Day of Repentance and Prayer: suggested resources

A few Scriptures that we hope you will find useful:

Calls to humble ourselves and repent

1. “When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal the land.”                            2 Chronicles 7: 13-14

Blessings and curses

1. “See, I am setting before you a blessing and a curse: the blessing if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today; and the curse if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn away from that I am commanding you today….”                                                                                           Deuteronomy 11: 26-28

2. “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses.Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying Him, and holding fast to Him …”                                                 Deuteronomy 30:19

3. “Thus says the Lord:See, I am setting before you the way of life and the way of death.”                                                                                                                         Jeremiah 21: 8 

The call to proclaim repentance … and outcomes

1.   “The word of theLord came to me: “Son of man, speak to your people and say to them: ‘When I bring the sword against a land, and the people of the land choose one of their men and make him their watchman, and he sees the sword coming against the land and blows the trumpet to warn the people, then if anyone hears the trumpet but does not heed the warning and the sword comes and takes their life, their blood will be on their own head.  Since they heard the sound of the trumpet but did not heed the warning, their blood will be on their own head. If they had heeded the warning, they would have saved themselves.  But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet to warn the people and the sword comes and takes someone’s life, that person’s life will be taken because of their sin, but I will hold the watchman accountable for their blood.’

“Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the people of Israel; so hear the word I speak and give them warning from me.   When I say to the wicked, ‘You wicked person, you will surely die,’ and you do not speak out to dissuade them from their ways, that wicked person will die for their sin, and I will hold you accountable for their blood.  But if you do warn the wicked person to turn from their ways and they do not do so, they will die for their sin, though you yourself will be saved.”                                 Ezekiel 33: 1-9

2. “The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, ‘Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you …

… When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed His mind about          the calamity that He said He would bring upon them: and He did not do it.”                    Jonah 3: 1-10

God’s unchanging and eternal love

1. “For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, have not perished.Ever since the days of your ancestors you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them.  Return to Me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts.”                                                        Malachi 3:6

2. “For God so loved the world, that He gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”                                                                                            John 3:16.

Some suggested areas for repentance –

 this list is by no means exhaustive!

1. The secularist rejection of, and open contempt for, God.
2. Our own failure to defend the Gospel when attacked, dismissed or ridiculed by others.
3. Society’s uncritical ‘worship’ of science and ever more outrageous attempts to reorder and remake creation.
4. Society’s worship of sexual licence and immorality.
5. The drive to normalise and promote behaviours branded as sin in the Bible.
6. Promoting those behaviours in the attack on childhood innocence by educational programmes.
7. Our defiance and rejection of God’s creation, with, for example, genetic engineering and teaching children as young as 3 that gender is a matter of choice, not biology.
8. Our lack of respect for life through society’s mindless slaughter of the unborn.
9. Our failure to respect and honour others as made in the image of God, deserving of care and compassion from conception through to natural death.
10. The compromise of the Church.

If you’d like more informed analysis, please go to articles on the News page of our website: https://vfjuk.org/category/news-updates/      

Or visit Lynda’s blog:  https://vfjuk.org/category/lyndas-blog/

 And remember: 

“… though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.”                  

2 Corinthians 10:3-4