Healing our land

At least once a year, during one of our "Remembrance" holidays, I find myself drawn to 2 Chronicles 7:11-14:

11 When Solomon had finished the temple of the Lord and the royal palace, and had succeeded in carrying out all he had in mind to do in the temple of the Lord and in his own palace, 12 the Lord appeared to him at night and said:

“I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a temple for sacrifices.

13 “When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, 14 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 I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

As is easily derived from the text, the passage is speaking of the time immediately after Solomon has finished the vision of his father, King David, of bringing the Ark to Jerusalem and building a Temple.

One of the things that always strikes me about this passage is how often we want to use this passage as a magic wand. America is a pretty great country, overall. We have more luxuries than people in the time of Solomon could have imagined. We have freedom to worship. Most of us have very little fear of missing a meal, not having clean water, or not having a roof over our heads. So, it always amazes me that as soon as something pretty minor happens in our country, we immediately reach back to this passage as if the end of our lifestyle is one battle away. I say "magic wand" because we try to treat God as if He is obligated to do as we please because we found the magic incarnation.

Don't get me wrong, God absolutely can and will follow through on the principles laid out in our text. But we also need to be honest about the fact that God often took years before He allowed judgement. And, He often allowed hundreds of years of captivity before the timing was right for His redemption.

While we have a lot of ebb and flow of certain freedoms in this country, I think that we sometimes treat our seeming hardships with a slight exaggeration, when compared to what the people of Solomon's day lived with.

Still, I think that we are probably less free that we once were, and I often look around and wonder how long until our country falls under captivity. So, let's look at our text.

This promise to Israel, in my opinion, is also a principle that applies to the church.

We will focus on verse 14, because this is where the principle lies. As we read, I can't accentuate enough the fact that the very first word is "if." This isn't a magic recipe to get what we want. There are conditions...and these conditions are specific, and they are life-altering.

First, this promise/principle is given to "my people." At the time of the writing, this promise was given to Israel. We claim this principle as applying to the church, but we do need to be careful not to demand this as a promise to us...the promise was to Israel.

Second, I want us to see that He further dissects the audience. This promise is not just to anyone who claims to belong to Him. This is not every Jewish person, nor is it everyone who calls themselves a Christian. The principle is for those who are the called according to His name. This promise is made to those who have set their lives apart for a calling of following after the LORD. As I've been focusing on for the past few weeks, I'm going to call these, Holy Spirit filled believers. Not those who casually call themselves by a title, but those who truly want to follow His calling.

So, one the audience has been defined, He lays out the conditions:

First and foremost is humility. I'll be 100% honest...as Americans, we don't do 'humble' very well. A perfect companion passage for this text is Romans 11 and 12. Here, Paul is talking about Israel's rejection, and Paul has much to say about the attitude that they church should have. in 12:3 Paul warns us not to think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think. A little further down, Paul shows us how we ought to think of ourselves and treat others: being kind, not showing favoritism, blessing those who curse us, repaying good for evil. This flies in the face of most of what we are told, taught, and shown. We're told to worry about self. Coddle self-esteem; do things for ourselves because "we're worth it." Our entire culture is about self. Self-care. Self-love. Jesus tells us to give ourselves up for others. That's tough. But that's the first condition to this promise. Be kind, put others needs first, and be humble.

The second condition is to pray. While this seems so easy to do, I wonder how often we really take prayer as seriously as we should. We believe in prayer. We believe that God is able to answer prayer. ...or we say we do. But, if we truly believed, we would be devoting a huge portion of our time to our prayer life. I, for one, am guilty of getting so busy in my day-to-day life, that sometimes prayer becomes an afterthought...despite truly believing in the capability of God.

The third condition is to Seek His face. I wonder how much we seek His face? Do we spend time in the Word, getting to know Him? Do we truly desire to know His character and His opinion on things in our life? Or, do we go about our day thinking everything is alright because we feel ok?

Finally, is the tough part: We have to be willing to turn from our wicked ways. This is honestly, where it gets sticky. Are we trying to better ourselves? Are we working to be more like Christ? Are we desiring to make meaningful progress in our lives as Christians, or are we ok the way we are? Is going to church and tossing some money in the plate enough? Or, do we desire to be molded by God?

These are all hard questions. And, if we're honest, we could all probably work on ourselves in every one of these areas, I know I can. But, these are the conditions. And only after these conditions are met, will God Hear us, Forgive our sins (I think this a collective "forgive the sins of the nation"), and heal our nation.

Our country will never be made great because of who is or isn't in the White House. Our country will never be made truly great by our 535 elected representatives in Washington. And if that is where our hope is, we are truly lost.

The hope of our nation is upon each of us to do our part and then wait for the LORD to do His!