles such as no one ever heard before (Is. 64:1-3, The Jerusalem Bible).
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