[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 34 (Tuesday, March 24, 1998)]
[House]
[Page H1385]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 PRAYER

  Bishop Eddie L. Long, Senior Pastor, New Birth Missionary Baptist 
Church, Decatur, Georgia, offered the following prayer:
  Let us pray. Father, in the name of Jesus, we come before You and 
claim Your promise in 2 Chronicles 7:14. ``If My people, who are called 
by My name shall humble themselves, pray, seek, crave, and require of 
necessity My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear 
from heaven, forgive their sins, and heal their land.''
  We as a Nation stated in our Declaration of Independence through our 
Founding Fathers, ``We hold these truths to be self-evident that all 
men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator, with 
certain unalienable rights. . . .''
  Lord, the fact that our Founding Fathers declared that nothing we do, 
or will do, as leaders and citizens of this Nation is legal without God 
being the foundation of this government is significant. We must turn 
and legitimize ourselves through repentance so that this Nation can be 
led into spiritual and earthly clarity as to why it was created. We 
understand that when You, as Creator and the Founding Father in 
creation, created fish, You called them from water, yet, in order for 
them to live, they have to stay connected to the water. When You called 
trees and vegetation, You called it from the ground. And in order for 
that to live, it had to stay connected to the earth. When You created 
us, You called us out of You, and we must stay connected to You that we 
might have life.
  Therefore, God, allow us, along with all creation, to reconnect 
ourselves into Your Divine, harmonious flow of life, that we would hear 
from heaven, and our land would be healed. Amen.

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