Saturday, December 31, 2016

A CALL TO REVIVAL (Part 2)


2Chron. 7:13-14: 13If I shut up heaven that there be no rain, or if I command the locusts to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among my people; 14If 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.
                                                                                                                                                  

The Promises
As mentioned earlier, 2Chron. 7:14 has four conditions that God’s people must fulfill and three blessings that God will bestow upon His people should they meet the specified conditions.  Upon fulfilling the conditions, God says:
1) I Will Hear From Heaven
God says He will give ear to, give attention to (e.g. Exodus 3:7) or will consider our requests. God is saying in the passage that if His people will meet the four conditions that He requires, then He will not just hear our prayers, but he will pay due attention to them, He will act on our prayers and answer them..
2) Forgive their sins
God says He will pardon or spare us. Sin leads to death, but God has promised to spare His people from the consequences, or penalty of sin (Romans 6:23, Ezek. 18:20-32).  
3) Heal their land
God says if He has stopped the rains from the land and brought drought, if He has brought plagues of locusts and insects to devour the crops, and if He has caused pestilence to fall on His people, if He has brought judgment on His people due to their wicked rebellion against Him and His statutes.  Then If His people will humble themselves and pray, and seek His face, and turn from their wicked ways, then He will heal the land from the  judgments He has brought upon it.
In ancient Israel the land was their livelihood.  If the land did not bring forth the crops at the appropriate times and if the harvest was poor, then the people would starve or have insufficient food, or the animals the people grazed for milk, cheese, and other products would be under nourished, and not produce sufficient milk, cheese, etc.  Again the people’s lives would suffer, as a result of the poor crops and livestock. (Deut. 11:16-17)
This principle can be applied at all levels of our life and society. Essentially, God is promising that if His people will comply with the four conditions outlined in 2 Chronicles 7:14, then He will heal their land, God will heal the family problems and the country’s ailing economies. God will surely provide for His people and they would prosper.  God wants His people to have a good life, and enjoy the planet He created for them (Matt. 7:11).

Summary
God wants to bless us in such a way that we will prosper and live a good life, but all we need to do is to repent, seek Him with all our hearts in absolute humility, and trust Him to deliver on the promises He has declared and made.
In Ephesians 4, Paul entreats us to walk before God in a manner worthy of our calling, with all humility and gentleness; to lay aside our old self, which is corrupted with lusts and deceits; to renew the spirit of our minds, and put on the new self, which is in the likeness of God. 
In Romans 12:1-2, Paul exhorts us to present our bodies as a living and holy sacrifice before God, and renew our minds and not conform to the world because this is how we serve God in worship. Lots of people say they want to repent; they want to seek God, and they want to pray.  Yet I do not know those who say they want to be humble before God. We all profess to know God but our hearts are far off from God’s desires. The pleasures of this world have entangled our hearts. (Read Acts. 3:19).

Finally

God is not a man that He will lie (Num. 23:19). Some will say that this teaching is Old Testament and therefore does not apply to them as we live under grace and in the New Testament age but I want to tell you that all the promises of God are yea and Amen in Jesus name (2Cor. 1:20).  Amen!

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