NATIONAL PRAYER ALTAR
NATIONAL PUBLIC REPENTANCE OF THE CHURCH IN NIGERIA
(This prayer of national public repentance is recommended to be prayed by Nigerian Christian congregations as well as Christian families, both at home, as well as in the Diaspora.)
12th July 2023
Oh God of all creation,
We Your children come to You this day according to Your word in 2 Chronicles 7:14 (NKJV): “If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”
O Lord, we have lamented in secret and cried in the open, and hereby add this public confession of our transgressions. We bow our knees to You, O Lord. We fall upon our faces before You. In our pride and arrogance, we have wagged our fingers at You and insisted that we have committed no sin against You, because of the ostensible ‘successes’ in the little kingdoms and domes and shells that we have built for ourselves. We have not remembered the dungeons from where You mercifully picked us up. Our apparent successes have become a stench in Your nostrils. We’ve made Your word scarce in the land because we have become conformers with the world instead of transformers of the world by Your Spirit.
In the present state of our nation, You answered us according to the idols in our hearts. We challenged the word that You sent to us. We have been forced to cry to You in this season essentially because our comfort has been threatened. We condemned prophecies that did not come to pass as we expected. We did so not because we tried all spirits but because our ‘national cake’ – the tithes and offering boxes – have been threatened. Our sins, transgressions and iniquities are too numerous to mention.
As it stands, even the cautions in Mathew 7 have not deterred us. We have taken You for granted because of the ‘great things’ we have accomplished: our Babel Towers and great monuments; our miracles, signs, and wonders in programmes and at other outreaches that have not truly reached out to the lost. Now our country, the portion of the earth that You gave us to rule in, is in despair. We come before You in ashes and in sack cloth, confessing our sins and repenting of our ways.
For more than 60 years, You have given us much food, and we grew in wisdom, but we have built our own kingdoms, not Yours, causing many of the upcoming generation to go astray. O Lord, by Your invitation, we now publicly approach Your throne, acknowledging our sins, transgressions, and iniquities, for we know that Your mercy endures forever.
Father of fathers, we have ignored Your word concerning the little ones, that whoever would cause any of those little ones who believe in You to sin, were better “drowned in the depth of the sea” with a millstone hung around their neck (Mathew 18: 6; Luke 17:2, NKJV). Those little children we have maimed, kidnapped, cannibalized, exploited as sex slaves and even used for blood sacrifices. However, we plead Your mercy according to Your word in Ezekiel 18 (NKJV), that the children should no longer be liable for the sour grapes of iniquity eaten by their fathers, but that every soul should carry their liability.
We acknowledge our sins, transgressions, and iniquities. We cannot recall them all, but against You, God of all creation, we have sinned.
1. We have eaten on the mountains and defiled them. We lifted up our eyes to the idols of the land and defiled everyone under us.
2. We have oppressed our neighbours and have not restored to the debtor our pledge. We have robbed with the violence of our words. We have not given bread to the hungry. Instead, we have taken the little that they have, and even uncovered their nakedness, committing abominations among Your people.
3. We have exacted usury and taken increase from people. We have not withdrawn our hands from iniquity. We have not given true judgment between one and the other.
4. We have not walked in Your statutes, neither have we kept Your judgments faithfully. We have imbibed the world and adopted it for our standards, leaving little difference between us and the world.
5. We have begotten sons that are robbers and shedders of blood. We have refrained from judging them because of what we get from them; sons misled by the wicked examples of us their parents.
6. We have oppressed the poor and needy, have robbed by violence and committed many abominations.
7. Our fornications, adulteries and sexual immoralities are beyond words.
8. We have turned Your house into a marketplace. It is no longer a house of prayer. We transact with prophecies and visions according to the idols in the hearts of the people.
9. We have welcomed tithes and offering from the proceeds of Babylon. We have drunk of Babylon’s wine of deceit, and defiantly used the same abominable proceeds to finance ‘Your’ work.
10. We have accepted the change of times and laws out of place to Your statutes.
11. We have put the chains of religion on the necks of Your people and made them into willing slaves. We have threatened them with the anointing, manipulating them to fear us, not You. We have elevated the ‘anointing’ rather than preach genuine repentance.
12. We have diverted the eyes of Your people from You to ourselves and to the world. Like David, we have killed Uriah and proceeded to stuff our rebellious ears. Now our children hear only the voice of strangers.
13. We have fleeced the sheep and left them desolate.
14. We have replaced the fruit of the Spirit with the gifts, deluded by religious activities while we totter dangerously at the edge of our destruction.
15. Now we preach what Paul would call “another gospel,” ignoring to warn about sin, hell, judgement, salvation, sanctification, and heaven.
16. We have continued to build our kingdoms, although we still call them by Your name.
17. We have forgotten brotherly love, ready to slay a brother and use him as ‘pulpit’ to establish ‘our ministry.’ In our selfishness and nonchalance to our people, strangers have been the messiahs.
18. We hate our brothers. We live in unforgiveness. We perpetuate evil against ourselves and have split up the nation along ethnic lines, for our private gains.
19. Our secret and public prayers have lost power. We confess sins merely to cast off guilt from our callous hearts, but have not forsaken the sins from the heart.
