[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 4 (Monday, January 9, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Page S609]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

                                 prayer

  The guest chaplain, the Reverend Dr. Mark E. Dever, pastor of the 
Capitol Hill Baptist Church, offered the following prayer:
  Let us pray:
  O God of all truth, we begin this day asking for Your help, for those 
working in this place, for all those in authority in this Capital City, 
and around this Nation. We come to You out of habit and custom, O Lord, 
yes, but we--every one of us who come in sincerity--we come to You also 
out of a sense of our need, and of Your plenty. We confess, Lord, that 
too often we find in ourselves the darkness of ignorance, the sickness 
of greed, the loneliness of pride. O Lord, for Your glory, and because 
we acknowledge that we cannot do it without Your aid, take from us our 
darkness, our sickness, our loneliness. Replace our pride with Your 
divine humility. Replace our greed with Your giving. Replace our 
ignorance with Your truth, we pray.
  In this place where so many would seek to bind wills and votes in 
their knowledge of a part of the truth, we pray that You would, in Your 
mercy, supply those gathered for business here today with all the truth 
they need to do the work You have committed into their hands. Teach 
them how, we pray, in the frustrations of committees and compromises, 
in the honest uncertainties of ever-changing challenges, teach them how 
to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and to our posterity, 
and to help to extend those freedoms around Your world.
  Give us, as a nation, we pray, the freedom that comes through Your 
truth, and use even our actions here this day to that end for Jesus' 
sake. Amen.

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