“Even now–this is the Lord’s declaration–turn to Me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping, and mourning. Tear your hearts, not just your clothes, and return to the Lord your God” (Joel 2:12–13 CSB).

Rep. Monty Fritts, of District 32 in Tennessee, has sponsored a bill calling on the entire state to cry out to God for mercy and healing.

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Tennessee House Joint Resolution 0803 designates July 1–31, 2024, as a time of prayer and fasting to ask for God’s hand of mercy and healing.

Thirty other representatives joined Rep. Fritts to co-sponsor his bill. While many governors in our country have created proclamations similar to HJR0803, it is pretty rare to have a state Congress petition a sincere cry to God to intervene in the affairs of human beings.

The words of Abraham Lincoln come to mind in such times as these. At the end of the Civil War, he also called for a day of fasting and prayer:

“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!”

Let’s continue to intercede for our nation. Let’s pray along with the state of Tennessee in July that God would heal our land and bring peace to our politics and prosperity to our people.

Following is the full text of the resolution.

A RESOLUTION to seek God’s hand of mercy healing on Tennessee.

WHEREAS, our State and Nation suffer from violence committed upon our citizens by our citizens; and

WHEREAS, our State and Nation suffer from violence committed upon our citizens by non-citizens; and

WHEREAS, acts of violent crime in our schools are unacceptable; and

WHEREAS, human trafficking is an unacceptable and violent evil in our State, enslaving lives and violating the core values of our Creator-endowed rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and

WHEREAS, drug addiction overwhelms our families, our government finances, our workforce productivity, as well as our healthcare and our law enforcement resources; and

WHEREAS, deadly fentanyl flows uncontrollably across our southern U.S. border resulting in the deaths of Tennesseans; and

WHEREAS, Driving Under the Influence, drunk driving, results in great pain and injury for Tennessee families; and

WHEREAS, we have approximately 9,000 children in need of foster care, indicating a brokenness in many Tennessee homes; and

WHEREAS, evidence of corruption in our federal government stands to impact every Tennessean; and

WHEREAS, our National and State Founders trusted in the omnipotent hand of Providence to guide and bless our land; and

WHEREAS, over decades, these leaders called our people to seek out the Creator’s favor by issuing proclamations like the one from John Adams on April 15, 1799:

[This day] be observed throughout the United States of America as a day of solemn humiliation, fasting, and prayer; that the citizens on that day abstain, as far as may be, from their secular occupation, and devote the time to the sacred duties of religion, in public and in private; that they call to mind our numerous offenses against the most high God, confess them before Him with the sincerest penitence, implore his pardoning mercy, through the Great Mediator and Redeemer, for our past transgressions, and that through the grace of His Holy Spirit, we may be disposed and enabled to yield a more suitable obedience to his righteous requisitions in time to come; that He would interpose to arrest the progress of that impiety and licentiousness in principle and practice so offensive to Himself and so ruinous to mankind; that He would make us deeply sensible that “righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.” [Proverbs 14:34]; and

WHEREAS, we hold that our Founders correctly acknowledged Truth in their words; and

WHEREAS, we hold that “Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain” (Psalm 127:1); now, therefore,

BE IT RESOLVED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF TENNESSEE, THE SENATE CONCURRING, that the period of July 1, 2024, through July 31, 2024, be recognized as a time of prayer and fasting in Tennessee. 

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that we recognize that God, as Creator and King of all Glory, has both the authority to judge and to bless nations or states.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that we, as public servants in the Tennessee General Assembly, seek God’s Mercy upon our land and beseech Him to not withdraw His Hand of blessing from us.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that we recognize our sins and shortcomings before Him and humbly ask His Forgiveness.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that we ask the Lord Jesus to heal our land and remove the violence, human-trafficking, addiction, and corruption.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that we ask that the Holy Spirit fill our halls of government, our classrooms, our places of business, our churches, and our homes with peace, love, and joy.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that we call upon all those who are physically able and spiritually inclined to do so to join in a thirty-day season of prayer and intermittent fasting as we begin a new fiscal year as a means of seeking God’s blessing and humbling ourselves to receive His Grace and Mercy, transforming ourselves, our communities, our State, and our Nation.

Share your prayers below for your own state and for our nation!

(Vaughn Cassidy is IFA’s state prayer leader for Tennessee. Photo Credit: Avalon_Studio/Getty Images Signature via Canva Pro)