A prayer for our freedom

This is a prayer I recently wrote to be included in a
prayer guide for our nation that my church distributed.

Almighty God,
You have blessed the people called Americans with a land that enables us to live in freedom, speak in freedom, and worship in freedom.

These freedoms reflect the freedom that you gave to each of us when you created us in your image. You created us free so that our love for you would be freely chosen. You created us free so that our love for others would be freely chosen.

But God, like the rest of humanity throughout the ages, we as individuals and as a nation must confess to you that we haven’t always used our freedoms for your glory. Instead, we’ve used our freedoms for our own selfish purposes and ambitions. We’ve used our freedoms to oppress others. We’ve used our freedoms to pursue earthly pleasures rather than your Kingdom. Forgive us. We are desperately in need of your mercy and grace.

Almighty God, forgive us and free us from the sins that entangle us so that we can truly be free to love you and love others. Grant us the strength and resolve to use our freedoms for your purposes and not for our own. Grant us the strength to use our freedoms for the encouragement and upbuilding of others and other nations, particularly those who are the most vulnerable in this world. Grant us the strength to use our freedoms to pursue righteousness and holiness.

Grant us these things so that people would be able to see that you, the author of freedom, love this world deeply and desire for all its people to prosper.

We ask all these things in the name of your son Jesus Christ who freely went to the cross for us and for our salvation, Amen.