20. We have disregarded Your word in Mathew 6:33 to seek first Your Kingdom. Instead, we have sought after Mammon, assumptions of Your presence with us but tragically oblivious, like Samson, of Your silent departure.
21. We have sold ourselves to our abominations and ensnared the next generation in our wicked ways, making them ten times more the sons of hell than us.
22. We have dined with Prophetess Jezebel. As a result, and some of us have lost our children, our callings, and our ministries. Still, we do not discern. We have been so overtaken in our ways that we call evil good and good evil. Our silence against evil has spoken louder than our voice for good.
23. Under our watch, the family structure has become unrecognizable from Your original pattern.
24. We deceive ourselves in the false confidence that You don’t see us or hear us, only because Your judgment has not come upon us as speedily as in the days of old.
25. We have amassed titles and lost mantles.
26. We have turned worship into an industry that promotes the self. Our music has become entertainment, with theatrical stage fog that mimics the cloud of Your glory that we have sadly lost.
27. Have we cared about Your friends on the mission field, the missionaries? No. We have not only forgotten them but have also turned our backs on their woes. Their churches and houses are burnt, their children abducted and killed, their lands taken over by invaders, and they themselves driven from their homes, yet we have not borne their pain.
28. We have destroyed the unity we had had as a Church, and the world no longer recognizes us as Your disciples.
29. Like Jehoshaphat, we have aligned ourselves with the wicked and loved those that hate You, thus bringing upon ourselves Your wrath (2 Chronicles 19:1-3, NKJV).
30. We pray, O Lord, may every sinner bear their own iniquity, and do not put their judgment upon the innocent.
31. O God of all creation, You have called us to open repentance. Despite our ways, You have been faithful and have blessed us whom You so loved that You gave Jesus Your Son for our peace.
32. Father, we accept Your chastisement, but we ask Your forgiveness. May the blood of Jesus cleanse us. We have forgotten You in our old age, but let Your mercy in Christ Jesus speak for us.
33. We know, O Lord, that righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne. That is what we need in Nigeria. We plead in the voice of the Psalmist in Psalm 94:1-2, “O LORD God, to whom vengeance belongeth … shew thyself. Lift up thyself, thou judge of the earth: render a reward to the proud.” You are not as we are (Psalm 50; 1 John1:5-10; 1John 2:1-5).
34. We agree with You about our state, and we acknowledge our evil ways and we ask for mercy, O Judge of the whole earth.
35. We come based on the finished work of our LORD Jesus Christ on the cross of calvary. We embrace Your word in Hebrews 10:12-3, that Jesus sits at Your right hand side soliciting on our behalf, until our enemies should become our footstools.
36. We cry to You, Judge of the whole earth, for Your mercy upon our generation. We have failed You. We failed to preserve what You gave us. We failed to love one another as You loved us. We failed to pass on righteousness and justice to our children. Our seed have gone astray, and it has become difficult to salvage the harvest.
37. In Your mercy, look upon the Blood of Jesus Christ and have mercy upon our generation and cleanse us again, that we might fulfil that which is written of us in Your books.
38. By this and by the Blood of Jesus, we enter into the Holiest Place and present ourselves.
39. We draw near once more, with our hearts sprinkled from our evil conscience and our bodies washed with the pure water of Your word according to Hebrews 10:22. We hold fast to what You have given us, and speak it into the future, knowing that You who promised are faithful.
40. Heavenly Father, Father of lights, we thank You for taking away our iniquity, saving us and returning us to Your plans and purposes as written in Your books. Amen.
Humbly,
Your children, on our behalf, and on behalf of the land and the Church in Nigeria:
Bosun Emmanuel SW
Kontein Trinya SS
Ijeoma Edoziem SE
Moda Simon-Hart SS
Olanrewaju Awotona SW
Christiana Ogaje NC
Alisa Wadzani NE
Hauwa Kure NW
Chiedu Issachar SE
Evelyn Alfred-Irabor SS
Obiageli Udeh SE
Patricia Ona NC
Oluchi Ema-Etokudo SS
Adeyanju-Osadolor SW
Edith Ogbebor SS
Ifeoma Enweani SE
Chinyere Uduku SE
Obby Okorafor SE
Joy Nwaiwu SE
Gloria Akinniyi SW
Ekashili Sunday SS
Benjamin Dike SE
Amao-Kehinde A. SW
Mary Anso SE
Doris Ipinniwa NC
Anthonia Vincent SW
Eduzor Chinedu SE
Ihuoma Okorocha SE
Obele Ibanga SS
Chamberlain Osueke SE
Okwuchukwu F. B. SE
Samuel Ogbonna SE
Hope Ayabina SS
Chinyere Okoro SS
Linda Ndache NE
Funmilayo Onireti SW
Chinwe Onyebuchi SE
Chijioke Maduka SE
Ifeoluwaju Peters SW
Chidubem Akinyede SW
Ibironke Alonge SW
Emmanuel Gbanigo SE
Segun Buraimoh SW
Blessed Adeyemi SW
Tunde Chukwujekwe SW
John U. Okoli SE
Tuate Alagoa Nene SS
Comfort Ewang SS
Celestina Nweze SS
Benjamin Aditsoma NE
Oluwatoyin Osinubi SW
Amarachi Anastasia SE
Michael Adedeji SW
Favour Isaac SW
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