Thursday, July 23, 2026

Valued Faithful Friends,

Together, we shape and steer nations under God. Thank you for praying.

This issue: the 5 pillars of the American Founding. "The foundations of law and order have collapsed. What can the righteous do?" (Psalm 11:3 NLT).

— Brian

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A Nation Under Covenant: The Pillar Central to the Rest

Five pillars hold up the house we call America. Last issue: the Founders learned about democracy from Greece (with a warning about mob rule) and Rome's answer of order and representative government (a Republic, not a pure democracy).

In this issue we highlight the central pillar — the revelation of the Judeo-Christian faith.

In 1630, John Winthrop stood on the deck of the Arbella and told the Puritans they were entering a covenant with God. "We shall be as a city upon a hill," he said.

That covenant language stuck. Centuries later, our system of government is still called "federal" — a word that comes from the Latin for covenant. The idea of binding agreements before God became the idea of binding agreements between citizens and government.

By the 1700s, it came to mean “formed by agreement among independent states,” and in the U.S. founding era it described a “federal union” based on treaty-like compacts.

A century later, the First Great Awakening swept the colonies. George Whitefield preached to crowds larger than any colonial city could hold indoors. He cultivated a shared spiritual heritage that united many colonists in the quest for freedom.

That same faith armed them to resist. In 1750, Boston pastor Jonathan Mayhew preached that Romans 13 did not require obedience to a tyrant — that a ruler who defied God's law forfeited the obedience owed to him.

That sermon has been called the “morning gun of the Revolution.” Colonial clergy kept preaching it for the next 25 years, until men picked up muskets believing God was behind the formation of a new nation. See this issue: The “Black Robe Regiment”—when American preachers led the fight for freedom.

Samuel Adams, nicknamed the last of the Puritans, never let go of his family's strict Congregationalist faith.

George Washington's own wartime General Orders called troops to days of prayer, and his Farewell Address called religion and morality "indispensable supports" to political prosperity.

John Jay, one of three men who wrote the Federalist Papers as Publius, later became founding president of the American Bible Society.

Thomas Jefferson and the Continental Congress named God in the Declaration 4 times… closing with "a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence."

"All men are created equal" wasn't a Greek or Roman idea. Equality came from the belief that every person carries the image of God.

This was not the cold Deism of the French Enlightenment. This was biblical Christian faith — covenant, conviction, and resistance under God. It ran straight through the Founding. The Creator engages history and speaks. We partner with the Creator.

Next week: Patrick Henry's fire, Benjamin Franklin's surprising prayer, and the actual architecture of the Constitution itself.

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Signals & Shifts

Quick hits from around America. Curated to help with awareness, informed prayer, and prayer-borne action.

⭐️ Smithsonian Institution: engaged in a national teardown. American taxpayers fund nearly two-thirds of the Smithsonian's budget. Now it stands with those tearing the nation down.

⭐️ Democratic Socialists of America unveil platform calling for abolishing the Senate, Presidency, and Supreme Court.

We can draw on America's founding prayers, covenants, documents, and early experiences as "prayer architecture" for today. Adapt the prayer language below to your prayer voice as the Holy Spirit leads.

🏛️ Covenant Renewed — Father, You are a covenant-keeping God. Winthrop's generation entered this land looking to walk in covenant with You, and I ask You to renew that covenant over this nation today. "Therefore know that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments" (Deuteronomy 7:9, NKJV). Draw America back to faithfulness.

🔥 Release Revival Fire — Lord, You sent fire through the colonies once through ordinary preaching in open fields. Do it again. Water dry hearts. Wake up cold churches. "If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land" (2 Chronicles 7:14, NKJV). Heal this land, Lord.

📖 2026 Summer of Readiness — Lord, use this summer to sharpen us the way the Minutemen sharpened themselves before the moment came. Give us hunger to read, to study, to know our history and our times. Prepare us now so we are ready later. "Be dressed in readiness, and keep your lamps lit" (Jesus in Luke 12:35 NASB).

🛡️ Lord, protect this nation by Your sovereign hand — You govern nations. We ask for Your protection over America — its people, its children, its institutions. Where the Church has been absent from its post, cover what we have left unguarded. “Plead my cause, O Lord, with those who strive with me: fight against those who fight against me” (Psalm 35:1 NKJV).

As you pray, tune in to the Father’s heart. Resonate with the sharp prayer edges he surfaces in the Spirit. Leave “white space” in prayer for fresh prayer improvisation.

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Brian Del Turco
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