Identifying with Sin

For the Global Day of Prayer this year, we're planning on doing a section on identificational repentance. While reading Awakening Cry by Pete Greig, I came across this clear description of how and why we are called to identify with the sin of our people.


Intercessory prayer can only really flow out of a deep level of personal identification. Compare the way we pray for a starving child in Africa to the way we would pray for our own child. The difference is not so much the scale of emotion as the level of intimacy. When distant strangers become intimate neighbors our prayers for them find passion. The Bible is full of such identification. Jeremiah identified so strongly with Israel's pain that he wrote: Oh my anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain. Oh, the agony of my heart…the whole land lies in ruins (Jeremiah 4:19). Hosea was even called to identify with Israel's unfaithfulness to the extent of marrying an adulterous wife. When Nehemiah hear about the disgrace of Israel, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven. Then I said, "O Lord…I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father's house, have committed against you." (Nehemiah 1:4-6)

As we seek God for revival, we have a priestly duty to confess the sins of our nation. In Scripture this is never a detached theological exercise, but a heart cry, often accompanied by fasting, mourning and the wearing of sackcloth and ashes. In such prayer, we acknowledge that the filth of society infects and affects us too, and we cry out that in God's perfect anger, he would remember mercy and spare us. Daniel prayed a remarkable intercessory prayer for Israel, owning its disobedience as his own, although he himself was "highly esteemed" by God (Daniel 10:11). While I was speaking and praying, confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel and making my request to the Lord my God for his holy hill…Gabriel came to me in swift flight
(Daniel 9:21)
(p 104-105 - Awakening Cry - Pete Greig)

May we mourn for the sins of our cities and may we cry out for God to have mercy and deliver them.