Why 2nd Chronicles 7:14 Hasn't Been Working
In the last article that I published along these lines, I tried to point out how our nation's recent history has unfortunately paralleled the conditions outlined in Romans 1:18-32, and that our only hope (if any) is found in 2nd Chronicles 7:14. For years, many good Christians have been attempting to implement 2nd Chronicles 7:14 and so far, it hasn't been working. In this article, I will attempt to explain what it is that might be getting in God's way. And I hope I'm wrong.
I'm writing this article in September of 2015 for those of you who may find it online in the future. If things continue in our nation as they have for more than 50 years as of this publication, then this article will be even more relevant for you than it is for me in 2015.
Starting around 2010, these yard signs began popping up everywhere. They were a visual manifestation of what most alert Christians were recognizing about the future of our nation. Investigate any social chart monitoring the frequency of any social statistic, everything has gone from bad to worse since the Supreme Court in 1963 stripped God and all things connected to God from our schools and colleges as if He were a disease to be eradicated. The impact on our society is a fact of mathematical numbers which can statistically show a drastic change from the characteristics of a time when nobody locked their doors at night to the modern age where children in broad daylight aren't even safe from being shot down in cold blood while going to school.
The so-called moral majority keeps waiting for something to change. Every 2 years our nation goes through an election cycle, either a presidential election or a mid-term election, hoping to bring people into power that might bring about a change in the direction our country is going. But it doesn't seem to matter whether Republicans are in power or Democrats, things continue to go from bad to worse. Multiple generations of people brought up under a post-1963 education system continue to grow up and obtain positions of power in political offices, schools, courts, churches and therefore, most everyone in power is ignorant of what America used to be or what made it great or even if it was ever great to begin with. What used to be nationally understood definitions of good and evil have been erased from the public mind.
Everyone used to know and understand the U.S. Constitution, how it applied, why it's important, why our leaders must always abide by it, how WE THE PEOPLE (not the government) are those who enforce it, and how by limiting our government's authority to what is defined by our Constitution, we are able to keep ourselves free. But today, if you were to tell someone that a particular ruling or law isn't constitutional, you might get a shoulder shrug, a so-what, or a who-cares. What a tragedy!
The Constitution is from WE THE PEOPLE and addressed TO THE GOVERNMENT, not the other way around. The American Christians of 1776 didn't want the government coming between them and their faith, or between them and their influence upon their society. Therefore, preventative measures were outlined in the Constitution to keep the government from overstepping it's authority. Today's Christians have all but forgotten what those measures are. Most of them have been brainwashed into believing a revisionist, secular view of the Constitution which keeps Christians disengaged and out of the way.
In the following video excerpt recorded in 2010, Chuck Missler was wrapping up his commentary on the book of Hosea in which Hosea the Prophet spent 14 chapters explaining to the Northern Kingdom what God was about to do in judgment against them if they did not repent as a nation. Since the Northern Kingdom did not repent, Missler brings up a pretty good question. In Isaiah 55:11, God declared that "His Word would not return void but accomplish that which he pleased." If that's true, then what was accomplished by the book of Hosea since the Northern Kingdom didn't repent? Could it be that God intended for His Word through Hosea to accomplish repentance in future nations that needed to repent? Like... the United States?
The above video from Chuck Missler's expositional commentary on the book of Hosea was published about the same time 2nd Chronicles 7:14 started popping up all over the place on billboards, on bumper stickers and on yard signs in people's yards. What escalated this phenomenon in 2010 was the sudden and drastic realization that an ancient evil which everyone used to know and understand, an ancient evil which many had believed to be defeated and gone forever, was being resurrected and placed into power right under our noses by unwitting accomplices of an electorate stripped of all truth and apparently prevented somehow from even receiving it. Something dark and spiritual was preventing sound wisdom from getting into the hearts and minds of the electorate so that by 2009 and prevailing in 2010, the ancient and well established evil had aggressively taken power in the highest office of the land with nothing and no one to stand in it's way. This ancient evil was classic socialism.
