Prayers for Our City: February 17, 2020 – Presidents’ Day
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses … let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us,” Hebrews 12:1 NIV
As we celebrate Presidents’ Day, we thank You, Father, for the humble faith that many of our presidents openly displayed. Enable us to honor them by combining our faith with theirs as we agree together with their prayers for personal, city, state, and national needs.
We humbly join President George Washington’s cry for Christ likeness:
“Increase my faith in the sweet promises of the gospel; give me repentance from dead works; pardon my wanderings, and direct my thoughts unto thyself, the God of my salvation; teach me how to live in thy fear, labor in thy service, and ever to run in the ways of thy commandments; make me always watchful over my heart, that neither the terror of conscience, the loathing of holy duties, the love of sin, nor an unwillingness to depart this life, may cast me into a spiritual slumber, but daily frame me more and more into the likeness of thy son Jesus Christ, that living in thy fear, and dying in thy favor, I may in thy appointed time attain the resurrection of the just unto eternal life. Bless my family, friends, and kindred.”
~An undated prayer from Washington’s prayer journal, Mount Vernon
We humbly join President Thomas Jefferson’s request for our nation:
“Almighty God, Who has given us this good land for our heritage; We humbly beseech Thee that we may always prove ourselves a people mindful of Thy favor and glad to do Thy will. Bless our land with honorable ministry, sound learning, and pure manners. Save us from violence, discord, and confusion, from pride and arrogance, and from every evil way. Defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people, the multitude brought hither out of many kindreds and tongues. Endow with Thy spirit of wisdom those whom in Thy name we entrust the authority of government, that there may be justice and peace at home, and that through obedience to Thy law, we may show forth Thy praise among the nations of the earth. In time of prosperity fill our hearts with thankfulness, and in the day of trouble, suffer not our trust in Thee to fail; all of which we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
~Washington D.C., March 4, 1801
We humbly join President George H. W. Bush in confessing the only just use of power:
“Heavenly Father, we bow our heads and thank You for Your love. Accept our thanks for the peace that yields this day and the shared faith that makes its continuance likely. Make us strong to do Your work, willing to heed and hear Your will, and write on our hearts these words: “Use power to help people.” For we are given power not to advance our own purposes, nor to make a great show in the world, nor a name. There is but one use of power, and it is to serve people. Help us to remember it, Lord. the Lord our God be with us, as He was with our fathers; may He not leave us or forsake us; so that He may incline our hearts to Him, to walk in all His ways … that all peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God; there is no other.”
~Inaugural address, January 20, 1989
We humbly join President Ronald Reagan’s appeal for spiritual renewal and peace:
“The time has come to turn to God and reassert our trust in Him for the healing of America … Our country is in need of and ready for a spiritual renewal. Today, we utter no prayer more fervently than the ancient prayer for peace on Earth. If I had a prayer for you today, among those that have all been uttered, it is that one we’re so familiar with: “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you; the Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace…” And God bless you all.”
~From a speech to the American people, February 6, 1986
We agree with President Abraham Lincoln’s call for national fasting and repentance:
“We [the United States of America] 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.”
~from text of Proclamation appointing National Fast Day issued March 30, 1863
[see more Prayers of the Presidents]
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