2 Chronicles 7:14 is not the only passage that talks about God’s people seeking His face and turning from their wicked ways, and His promises that come if His people do so.

Seek the Lord, and His strength, seek His face evermore.  Psalm 105:4

I will go and return to my place, til they acknowledge their offense, and seek my face; in their affliction they will seek Me early.  Hosea 5:15

And it came to pass, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned certain days, and fasted, and prayed before the God of heaven,  And said, I beseech thee, O LORD God of heaven, the great and terrible God, that keepeth covenant and mercy for them that love him and observe his commandments:  Let thine ear now be attentive, and thine eyes open, that thou mayest hear the prayer of thy servant, which I pray before thee now, day and night, for the children of Israel thy servants, and confess the sins of the children of Israel, which we have sinned against thee: both I and my father’s house have sinned.  We have dealt very corruptly against thee, and have not kept the commandments, nor the statutes, nor the judgments, which thou commandedst thy servant Moses.  Remember, I beseech thee, the word that thou commandedst thy servant Moses, saying, If ye transgress, I will scatter you abroad among the nations:  But if ye turn unto me, and keep my commandments, and do them; though there were of you cast out unto the uttermost part of the heaven, yet will I gather them from thence, and will bring them unto the place that I have chosen to set my name there.  Nehemiah1:4-9

Like the 2 Chronicles passage, this Nehemiah passage is written to Israel in context, however, we know God works in unchanging principles and is no respecter of persons.  What applies to one of His applies to all of His.

Would it be wrong to plead with God for this wayward nation and the many churches and church leaders that have strayed from truth?  Of course not!  If we based our requests on what we deserved, there would be no point in ever praying.  We all deserve hell. We don’t appeal to God on the basis of deserved-ness we appeal on the basis of His grace, mercy and goodness.

We can try to “humble ourselves” but frankly, we have this thing called pride, which is a deadly sin, that makes it very difficult to achieve.  For those who are riding high on the deceptive and temporary “status” Satan has lavished on them for their cooperation and compromise with evil, they are operating in darkness.  We need to pray for God to sweep over His churches with a spirit of broken-ness, repentance, Godly sorrow!  2 Corinthians 6 and 7 Too many churches are talking about “lift us up O Lord, that we may show the world Your power” when in reality, God never tells us to seek to be lifted up, but rather Jesus taught we must be the lowliest of servants.  God is glorified when His people draw near Him.  Just like when crowds surround a celebrity, anyone knows that person is “somebody”, when we gather ’round and draw near to God, it is instant unity, and others will wonder what is drawing us.  Then Moses said unto Aaron, This is it that the LORD spake, saying, I will be sanctified in them that come nigh me, and before all the people I will be glorified. And Aaron held his peace. Lev. 10:3

There needs to be a return of Godly fear!  Pray for that!  But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him.

Besides repentance, we need to ask God to do a work in our hearts in regards to our love for each other.  The scriptures tell us that near the end, peoples love one for another would grow cold.  Yet love for others is Christ’s primary command, and is the way by which we are supposed to be known and recognized as one of His.  We cannot do this work in our own hearts.  For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.

We need to pray for God to place a burning in many more of our hearts for evangelism and missions, asking for Him to personally give each of us boldness!  And for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel,

One of the key requirements in 2 Chron. 7:14 is PRAYER.  God’s people need to pray.  Our faith itself is a gift from God.  We can’t muster it up on our own.  Likewise effectual prayer.  We need to ask the Holy spirit to guide and help our praying. More than just praying, though we need prayer accompanied by fasting!  Sanctify ye a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the Lord your God, and cry unto the Lord.  Alas for the day! for the day of the Lord is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come. Is not the meat cut off before our eyes, yea, joy and gladness from the house of our God?

What does fasting do that prayer alone doesn’t?

1. It humbles the Christian (Ps 35:13, Ezra 8:21)
2. It afflicts the soul (Isaiah 58:5)
3. It chastens the believer (Ps 35:13)
4. It subdues the enemy which resides in our flesh, which strives against the spirit, by deprivation. (Galations 5:17)
5. Fasting brings honorable “reproach” that draws us near unto God’s heart while sin is a reproach that separates us from Him. Moving toward God automatically precludes moving further away. (Psalm 69)
6. Fasting is to be done in secret, (fasting is moot without prayer,  but is to be done in secret, which is why it’s not another National Day of Prayer that we need) Making a big production out of it isn’t going to impress God as to our seriousness in this matter.  Too much of modern Christianity is “for show” which is a big part of the problem. (Matthew 6)
7. Paul fasted often! (2 Cor. 11:27)

Churches who get together every Sunday, spend 40 minutes in what amounts to a pep rally, with a 15 minute sermonette tacked onto the end, and then dismiss without even a hint of awareness or acknowledgment that the church as a whole is sickly right now, may as well stay home.  If you are going to church just to feel good you are going for the wrong reason! There have been times when I have been sitting in a service some place and my spirit is so grieved that I just want to stand up and interrupt the revelry and try and talk sense into the oblivious.  But that is not what is needed.  Those who “get it” need to pray for more of the others to “get it”.  Especially those occupying the pulpits!

• We need to plead with God for undeserved Grace and Mercy,

• For Godly sorrow, brokenness and repentance on the part of His people

• For a resurgence of good old fashioned “fear of the Lord”

• For God to instill or renew in our hearts an abundant and constraining love for others
• We need holy boldness, personal zeal for evangelism and burden for lost souls

• We need to incorporate fasting with our prayer.

Listen, I am nobody special.  But I can honestly say that I have spent hours on my knees praying or this nation, and for the church.  (Not that I don’t need to do more of it!!!)  That is the only reason I can even begin to pinpoint as to why this blog has been successful.  It is God at work. I am just an instrument in His hands.

I will confess that I have not believed God for a spiritual awakening.  Perhaps that is because my own spirit was sickly for so long, and perhaps also due to my own love and desire to be with my Savior, but if I really love Him, what He most wants from me, he has asked us all to do, and that is “feed my sheep”.  This has no bearing on “where we are on the timeline toward the end of this age” which still looms very near (though I maintain that God can do whatever He chooses, and if that means decompressing the pressure cooker this world is in, so be it.  I could handle living to see my kids marry and make me a grandma). The broader scope of my subject for the purposes of this muli-part essay, though,  has to do with what conditions we may live under here in America during the time that remains, and what potential impact we might have on the rest of the world.

The promise at the end of 2 Chronicles 7:14 is conditional.  If/then.

So if (and only if) we do the first part, then we can know without a doubt, God will do the second part.

The next installment in this series will address “What comes after the ”then'”.  Stay tuned!  And, if you have been blessed by this blog, please spread the word.  Send out links via e-mail to your friends with a personal testimonial.  When this blog was started, I was diligent to do the things suggested by WordPress, to let folks know about it, but I said, “Lord, this is Yours, do what You will with it”, and other than the effort of getting the name “out there” at the beginning, the growth of this blog’s following has been very “grass-roots” in an “if you write it they will come” sort of way, lol.  I didn’t even put it on Facebook until recently. (https://www.facebook.com/shekinah.419)  No one is more surprised than I am to see readership continue to climb.  To God be all the glory.  I am especially grateful to the core group of folks the Lord has commissioned whom I know pray regularly for this blog, and for me and my family.  You know who you are.