Intro to 40-Day Prayer Vigil

This prayer vigil will focus on several things. First, we will center on the Lamb of God and His covenant with mankind which offers His life and salvation to all. Entering into the season of Lent, as we meditate on Christ’s sacrifice for us on the cross, we come before His throne with our prayers of repentance and healing for ourselves, and our families.

This year however, in preparing for celebrating the transforming power of Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection in our lives our hearts are heavy for the grievous declining condition of our nation. Therefore, we are also focusing on the state of the church and the spiritual repercussions surely affecting our nation. 

In bringing our prayers and petitions before the Lord, often times we neglect to consider the holy character and nature of our God. In ignorance of His divine integrity we fail to realize that our spiritual fathers, by their actions, attitudes, and failures have profaned His holy name. As result of their past participation with unscrupulous federal policy initiatives we are beginning to reap the results of the seeds of lawlessness and corruption sown over the last two hundred years.

We have failed as a church to adequately represent God’s holy name and nature to the Indigenous populations of our once highly favored and prosperous nation. As a consequence over 90 percent of America’s Native people view Christianity as a part of European strategy to destroy and decimate their ancestors and steal their God-given resources and land.

Although many claim we are a Christian nation, our nation is not reflective of His nature and His person. This is an outcome that can be laid at the feet of His church, which has historically neglected to stand up for God’s righteousness and justice to prevail, beginning with the Indigenous people of America. 

As an act of repentance we ask you to join us in bringing the many Indigenous Nations before our Father in heaven. We are uniting to ask Him to forgive His church for their role in decimating, destroying, and disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of Native people during the founding, expansion, and development of our nation.

As a consequence of egocentric poverty inducing federal policies many tribal communities continue to exist in destitute third world living conditions. After a hundred years of injustice and oppression they remain a forgotten people within our nation. Isaiah said that “no one calls for justice” and that “the Lord saw it and it displeased Him that there was no justice.” (Isa. 59:4,15)

During this season of prayer and travail we want to stand in the gap for the church which collaborated with the federal government in acts so horrendous that even to this day America’s Indigenous nations are deafened to hearing of a merciful God who loves them. 

Instead, with suspicion, they push away the message of salvation, healing, and divine blessing. Ask God to grant us the revelation and strength to carry out justice in this matter. As we repent ask Him to lead us in bearing fruits worthy of repentance. Let us seek His forgiveness in this matter and ask Him to have mercy upon us and our nation. Let’s pray As Daniel prayed: 

“And I, Daniel, set my face to the Lord God to seek Him by prayer and supplications, with fasting and sack-cloth and ashes; And I prayed to the Lord my God and made confession, and said, O Lord the great and dreadful God, Who keeps covenant, mercy and loving-kindness with those who love Him and keep His commandments, we have sinned and dealt perversely and done wickedly and have rebelled turning aside from Your commandments and ordinances. Neither have we listened to and heeded Your servants the prophets, who spoke in Your name to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, and to all the people of the land....” (Daniel 9:3 -14)

When the first man was placed in the garden and chose to be disobedient, God revealed His character of being a covenant-keeping God. He came along side man and provided the sacrifice and garments to cover man's nakedness. 

He gave man the promise that although Satan had bruised the heel of man, Adam’s descendants would eventually crush the head of Satan. God knew even then that man was incapable of fulfilling that destiny without His help. 

In His master plan God, through the blood sacrifice of His Son, restored man’s authority through Christ, empowering man to overcome, enter into intimate relationship with Him, and to participate with Him in redeeming the people groups of this world. It is with this message of the kingdom that we join with our heavenly Father to see Him bring healing to our nation.

We must remember that never has God instructed His people to bring others to Christ through the use of force, threats, or other manipulative or intrusive techniques. It is by pure preaching and teaching of the word and demonstrating His great love that potential believers are brought into the kingdom. 

