James 4:9 “Grieve, mourn, and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.”
Lord, my sins are so grievous in Your sight for You are holy. I need to see them as such and to realize that they are no laughing matter. Help me to see my sin quickly, to confess and repent. Your church is affected as well. We cannot allow ourselves to be pulled into our world unless it is to be salt and light to it.
In our country we have gone from the days of the “Scarlet Letter” and the “Salem Witch Trials” to open homosexuality, adultery, and fornication, abortion, astrology and palm reading. Treachery, gangs, murder, rape, and thievery is common in the daily paper, yet Your church seems to sleep on in prayerless indifference and participates in those activities vicariously in the privacy of our homes, or not so secretly by what we do in public.
Revive us, Your church, Lord. Help us to become what You would have us to be. Open our eyes to our selfishness and sinfulness. We are so blessed and rich, Lord, and live in relative peace. But therein lays a grave danger, as it did for Israel. Whenever Israel became affluent and lived in peace, they strayed away from You. Sometimes it was slowly like the time from Joseph to Moses. Sometimes it was more rapid as in the book of Judges. Each time in your love, You disciplined, warned, and pleaded for them to return to You. When they would not, You allowed them to have disaster, to be conquered, or to be led away into captivity until they finally cried out to You. Then as a nation they had to purify themselves before they could come near You or You could come near them.
Lord, may Your church in this country awaken from our sinful stupor and grieve, mourn, and wail over our sins, confess and repent. Make us the salt and light You intend us to be
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