HONOUR YOUR FATHER AND MOTHER

We come and humbly admit that we do not honour our fathers and our mothers in the way that pleases You. We admit that we have become a rebellious stiff necked nation, full of pride and ego. We humbly beg Your forgiveness for the times we not submit to the authority that You bestowed upon our parents or any other authority figures that You placed in position. We also rebel against You, the most High. We have placed our parents in homes and forgotten them. We have thrown them away to seek our own pleasures and fortunes, , (Mark 7:10-13). We have spoken ill of them with others, mocked their values and ridiculed them. Father we know there are people that have been abused by their parents, we pray that You will help them to forgive and move forward. We also pray for Your intervention where parents are abusing their children, be it physically, verbally or sexually. Father, please help us to have a deeper understanding of our God-given roles and authority as parents (Luke 1:17).

Thank You for our parents. Thank You for the valuable lessons they have taught us. Thank You for the times that they pray for us. Please help us to again see their worth and to respect them and love them the way You want us to.

Thank You that You are a wonderful, loving, Father. Thank You for inviting us to call You Abba/ Daddy and for ever running to meet us, when we were the prodigal sons.

YOU SHALL NOT MURDER

Father, South Africa has become a place where lives are cheap. Please forgive us. Your ways are higher than our ways and when we hate or do not forgive in Your eyes it is akin to murder. We therefore stand with our hands dripping with blood. We curse others at a whim and feel it is our right to remain angry. We have become a nation that takes lives because others have and we don't. We have become a nation that drives recklessly or drunk and in this manner endanger or kill others, simply because we feel the road belongs to us. We have become a nation where MY right to life/ possessions/ the road/ the mall/ the park/etc. is more important than the other person (Proverbs 6:16-19). We are a nation filled with hatred and loathing of other nations, cultures, our own brothers and You. Father we have become a nation where the lives of the unborn are ended by the drinking of a pill or the scraping of a womb. We have become a country where foetuses and newborn babies are dumped into rubbish bins or toilets to rot.

Father, the stench of the corpses (of all the lives that have been ended by our hands) has reached Your nose and Your anger over the hardness of our hearts should fill us with fear. Please forgive our heartlessness and help us to forgive. Heal our hatred and our fear of man. Help us to fear You instead, (Matthew 10:28; Proverbs 9:10, Isaiah 2:10). Help us to forgive as You forgive and to show grace towards others as You show grace towards us, (Matthew 18:34-35, James 2:8-13). Help us to lay down our anger and bitterness and renew our hearts toward each other.

YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY

We stand before you, our bodies and our thoughts stinking of lust and impurities. We are a country that looks with lust at the bodies of men, women and even children. We are a country where pornography has defiled our minds and we no longer even see the problem with the pictures on magazines on our newsstands at our supermarket - which corrupt the minds of our children.

We admit that we are a nation that has given our bodies to people whom they do not belong to. We are fornicators. We watch programmes and read articles that propagate sex outside of the bonds of marriage, that propagate intimate relationships and marriages between people of the same gender and we take part in all these types of adultery.

We sell our bodies for money. We visit places of prostitution and say that because we have only looked at the strippers, we have committed no sin. We enter into phone and virtual sex and claim to have done nothing wrong. BUT Father, You see our wicked ways. You have created sex between husband and wife to be beautiful and special and we have perverted this in every way. We are a nation with one of the highest divorce rates in the world. We leave our husbands and wives at a whim. We expect our spouses to be the source of our happiness, which makes them idols in our lives, and when they cannot perform this impossible task we go seek greener pastures. Our hearts have been hardened towards our spouses and towards You.

Forgive us Father. Heal our minds and our bodies and our souls. Wash us clean - as Your word teaches that all others sins happen outside of the body BUT sexual sins happen within the body. Your word also teaches us to resist Satan, but when it comes to sexual sin, You command us to FLEE from the devil. (Matthew 5:28, 2 Timothy 2:22, Galatians 5:19, Romans 13:9, 1 Corinthians 6:18-20, James 4:7, Colossians 3:5).

Help us to run away from these sins, open our eyes to them when we watch TV/ movies, or read in the media - so that we will turn it off and thus flee from it, rather than entertain it.