Almighty
God, we bow before You our Creator, You are the One
who has given us life and health, talents, gifts and opportunities
for service. Every breath we breathe is a gift of Your
grace. We acknowledge that You are also the Eternal Judge
before whom each one of us must stand and give an account
of our lives. Have mercy upon us, Lord. Do not treat us
as we deserve. We plead for Your mercy – for Your
grace, Your undeserved favour. We confess that we are
a sinful people and we are part of a nation in rebellion
against You.
We
have broken Your holy Laws.
Our
leaders are too proud to bow before you in prayer at the
beginning of Parliament.
At
state events our leaders have committed idolatry, worshipping
other gods who are not God at all.
Your
Name is routinely taken in vain on national television
and at cinemas and this blasphemy is constitutionally
protected and regarded as “entertainment.”
The
Lord’s Day is desecrated every week. What You ordained
as a Day of rest and a Day of worship is being commercialised
and abused for the worship of pleasure.
Respect
for our parents and elders is being undermined everywhere
by the laws, the entertainment industry and by the explosion
of violent crimes against the elderly.
Every
year over 20 000 people are murdered in South Africa and
our Justice system is failing to protect the citizens
of this land. Most of the murderers who terrorise our
people escape being brought to justice. In fact our laws
seem to favour the rights of the criminals and all too
often criminalise the victims.
Have
mercy on us Lord.
And
we must admit that we have the hypocrisy to claim to be
a ‘human rights society” while denying the right
to life to pre-bom babies. Forgive us Lord for interpreting
the Right to Life to protect guilty murderers from execution
but not protecting innocent babies from receiving the
death penalty through abortion. We are ashamed that our
society could have become so calloused, careless and cruel
as to allow little babies to be poisoned, burned, dismembered,
smothered or strangled - through abortion.
We
recognise that all that is necessary for evil to triumph
is for good people to do nothing. And we must confess
that most of us, even in the Church, have shamefully done
nothing to protest and work against the legalised slaughter
of pre-born babies in South Africa.
You
have declared that “Whatever you did not do for one
of the least of these, you did not do for Me.” (Matthew
25:45). We recognise that to know the good we ought to
do and to fail to do it is sin (James 4:17).
Selfishness,
greed, covetousness and deception are pervasive and we
have become a nation infested with corruption and theft.
Our Constitution entrenches the rights of pornographers
to exploit people made in the image of God for profit
- to take what You have made to be holy and perverted
it, to take what You designed to be special and made it
sordid, to distort what you intended to be private and
developed it into a multi million rand exploitative industry.
Have
mercy on us Lord.
We
have sinned. We have not loved You with all our heart,
soul, mind and strength, nor have we loved our neighbours
as ourselves. We have not done unto others as we would
have others do unto us. We have been thoughtless and careless.
We have squandered our time and polluted our souls with
gossip and soap operas. We have been self-centred and
preoccupied with less important things. Forgive us for
thinking so much of ourselves and so little of You and
of our neighbours. Especially we confess that we have
not loved our unseen, pre-born neighbours as we ought.
Have
mercy upon us, 0 Lord.
On
behalf of our congregations, communities and nation we
repent of the national sin of abortion. May You be merciful
and gracious 0 Lord to forgive us our many sins and to
bless us with a revival of repentance.
May
You raise up many more Christians to fight for the right
to life of pre-born babies.
May
you grant to mothers going through crisis pregnancies
– grace, comfort, strength and the support of family,
friends and congregations – to choose life that the
children may be born and brought up in the love and admonition
of the Lord.
Lord
raise up more pastors, elders, deacons and church members
to see the needs and to educate and mobilise their congregations
to respect the sanctity of life, and lovingly support
both mothers and children – especially in crisis
situations.
Strengthen
the doctors and nurses to resist all pressures to pervert
their healing profession from saving lives to taking lives.
May the medical profession stand together in resisting
the overwhelming pressures to turn them into paid assassins
instead of those who are true to their Hippocratic oath.
And
we also pray that You may grant that those politicians
who worked and voted to legalise abortion in South Africa
would come to repentance. And should those guilty of unleashing
this abortion holocaust steadfastly refuse to repent,
then we pray that You, 0 Lord, may remove them.
May
you raise up new leaders who will respect the right to
life of even the most helpless members of our society
and ensure that babies are effectively protected from
the violence of abortion – by law.
Guide
each one of us 0 Lord as to what we can do to save lives
and love our neighbours, for we ask all this in the Name
of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ – Amen.
