A Statewide Call to Prayer! Day Forty-Five!!

In C.S. Lewis' classic The Chronicles of Narnia, there is a scene in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader where the character Eustace is faced by Aslan the lion (Christ).  Eustace is arrogant and independent.  He complains and whines.  Through an act of greed he has been transformed into a dragon.  His redemption is in the hands (claws) of Aslan.   One portion reads,

"Then the lion said -- but I don't know if it spoke --'You will have to let me undress you.' I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it. "The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I've ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff (the dragon hide) peel off."(Emphasis added, C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, page 65)

The Lord wants to deal with the heart of our state and nation.  In just a few days we will gather at The Response in Houston to allow Him to pierce our hearts with His love and mercy.

In preparation for that day I would like us to journey through a declaration of repentance that I first read two years ago on Friday, July 31, 2009.  The next few days we will walk through this declaration:

We gather here today as citizens of the United States of America and as citizens of God’s Kingdom. Our American citizenship being conferred to us by mutual place of birth and residence in God’s providence; our Heavenly citizenship being purchased for us by the finished work of Jesus’ death and resurrection on the cross in which we corporately trust. We recognize that as members of both this earthly and heavenly kingdom, it is our sacred duty and trust to bridge the gap between our nation and the Almighty. It has fallen to us, and to our watch, to bear witness of His righteous judgments in the face of impending calamity. We now endeavor to sound the trumpet of a watchman thus commissioned by God and stationed upon the ramparts of our great nation. (Ezekiel 33:1-7)

On behalf of our national sins and to any degree in which we have personally partaken we do now repent for:

The Sin of Abortion: With intense sorrow we duly recognize that our nation has chosen the idol of convenience and self indulgence over the precious gift of life. The blood of each child, who although created in the image of God was thought a burden and relegated to a place of refuse, indeed each one of these blood cries out from the ground for judgment. Rather than defending the defenseless we have led them to slaughter. In addition, as the Body of Christ, we repent for allowing the justification of such abominable acts to proceed from our pulpits and declare that there can be no reconciliation between the practice of abortion and the preaching of Your Kingdom! Gen. 4:10 - Psalm 139:13-14

Lord we are guilty; we beseech You to have mercy!