My heart is breaking over the current state of our country. I believe that there is only one hope for us. Our hope cannot be in our government, police, any other agency or anyone else. We must turn to the only one who can really make a difference, God!
II Chronicles 7:14 says, “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.” (KJV)
The first word in that verse is small but extremely important. IF means that there are conditions to be met in order to get the blessings. The only way to be heard by God, have our sins forgiven and see our land healed, is to understand and heed the conditions.
The first condition is to humble ourselves. To me, that means that we must come before the Lord without pride and realize that HE IS GOD and we are not! We must realize that we need Him because without Him, we can do nothing! If we think that we can do anything without Him, we are prideful. True humility will bow to His will and His way and profess He reigns and rules over us.
After we come to God in humility, we must pray. Praying must come from a position of humility and we must pray from our hearts. Prayer should be a conversation that we have with the Lord. We should call out to Him in sincerity. Part of our prayer needs to be genuine repentance but I will cover more on that later while discussing the fourth condition.
The third condition is to seek His face. Jeremiah 29:13 says, “And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.” (KJV) To seek means to make an effort to find someone or something. It means to pursue them. In this case, we need to search for God and make an effort to find or discover Him. Have you ever searched for something of value and you did not give up until you found it? The Bible tells a story about a woman who lost a coin and searched until she found it. Luke 15:8-9 says, “Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Won’t she light a lamp and sweep the entire house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she will call in her friends and neighbors and say, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost coin.” (NLT) We need to diligently search for the Lord and seek His face. Deuteronomy 4:29 says, But from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul. (NKJV)
The fourth condition is to turn from our wicked ways. If we have done the first three steps of humbling ourselves, praying, and seeking His face then we have begun to get closer to knowing God and His character. Once we know Him more, we begin to recognize what is of Him and what is not of Him. We are in a better position to understand what is evil. When we have a relationship with God, we want to turn from our wicked ways because we want to please and serve Him. That is where repentance comes in because we recognize our sins and don’t want to continue in them. When we truly repent, we have Godly sorrow over what we have done and want to stop doing those things. We do not want to hurt our Heavenly Father by our actions.
If we want the blessings of God hearing us, forgiving our sins and healing our land, we must meet the conditions of II Chronicles 7:14.
God is our only hope!
Patricia Styers
GivenThanks Ministry 