Thursday, July 23 – Seek God’s help to  understand that we and our churches can forsake Him. Ask God to help us understand our true spiritual condition. Beg Him to reveal any place we have exchanged his glory for a substitute for Him and His ways, and to help us repent.

"But if your heart turns away and you will not obey, but are drawn away and worship other gods and serve them,” (Deut. 30:17, NASB).

Friday, July 24 – Implore the Lord to lay before our faces the broken cisterns we have allowed to take the place of a relationship with Him. Ask Him to restore us to a God-centered love relationship with Himself.

“My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water” (Jer. 2:13, NIV).

Saturday, July 25 – Beseech God to do whatever is necessary to show us our need to return to Him. Cry out, asking Him to confront us with a sense of His presence, and to so grip our hearts with what we have done that we confessour sin and seek His forgiveness, cleansing, and restoration.

“Ever since the time of your forefathers you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you," says the LORD Almighty” (Mal. 3:7, NIV).

Sunday, July 26 – Plead with God to help us take a long look at our lives and our churches to see if there are things that He has commanded us to do that we are not doing.  Ask God to distress us until He gets our full attention, and in brokenness we recognize how we have grieved Him. 

”Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts; and see if there be any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way” (Psalm 139:23-24, NASB).

Monday, July 27 – Pray that your pastor and other spiritual leaders in our nation will respond to God in the same way Josiah did. Cry out for God to help them discern movement away from God and to know how to lead the people in repentance. 

“Because your heart was responsive and you humbled yourself before God when you heard what he spoke against this place and its people, and because you humbled yourself before me and tore your robes and wept in my presence, I have heard you, declares the LORD” (2 Chron. 34:27, NIV).

Tuesday, July 28 – Ask God to deal with the pride that keeps us from repentance. Beg Him to reveal any sin that keeps us from being useful to Him.

“Grievous punishment is for him who forsakes the way; He who hates reproof will die” (Prov. 15:10, NASB).

Wednesday, July 29 – Entreat God to help us see how fatal it can be not to respond in repentance when He calls us to return to Him. Ask God to set the plumb line of His Word alongside us, our families, churches and nation to show us how we have departed from Him. 

“ . . . The Lord was standing by a wall that had been built true to plumb, with a plumb line in his hand . . .   Then the Lord said, ‘Look, I am setting a plumb line among my people Israel; I will spare them no longer’” (Amos 7:7-8, NIV).