Don't be distracted by partisan allegiances. This is not a Republican vs Democrat argument. Both Democrats and Republicans used to be united against socialism because they both knew what it was. But it would seem that a socialist agenda from foreign shores has managed to slowly infiltrate our entertainment, our schools, our courts, our churches and finally our political systems over such a slow and gradual process of implementation that we hardly noticed it until it was too late. After more than 50 years of "re-education" and re-programming of the masses, it's become almost impossible to warn anyone who has been deceived by the socialist agenda.
Everyone used to know and understand what socialism was: how it worked; why it's dangerous; why leaders of government often promote it; how they use various tactics of deception to get voters to buy into it; what those tactical methods are; how they always target the needs of the poor, the anger of the rejected, the naivety of the young and the ignorance of the uninformed to gain power; and how it ALWAYS turns a free people into a slave nation via the voluntary surrender of personal freedoms in exchange for government-supplied security, food, shelter, or healthcare. It's an ancient, classic and deceptive system of tyranny that everyone in the United States used to be protected from and well informed about because it has always followed a classic pattern in order to gain power. We knew what that pattern was and we never thought it would happen here. But we should have known because that classic pattern always starts with the removal of God from the culture. We should have known. The few who DID know were outnumbered in 2008 and now if you were to tell most anyone that a politician was a socialist or promoting socialism, you might get a shoulder shrug or worse, a smirk. Because you see, "Socialism is a stupid word that old farts, rednecks, religious nuts, racists and homophobes use to define progressivism" according to the current propaganda machine.
The economic, social, historic and Biblical ignorance of today's American population is staggering!! Many of these people are now in positions of authority, making all of the life-changing decisions for the rest of us. They go to the polls every election cycle and vote according to the craving of their belly rather than the discernment of godly wisdom. They go to our schools to teach our kids everything but the truth. They go to the courts to defend the wicked while prosecuting and judging the righteous. They go to many of our churches to teach their congregations everything EXCEPT THE BIBLE. They go to the Supreme Court to manipulate and rewrite law to fit according to their base desires with no allegiance whatsoever to the Constitution or to the truth. They go to Hollywood to produce movies and TV shows to teach the rest of the nation what's socially acceptable (according to them) and what's socially unacceptable and wicked (according to them), with messages and deceitful tactics so satanic and stealth that most Christians have no idea how infiltrated their own home probably is of witchcraft and ancient paganism in the name of art and entertainment.
By 2010, many Christians finally began to realize what Paul had been saying all along in Ephesians 6:12: our problem is spiritual wickedness in high places and therefore requires a Spiritual solution. Therefore, several campaigns were launched in 2010 to take 2nd Chronicles 7:14 seriously and multiple ministries began promoting serious prayer commitments, focused on the spiritual welfare of this nation. On Independence Day 2010, I saw the following sermon on television from Charles Stanley. I had heard many a sermon from Charles Stanley throughout the years, but never one like this! Messages like this are what inspired the "Prayer: America's Only Hope ~ 2nd Chronicles 7:14" signs that have been placed on bumper stickers and yard signs since 2010.
Many a Christian since 2010 has committed themselves to prayer for our nation, joining in these prayer campaigns and placing yard signs in their lawns publicly declaring their allegiance to God and to prayer. But unfortunately in the past 5 years, things have only gone from bad to worse. Since Dr. Stanley's sermon, we've gone through 3 election cycles and nothing has stopped the tide in which he spoke. The spiritual and economic ideas of socialism have increasingly become law. Individual judges within the Supreme Court have overruled and overthrown the U.S. Constitution with multiple rulings.
The cost of everything has gone up, unemployment is rampant, the quality of healthcare has decreased immensely as the cost of it has sky-rocketed, employees of low wage jobs can't afford the cost of their healthcare benefits so that they can't afford to go to work. It's actually cheaper to be unemployed than to be employed!
There have been several riots and school shootings, earthquakes, droughts, wildfires and floods.
In 2015, the Supreme Court declared state's bans on gay marriage to be unconstitutional, forcing the legalization of gay marriage in all 50 states. Individual Christians who've chosen not to participate have been thrown in jail while militants have knocked on church doors saying, "Your next!"
