Almighty God, Lord of all that is created, Ruler of the nations,

we appeal to you on behalf of our beloved country. We honor and thank you for all the blessings our nation has enjoyed since its founding. We thank you for this great inheritance conceived by your Spirit in the hearts of our forbearers, who conceptualized a nation founded on your timeless principles of mercy, justice, and liberty under your supreme authority.

In the bounty of your provision for us, however, we have become arrogant and forgotten our utter dependence upon you for our very survival. We have excluded your Name from our schools and our corridors of power, forbidden prayer and public acknowledgement of your authority over us. We confess that we have ignored your first commandment and sought to replace you with the idols of our modern world—money, power, technology, information, social media, political saviors. We have abandoned your righteous laws for the sophisticated morality of modern thinking, only to find it disappointing and ultimately false. We beg your forgiveness, Lord, and pray that you will not abandon us but give us light to see our way back to you.

Deliver us, we pray, from the political diseases and parasitic ideologies that are eating away at our nation’s core values and sickening us with hate and division. Great Physician, we ask for humility that can show us the realities of our sin and lead us into repentance and recovery. We pray for our leaders at every level, that they may humble themselves and embrace your truth that greatness shows itself in service to others. Heal us from our modern delusions of a great society that can thrive on its own wisdom and achieve perfection by its own merit.

As much as we value being Americans, help us to realize that we are first and foremost citizens of your righteous kingdom. America, like all nations on earth, rises and declines under your sovereignty. Give us faith to recognize how you are working in our midst—in our local, national, and global communities—and show us how we can join with you in that work. Purify us until all our thoughts and actions are motivated by our love for you and love for our neighbors. Take away our fear, give us peace that surpasses the world’s understanding, and be our Guide and our Light, individually and as a people, one nation under God.

We pray all these things in the great Name that is above every name, now and forever.

Amen.