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II Chronicles 7:14
Failure
"If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land." (2
Chronicles. 7:14)
We, Gods people, have failed miserably. We have not done the four simple things that God asked of us in this verse, and now we are seeing the results of it in our country today. The biggest little word in this verse is "If", and on it hinges the crux of the entire verse, and perhaps the destiny of an entire nation. First, we must be sure that we are in the family; we need to accept Christ as our way to Heaven, and put our trust in Him for deliverance from our sin. Then God says, If His people, those who are called by His name, who have been washed in the blood of the Lamb, if His people, not the heathen, not the cultist, but His people, if we will humble ourselves, putting away our foolish pride; crucifying our haughty and arrogant lifestyles; if we will fall down before Him, and realize that we are less than nothing, but as dirty as dirt itself; if we will do this, and pray, we see a formula here, a formula for fixing what is wrong in America today; yea, it is not enough to humble ourselves without prayer, for who do we humble ourselves to? To those that are as wretched as we?
Prayer is humbling; it recognizes that we need help, God's help, and that we know that He is greater and we the lesser. Humble ourselves, and pray, then seek His face, oh how we need to seek His face, and chase after Him as a bee chases honey. We expect God to seek us, to woo us, to cater to us, but how slow we are to seek Him and to woo Him. "If" my people, If, if, only if. Then He asks that we turn from our wicked ways, is this unreasonable oh Christian? He asks only that which we have learned to expect from one another, only that which is our "reasonable service." We will not seek His face because we will not turn our wicked ways, but we cling to them and embrace them and hide them deep within the confines of our souls. Our Lord Himself said that "And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil."
(John. 3:19). Men do not want to come to the light because they love their evil. When will we forsake our evil ways? When will we truly know Him and seek His face? Woe unto us when we consider our petty desires to be worth more than the glory of seeking after our God. Yes, woe, a thousand woes to us when we think our sin more precious than His blessing, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" Only Jesus can deliver us from ourselves.
--Marty Dunn
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