Several cities across the land have publicly and officially endorsed the worship of Satan by lifting up statues in honor of Lucifer and Satanism in public government places, mocking America's freedom of religion.
Our government for the first time in our history, recently garnered a nuclear deal with Israel's enemies while refusing Israel's leaders to have anything to do with the talks. We're giving Israel's enemies everything they want and we've even threatened Israel that WE WILL OPPOSE THEM if they attempt to do anything to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities. No time in our history has America turned it's back on Israel like we have in recent months.
Then, as if killing the unborn isn't horrible enough, it's been uncovered that the killers are carefully carving out the body parts to sell on the black market. Victor Frankenstein had nothing on Planned Parenthood. This is no different than what the Nazi's did to the Jews who were tortured and experimented upon for the Nazi's so-called research. What's worse is that there is very little outrage. The release of this new grizzly information about what's going on at Planned Parenthood hasn't altered any positions for those who are pro-abortion. The most physically dangerous place in all the world for an American to be is inside his mother's womb. One in four pregnancies end in infanticide. This is our nation's holocaust. We often gasp when someone mentions the 6 million Jews who were slaughtered under Hitler's Germany. That's nothing compared to the 60+ million that have been slaughtered inside their mother's womb in the United States of America since 1973.
This is the United States of 2015. God has not yet healed our land and things have spiritually gone from bad to worse. Why?
If God hasn't healed our land as He promised in 2nd Chronicles 7:14, then it can only be because His people which are called by His name, have failed to meet the conditions of the promise. That's the only answer. What are those conditions? Let's re-examine them closely.
"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."
The 1st requirement to growing in your relationship with the Lord is to get over yourself. The Biblical lingo for this is "humbling yourself before God" but basically all that means, is to say, "God, you have the right to tell me I'm wrong about whatever you want." Too many of us try to grow in our relationship with the Lord with all kinds of limits to what we're going to agree with and how things are going to be. The audacity of our hand-on-the-hip, finger-wagging attitudes towards God while simultaneously presuming we have a healthy relationship with Him is laughable at best, and shameful at worst. Either way, it does not meet the 2nd Chronicles 7:14 requirement of humbling ourselves.
Notice the passage doesn't just say, "Seek God" but "Seek My Face" as in "Get in My Face". This is an aggressive search for an awareness of God's presence and an awareness of His infinite, penetrating attention toward you personally. We know it's real according to the Scripture, but seeking His face means finding out what that's like by experience. You can't experience this just by squeezing God in on Sundays and Wednesdays. THAT IS NOT SEEKING GOD'S FACE.
It's amazing to me what we will put in place of spending time with God alone in prayer and meditating on His Word. We'll watch every episode of 10 seasons of this TV show, then 9 seasons of that TV show, then 8 seasons of that other TV show in less than a year before we'll spend just one single hour reading anything from the Word of God. Satan's got us so addicted to our modern-day idols that the Bible just keeps sitting on the shelf collecting dust. Oh sure, we've hammered our "2nd Chronicles 7:14" signs in our yard and thumbed-up all the posts of Christian patriotism we find at Facebook, but we won't do what it takes to personally seek God's face.
If I want God to remove corrupt judges from our courts who are outlawing righteousness and enforcing wickedness, then I must first allow God to remove the corruption in my own judgments that usurps my own will over God's Will. This isn't easy to do, but that's where humility comes into play. We have to acknowledge that God is right and we're wrong and confess whatever those things are and begin to lay them down. That's what it means to "turn from our wicked ways." Too many of us Christians want the rest of the nation to turn from it's wicked ways without us privately turning from ours. But that's not the way God wants it.
Want God to stop abortions in our nation, then guys, quit looking at porn. Human wisdom says one has nothing to do with the other but the Wisdom of God in 2nd Chronicles 7:14 says that if you will turn from YOUR wicked ways, then God will heal your land of it's wicked ways. Quit privately rationalizing it away. Lay it down.
Do you want God to stop the government from confiscating everyone's income and spending it on things that go against your faith? Then you need to quit blowing $100 a month on lottery tickets to get rich or anything else you know in your heart that you shouldn't be investing money which God has given to you.