As believers our responsibility is to speak the truth and warn of the consequences of following false religious systems or occult practices. In the final day each person will give an account for their own religious beliefs or spiritual pursuits. The importance of remembering this is critical.

Therefore, it is very serious when believers who claim to follow Christ, exhibit the opposite of His character. It profanes His name. It also makes the effort of the evangelist almost impossible in persuading one to desire a relationship with Christ. Many within the church remain unaware of the horrid and treacherous track record of the church in America as it relates to the over 580 surviving Indigenous Nations in the U.S. today. 

For us to achieve spiritual breakthrough, to even have God begin to hear our prayers, the church must identify and repent of the sins of our church fathers. This applies to all Christian groups, whether they be Charismatic, Pentecostal, denominational, or traditional. In this prayer vigil we are bringing to remembrance the sins perpetrated against Native Americans, the tribal groups God appointed as the ancient people to steward and guard the gates of what has become the United States and Canada. 

Part of our hidden history sheds light on the Indian Boarding Schools and governmental policies that required Native families to give their children over to Christian organizations to methodically assimilate them into what was perceived as the melting pot of America. Extensive documentation substantiates the church's collaboration with the federal government to use religious education as a key tool to culturalize and Christianize Native youth.

Forcefully removing children from their parents and using predatory and abusive methods and approaches, the priests, nuns, preachers, and ministry staff and personnel regularly punished children if they dared speak their language or even mention the traditional religious ways of their people. 

Besides using violent methods to silence the voice of the children, there was an all-out religious assault on the tribal belief systems the children brought with them to Boarding School. Reports tell us that physical, sexual abuse and other daily hardships were merely a backdrop to a systematic assault on Native culture. 

Sad to say, almost all documentation of the Boarding School era identifies the church and its leadership as active participants in violating the God-given rights of Native children to freely speak their language and to practice their religion. All the commandment violating procedures were condoned and carried out in the name of Christ by those claiming to be members of His Church. 

The grievous violating, intrusive, and abusive activity practiced by our spiritual forerunners must be acknowledged and confessed by the body of Christ. We must stand in the gap for the church of North America and the future of our nation. The justice God requires in such matters can only begin in prayer and intercession.

Over 370 treaties or covenants were made and broken by our government, yet we as a nation claim to worship the covenant-keeping God. The tribal nations selected for this prayer vigil are few, but all were consistently deceived, defrauded, and betrayed by the empty promises of our government. And it happened in the midst of God’s chief agent for justice and righteousness in the earth, Christ’s church.

The shedding of innocent blood occurred all too often when whole villages were decimated with children, women, and elderly being murdered by vengeance consumed soldiers or militiamen. Yet, the tribal survivors of such atrocities, though a remnant, still remain a vital part of our nation. 

Although seemingly invisible they are testimony of a painful past, yet their resiliency and continued existence betrays the present assumed reality of America. Whether we want to acknowledge them or not, their pain, suffering, and grief resonate in the heart of God.   

We pray that the 3rd world conditions that the First Nations people have endured for far too long will be brought to light and that true justice will finally prevail for their benefit. Ask God to peel back the mantle of invisibility that has shielded their suffering from merciful intrusions. 

Petition our God to penetrate and dissolve the demonic conspiracy that has silenced the Native voice with hopelessness. Ask God to remove the cloak of shame that has smothered the strength of their identity and sabotaged their destiny for over 170 years.

Ask God to open the eyes of His church to see the reality of impending judgment upon our nation and its future generations. Pray that His church will not miss this present opportunity to execute true justice towards the poverty stricken tribal nations of America as His ambassadors of liberty and healing.

Ask God to open the ears of His church to hear the cry of the poor in the case of the many wounded and downtrodden tribal groups. Pray that church leadership will be reminded that God promises to hear the cry of those who themselves hear the cry of the poor (Prov. 21:13)and that they will quickly and diligently respond with mercy and justice.  

Only God can show us how to rectify this in His sight, but we have an opportunity to be “repairers of the breach” through our intercession at this time.