How does repentance on a national scale occur? 

Don Hart explains in this video that repentance in a nation is very much a grassroots matter. If repentance doesn’t begin to occur in the hearts of people, their families, and in churches, we don’t have much reason to expect that we will soon have a nation of repentant people.

Repentance creates lasting change. It is a genuine change of heart, created by faith in Christ alone by the grace of a sovereign God. A sinful nation will never reverse course unless people on an individual level begin to repent for their sin against God.  

2 Chronicles 7:14 (NKJV) – “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.”

Yet repentance in a nation is very much a grassroots sort of thing. If it doesn't happen in families, if it doesn't happen in churches, if it's not happening in the hearts of a little remnant, we don't have much reason to expect that it's going to spread like the kind of holy fire that we love and desire in this nation and that we're going to have a nation of repentant people. It's a whole lot more than a catastrophe which humbles us for a little while and causes people to go to church for a couple of months. That's not repentance. Repentance is the genuine new creature, change of heart, created by faith in Christ alone, by the grace of a sovereign God, a necessary fruit that must accompany the fact that we have been changed.

We are not the same nation, we are not the same people. We will not continue to go the same way. We will reverse course and follow God.