"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
This is the premise on which this campaign was started. The promise is very easy to see. The audience to which he is speaking is easy to see as well. So many times, those of use who consider ourselves "His children" point our fingers at the culture and say "They are the problem." But God isn't expecting anything from them! We are the ones accountable. We are the ones who have been given the truth and have rejected it by compromising, not speaking boldly in love, sitting back and enjoying our comfortable life. We haven't served like Jesus served. We haven't loved like Jesus loved. We haven't sacrificed like Jesus sacrificed. The Christian life isn't a call to Easy Street. Jesus says that we must deny ourselves and take up our cross daily and follow him. (Luke 9:23) That's not what most of us do.
This cuts deep. Believe me. I'm right there with everyone else--not denying myself or taking up my cross! It's gotten easy to spout off our theological knowledge, sound good in Bible study and "work real hard" to do the right things.
For decades now, Christians have sat back and let the culture disintegrate before their very eyes. We sit in our beautiful churches on our comfortable pews or in our Bible studies with desserts and coffee--talking theology about how we should be salt and light, what we can do to make a difference, and discuss WWJD??
All the while there are hurting people. People walking right outside our churches--afraid to darken the doors because of the judgement they've felt there. People who are physically hungry, with no place to call home. People who have real hurts and real troubles. Some of them are actually sitting right there in our pews and Bible studies. And we usually don't even take the time to notice--and we don't want to notice because it's messy. Real life is messy. Real life sucks sometimes. Real life is hard and sad and unlovely a lot of the time! That's why as Christians, we can look forward to the wonderful promise of life eternal with Jesus!!
But that's not what this post was supposed to be about. If we look inside of our hearts, we know that we have left our first love. We may come back to him now and again, but on a day to day basis, most of us don't remember what it's like to really be in love with Jesus. And that's our call--to love him with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. If we aren't doing that everyday, then this verse is for us--to humble ourselves and pray, seek his face, turn from our wicked ways.....
When we do that, he makes a promise. And God always keeps his promises. He will hear us from heaven, forgive our sin and heal our land. Wow! Do we need that??? And look, it has nothing to do with the unbelievers!! There's no conditions about them. We don't need to change them or get them to live "right." We don't need to change their views on gay marriage or even abortion. We don't need them to think the same way about the economy or war that we do. We don't have to worry about any of that. We won't change our land through laws or a different Commander in Chief.
Only Jesus can heal our land.
And all we have to do is pray--repent, turn from our wicked ways. We need to return to our first love and live like he lived, serve like he served, sacrifice like he sacrificed. Why? To earn God's affection? To make ourselves good enough to deserve our land to be healed and our sins to be forgiven? NO! If that was the case, we'd be in sad shape for sure! God calls us into relationship with him. That's what he desires. He wants us to recognize our need for him. He knows that the only way we will have true joy is to love him first, to put all of our hope and trust in him alone because everyone and everything else will fail. He commands to be the ONLY God. He commands that we have NO other idols. We have a lot of idols in America. I'm pretty sure he was thinking of modern day America (as well as Israel) when we was directing the author to write this.
So no matter what your political preference--if you are a child of God, I'm sure you're concerned about the state of our country. These 40 days of prayer are nothing about a certain candidate or political party. They are a calling of the Christians in our nation to turn back to their first love. Please join me and thousands of other Christians around the country in praying specifically for these things over the next days until the election--and beyond!
I believe with all my heart that God set the leader of our country where he is. I believe just as firmly that he has planned and set the next president as well. Personally, I don't think I can change that with my prayers. I believe these prayers are for the hearts of God's children. All we can do is open our own hearts, repent of our own sin, and seek his face ourselves. He will handle the land. He will control the leadership. He uses Christians and non-Christians alike to fulfill his purpose. So I can rest in the sovereignty of my Lord. I will do my part and vote for the people that I think will be most likely to carry out and represent my beliefs and values. And that's all I can do besides pray. And pray I will.
I encourage you to do the same.....
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