they said, “O Lord, the God of Israel, why has this happened in Israel, that today there should be one tribe lacking in Israel?” (Judges 21:3 ESV)
Oh Father, as the tribe of Benjamin in Judges 20 and 21, turned against Thee and Thy People and the blood of civil war stained the ground, we know too well the pain of division in the Church militant. We know division from sin. We know division from heresy. We know division from self-isolation from the rest of the Body of Christ. We also know the difficult but necessary reality of having to separate from tribes of the Church who willfully fall into sin and refuse to repent. Our hearts are broken that there are some who once preached Thy Word but who now doubt Thy Word; some who once were renown for tireless soul-saving labors who now toil for lesser, fleshly and even wicked causes, even anti-Christ causes; we bemoan that some who once stirred the other tribes to practical holiness of life—modeling godliness before fellow saints in other denominations of Thy one, true Church, and stirring all to grateful living—are now known to call right as wrong and to call wrong as right. Have mercy upon Thy divided Children! As in Christ Jesus all of the saved tribes of the earth find unity and life, so send revival to bring “Benjamin” back in, to bind the green branches of Thy Tree together to grow as one, and to work repentance and faith in the troubled, diseased and even withered branches, that in revival and renewal, Thy Church may grow and provide shade for the weary and balm for the sick and beauty for the landscape of life. May there will be no tribe of Thy Church isolated from the other. For the sake of the true unity which our Lord Jesus implored us to pray and for His name’s sake, and out of the burden of this passage in Judges 21 we pray.. Amen.