What If the Covenant People of God Prayed Isaiah 1 for Ourselves?

Today (Wednesday, January 14, 2026) Franklin Graham is calling our nation to a day of humility and prayer. And while I am glad for any call for the Church to pray, most of us won’t. It’s not been our way. Ardent, corporate prayer not our priority. Most of us will not gather. (Most of us won’t really pray by ourselves either.) What we might do is think about prayer – or be glad that one of our kind is giving a nod to something that sounds like stuff in the Bible. We might even do a podcast about prayer… But we won’t really cry out – not us, ourselves. We like the rhetoric of Joel. But the reality of Joel remains distasteful to us.

It has been my observation that when we have national rallies like this, we rarely humble ourselves about our own stuff. We’ll confess, and make moral pronouncements about other people’s stuff – the pagans; and the liberals. And we’ll tell each other that we need to hate the stuff that “they’re” doing, more. We’ll confess that the godless in our nation have turned their backs on God. We’ll encourage each other to be more intolerant of the evil in others. And then we’ll go home, consoling ourselves that we’re good. We’re on God’s side. And He is pleased with us.

…

…

…

And it’ll never occur to us that God wanted to talk to us about our idolatry. We’ll ignore the fact that He’s purging His Bride of our perverted definition of “greatness”. We won’t abase ourselves to repent of our lust for power. We won’t listen deeply enough to hear how he wants to cleanse us of our pride; our racial animosity; our political carnality and compromise; our hypocrisy; our winking at sin in our camp, and straining at a gnat in our adversaries’ camp. It’ll escape our notice that the Lord is grieved over the way we’re misrepresenting His Kingdom. We’ll not let the Spirit of the Lord trouble us about our malicious conspiracies, or our pro-militaristic narratives, our lack of compassion for the alien, or our deceitful and redacted nationalism, or the viral spiritual and sexual abuse that’s rampaging our own household. We don’t need to seek the Lord for any of those issues. Those are settled. Red ink. In the book.

But what if we DARED to really pray today?

What if we dared to cry out to the Lord for the full weight of our evil, pretentious and unrighteous ways? What if we agreed to the worst of what could be true about us, instead of fighting to prove the best about ourselves? What if we went deeper than the devil wants us to go? What if we made ourselves nothing on His threshing floor?

What if we opened our Bibles to Isaiah 1, shredded our religious spirit, looked into the mirror of the perfect law of liberty, and confessed everything that we see in this picture? How would the Lord view such sackcloth?

What if we prayed from this prophetic scripture with penetrating honesty and no thought of saving self:

O Lord, we humble ourselves before Your glory.

You have nourished us in every conceivable way – and yet we have rebelled against You. (v.2)

The ox and the donkey knows its honor, but we don’t know, and we haven’t even considered how we have spurned You. (v.3)

We are indeed, a sinful people. A people laden with iniquity, A brood of evildoers, Children who are corrupters! We have forsaken the Lord. We have provoked to anger the Holy One of Israel. We have turned away backward. (v.4)

We are filled with revolution. The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faints. (v.5)

From the sole of our foot even to the head, there is no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores; they have not been closed or bound up, or soothed with ointment. (v.6)

On account of our faithlessness, our nation is desolate, devoured and burned with fire. (v.7)

We are a besieged culture; we’ve neglected the weeds within ourselves; and the vines of the enemy have grown up around us, and ensnared us. (v.8)

Unless You, the Lord of Hosts had been kind to us, our household would have become like the neighbors of Lot, and our country would have become like Gomorrah. (v.9)

Indeed, we have embraced the rulers of Sodom. And we ourselves are a “deeply rebellious people”. (v.10)

Forgive us for bringing You trite, religious platitudes, when You’ve wanted – Yes, “deserved” our very souls. (v.11)

We’ve come before You, time and again, with our assemblies, our conferences, our endeavors, and carelessly, thoughtlessly trampled around Your holy courts. Forgive us holy Father. (v.12)

We have refused to see Your displeasure. We’ve cared little for our great iniquity as we’ve come into Your sacred place. (v.13)

We’ve altogether blinded ourselves from what You hate; what You’re troubled by, and what You’re weary of bearing re: us, and our ways. (v.14)

When we spread out our hands before You, we have pretended that they were not filled with blood. Nor have we considered how You continue to hide Yourself from us, even when we bring our many petitions before you. We’ve not “read the room” – Your courtroom. (v.15)

We have not washed ourselves, and made ourselves clean; We have not put away the evil of our doings from before Your eyes. We’ve not ceased to do evil. (v.16)

We’ve not learned to do good; We’ve not sought Your definition, or manifestation of justice, We’ve not rebuked the oppressor; We have not defended the poor, the historically oppressed, nor have we cried out for the alien when they are unfairly treated. (v.17)

We have not even come to You, to hear the ways of Your heart. We have not reasoned with You. We’ve not let You show us the intense stain of our sins. We’ve not let You cleanse us. We’ve instead covered ourselves in fig-leaves. (v.18)

We have neither been willing, nor obedient to counsel with You. (v.19)

We’ve not considered that You are a God who ultimately brings the sword, and wrath upon those who continue to refuse and rebel. (v.20)

We have not considered how our faith has turned to harlotry. We’ve not acknowledged that our own righteousness, now embraces the ways of murder. (v.21)

We have allowed ourselves to become polluted, and our the power of Your Kingdom we have altogether watered down. (v.22)

We’ve championed thieves, insurrectionists, and extortionists. They do not care a lick for the “have-nots”, nor those broken by the curse in our midst. (v.23)

We’ve not affirmed that You are the Lord of hosts, the Mighty One of America; a God Who ultimately takes vengeance upon His enemies. (v.24)

We’ve lived in blithe disconnect that Your fierce wrath may ever be aimed at us, or that Your hand could be turned against us, to remove our own dross. (v.25)

We’ve not wanted Your way of redemption and restoration. We’ve allowed ourselves to be distracted from Your vision of what a righteous, and faithful city looks like. (v.26)

We’ve cut deals with the way in which You establish redemption and justice within a people; How You build all righteousness upon radical penitence and thorough repentance. (v.27)

We have not promoted the fact that You are a God Who destroys transgressors and sinners. We have winked at the reality that You consume all those who forsake the Lord and His ways. (v.28)

We have not been ashamed of our many sins. (v.29)

We have incorrectly plodded along in our convention, believing we didn’t need the water of Your Word; (v.30) the piercing truth about our ways.

We have mocked the Words of Your own prophets who have looked at our adulterous ways and decreed, “The Word of the Lord will come like a spark and shall burn the work of the strong like tinder, and no one shall quench the fire of the Lord.” (v.31)

Father. Let our cry come before You. Humble us. Break us. Have mercy on us. Forgive us. Purge us. Establish us with Your steadfast lovingkindness. And fill us with a contrite spirit of truth, and peace, and holiness. For the glory of Your Son, alone, Father.

And what if some of us, so burdened by the depth of our rebellion, impatience and betrayal of God, stayed before the Lord through the night – trembling before His holiness – shaken by the true image of the wrath we deserve – “undone” like Isaiah. And what if a thousand – one hundred – or even two dozen preachers climbed back into the pulpit next Sunday – disheveled, messed up, tumbled, but touched by the Commander of the Lord’s armies. What would the Lord do with the fear of the Lord that burned in their words? What would He ignite in our family? What if that became the fire that were cast across our nation in this hour?

“Jesus! We’re here by Your mercy; wholly abandoned for Your increase, alone”.

____________________
JSB • January 14, 2026

Download the PDF Copy of the ISAIAH 1 PRAYER here.