Prayer for a Nationwide Christ Awakening for the Healing of Race Relations in America
How to Use This Prayer
- Pray it during your regular morning prayer time.
- Pray it with your family at the dinner table.
- Pray it with your Bible study group or Sunday school class.
- Pray it as a pastoral prayer on a Sunday morning during worship.
- Pray it out loud, even if you are by yourself.
- Pray it out loud in unison with one another if you are in a small group.
- Pray it responsively with a congregation, the leader praying the parts in bold.
- Pray it responsively, with the congregation reading only the parts in bold.
- Email it to friends, asking them to join you in making it their prayer too.
- Pray it often—asking, seeking, knocking (Luke 11).
The Prayer
FATHER,
In Ephesians 5:14 you command and promise us:
“Wake up, sleeper,
rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”
Even so, in the face of the rising revolution in race relations across our nation right now, we pray:
Show your people, Black and White, how to WAKE UP to CHRIST enough to open wide our hearts and our churches to him in new ways, so that together we restore him to his rightful place among us in the life of the Church and prepare the way for his essential, irreplaceable role in healing and reconstituting race relations in our land.
Summon your people in this nation, Black and White, to WAKE UP to CHRIST enough to gather in his presence and before his throne to listen to and understand one another better; to openly share our pain and brokenness with one another as well as our hopes and dreams; to unconditionally confess our sins against one another; to invite the Holy Spirit to bring about repentance, cleansing, reconciliation, new beginnings and long-term redemptive solutions for the racial challenges we face in the Church and in our nation.
Cause your people in this nation, Black and White, to WAKE UP to CHRIST enough to become proactively involved for his sake in advancing his kingdom by publicly standing side by side in his name to confront and address and to reverse and restore the extensive, pervasive damages of our nation’s “original sin”—slavery.
Allow your people in this nation, Black and White, to WAKE UP to CHRIST enough to become sorely sorrowful, realizing that one race brutally oppressing another is fundamentally a sin against the living Christ himself. Help us to be broken over how centuries of the plague of racism inside the Church has dishonored, distorted, and disgraced the Lord of Glory before the eyes of the nation.
Call your people in this nation, Black and White, to WAKE UP to CHRIST enough to enter together into fresh, dynamic manifestations of his active reign breaking through here and now, as the gospel spreads in more powerful, society-transforming ways causing Americans of all colors to reach out anew to receive in their own lives the saving power of the Lamb seated on the throne of heaven.
Finally, in keeping with the goal of Colossians 3:11, we ask you to bring forth a nationwide Christ Awakening movement that will connect Black and White Christians in vital synergy in which Black lives really DO matter (and in turn all lives matter) BECAUSE, first of all, Christ’s life matters—and because he is living that risen, reigning life in everyone who belongs to him.
Therefore, as we close our prayer, we do so with great anticipation because:
In this new creation of God’s design there is no distinction
between Greek and Hebrew, Jew or Gentile,
foreigner or savage, slave or free man.
Christ is all that matters
for Christ lives in them all.
(emphasis added)
PTL Saints,
Yes, only The Church in full force can conquer these enemies. We have to pray the right prayers and get answers from God.
June, absolutely! Keep praying. David