WASHINGTON — A Texas lawmaker tearfully implored God to forgive the manifold sins of the nation this week during a prayer gathering at the U.S. capitol.
Rep. Randy Weber delivered a prayer at Wednesday’s “Washington—A Man of Prayer” event, which was organized to honor the life of America’s first president, George Washington.
“‘Washington—A Man of Prayer’ commemorates the events of April 30, 1789, when, after being sworn in at Federal Hall, President Washington, accompanied by Congress, proceeded to St. Paul’s Chapel where, as one of his first official acts, the president offered a prayer of dedication to God on America’s behalf,” the event website outlines.
Organizer Dan Cummins said that the gathering is in its fourth installment, and the use of Sanctuary Hall for the prayer gathering was approved by Speaker Paul Ryan.
“Speaker Ryan has granted us use of prestigious Statuary Hall, formerly the Old House Chamber, which was the location of weekly Christian church services from 1800 to 1869. It was actually the largest church on the east coast,” he explained. “Legislation allowing that use was signed into law by President Thomas Jefferson who attended there as did President Adams after him.”
The 2017 gathering was hosted by Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., and Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Mich.
During the “Man of Prayer” event, as Weber took the podium, he asked—like Christ taught His disciples to pray in Matthew 6:9-13—that the Lord’s will would be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.
“Lord, Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on Earth here in the halls of Congress,” he prayed. “In our nation’s capital, Lord, may Your will be done.”
Weber then proceeded to outline the ways that God’s will is not being carried out in the United States.
“You say in Your word [that] the man who meditates on Your word is like a mighty oak tree. Blessed is he who meditates on it daily,” he outlined, referring to Psalms 1. “But Lord, we have endeavored to kick Your word out of public schools. We have endeavored to take the Bible out of classrooms, the Ten Commandments off the walls.”
“Father, we think we’re so smart. We’ve replaced Your word and You precepts with drug-sniffing dogs, with metal detectors, with uniformed police officers in our schools,” Weber lamented.
The Texas lawmaker became visibly moved as he spoke of how the nation has sought to redefine God’s design for marriage, and to kill our own children in the womb.
“Father, we’ve trampled on Your holy institution of holy matrimony and tried to re-write what it is, and we’ve called it an alternate lifestyle. Father, please, please forgive us,” Weber prayed, becoming tearful, his voice breaking.
“Lord, we have gone to killing the most innocent among us. Your servant Moses warned in Deuteronomy 30:19 for us to choose life so that we and all our descendants might live. [B]ut Father, we’re killing our descendants and we’re calling it a choice,” he mourned, again being moved to tears. “O God in Heaven, forgive us, please.”
Weber also noted that even Abraham Lincoln observed in his day that the people of America had neglected their Creator.
“Lord, forgive our sins. Father, help us to get back on Your precepts, on Your path, to a true understanding of ‘Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord,'” he implored. “Lord, let that please be us. Don’t remove Your hand of protection from us, Father, please. Lord, forgive us our manifold sins. In Your great mercy, bring us back to You.”
Weber’s prayer moved others in the room as well, as camera operators captured a man with tears wetting his face as he listened to the lawmaker’s words.
As previously reported, throughout America’s early history, a number of the Founding Fathers issued proclamations calling inhabitants to prayer, including in 1798, when President John Adams proclaimed a national day of humiliation, prayer and fasting.
“As the safety and prosperity of nations ultimately and essentially depend on the protection and blessing of Almighty God, and the national acknowledgment of this truth is not only an indispensable duty which the people owe to Him,” he wrote, “…this duty, at all times incumbent, is so especially in seasons of difficulty and of danger, when existing or threatening calamities—the just judgments of God against prevalent iniquity—are a loud call to repentance and reformation.”
President Abraham Lincoln also proclaimed a National Fast Day in 1863.
“[I]t is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord,” his proclamation read.
“[I]nsomuch we know that by His Divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people,” Lincoln said.
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