A proclamation calling for 31 days of prayer and fasting throughout the month of July has gone into effect.

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee (R) signed the House’s Joint Resolution 803 in April, which urges residents to “seek God’s hand of mercy healing on Tennessee.”

The resolution, which passed 27-1 in the Senate and 82-6 in the House, recognizes that God is the Creator and has the “authority to judge and bless” the state and country. “[W]e, as public servants in the Tennessee General Assembly, seek God’s Mercy upon our land and beseech Him to not withdraw His Hand of blessing from us,” the resolution adds.

“[W]e recognize our sins and shortcomings before Him and humbly ask His Forgiveness,” the lawmakers wrote. “[W]e ask the Lord Jesus to heal our land and remove the violence, human trafficking, addiction, and corruption.”

“[W]e ask that the Holy Spirit fill our halls of government, our classrooms, our places of business, our churches, and our homes with peace, love, and joy.”

The resolution calls for those who are “physically able and spiritually inclined to do so” to participate in a “thirty-day season of prayer and intermittent fasting as we begin a new fiscal year as a means of seeking God’s blessing and humbling ourselves to receive His Grace and Mercy, transforming ourselves, our communities, our State, and our Nation.”

The document echoes a proclamation issued by John Adams in 1799, which called for a day of “solemn humiliation, fasting, and prayer” to seek a “more suitable obedience to [God’s] righteous requisitions in time to come.”

In a letter accompanying the resolution, State Senator Mark Pody (R) and State Representative Monty Fritts (R) wrote that the document “embodies a bipartisan recognition that the issues we are facing cannot be effectively addressed without the intervention and favor of our Lord.”

“Let us model for those who are not called by His Name a better way to bring about the positive changes we so desperately need,” the legislators declared.