Before God will fix our nation, we've got to let God go to work on us and have His way. If we do that, then and only then...
Bill Salus (like Chuck Missler) thinks it's too late for America. We may have to throw away our 2nd Chronicles 7:14 signs and replace them with Hosea 4:6 and Jeremiah 7:16.
While many good Christians share our views written out in this post, most Christians in America do not. Most Christians in America today would rather focus on individual issues of personal and emotional importance rather than worrying about which direction the nation is going or whether or not God has something to say about it.
When I think of what makes up a lot of the so-called Christian body of America, those agreeing with the Supreme Court in 1963 which extracted God from public society, those agreeing with the Supreme Court in 1973 which began the American Holocaust against the unborn, those agreeing with the Supreme Court in 2015 which outlawed Christian opposition to gay marriage, who then turn around and go to church every Sunday, singing songs of worship, praying for God to watch over their families, their futures, asking Him to provide for them and meet their needs... I think of God's response in Isaiah 1:12-15:
Warnings such as these were written to inspire conviction and repentance. If American Christians continue on the course we've been taking without humility, without prayer, without seeking His face, and without turning from our wicked ways, then don't expect anything to change any time soon.
But if we HAVE implemented 2nd Chronicles 7:14 AND WILL CONTINUE to humble ourselves, if we continue to pray, if we continue to seek His face AND TURN FROM OUR WICKED WAYS, then there will always be hope that God is working behind the scenes to build up an awakening for National Repentance & Spiritual Revival. If Nineveh could humble themselves, pray, seek God's face and turn from their wicked ways, then so can the United States. It hasn't happened yet, but it could.
This is not a physical battle, it's a spiritual battle. It must be waged using spiritual weapons because if we should ever begin to see evidence that a Spiritual awakening is dawning, then expect to see with it all the powers of Hell rising to fight to keep the ground they've gained over the past 50+ years.
I'm writing this article in September of 2015 for those of you who may find it online in the future. If things continue in our nation as they have for more than 50 years as of this publication, then this article will be even more relevant for you than it is for me in 2015.
Starting around 2010, these yard signs began popping up everywhere. They were a visual manifestation of what most alert Christians were recognizing about the future of our nation. Investigate any social chart monitoring the frequency of any social statistic, everything has gone from bad to worse since the Supreme Court in 1963 stripped God and all things connected to God from our schools and colleges as if He were a disease to be eradicated. The impact on our society is a fact of mathematical numbers which can statistically show a drastic change from the characteristics of a time when nobody locked their doors at night to the modern age where children in broad daylight aren't even safe from being shot down in cold blood while going to school.
The so-called moral majority keeps waiting for something to change. Every 2 years our nation goes through an election cycle, either a presidential election or a mid-term election, hoping to bring people into power that might bring about a change in the direction our country is going. But it doesn't seem to matter whether Republicans are in power or Democrats, things continue to go from bad to worse. Multiple generations of people brought up under a post-1963 education system continue to grow up and obtain positions of power in political offices, schools, courts, churches and therefore, most everyone in power is ignorant of what America used to be or what made it great or even if it was ever great to begin with. What used to be nationally understood definitions of good and evil have been erased from the public mind.
Everyone used to know and understand the U.S. Constitution, how it applied, why it's important, why our leaders must always abide by it, how WE THE PEOPLE (not the government) are those who enforce it, and how by limiting our government's authority to what is defined by our Constitution, we are able to keep ourselves free. But today, if you were to tell someone that a particular ruling or law isn't constitutional, you might get a shoulder shrug, a so-what, or a who-cares. What a tragedy!
The Constitution is from WE THE PEOPLE and addressed TO THE GOVERNMENT, not the other way around. The American Christians of 1776 didn't want the government coming between them and their faith, or between them and their influence upon their society. Therefore, preventative measures were outlined in the Constitution to keep the government from overstepping it's authority. Today's Christians have all but forgotten what those measures are. Most of them have been brainwashed into believing a revisionist, secular view of the Constitution which keeps Christians disengaged and out of the way.
In the following video excerpt recorded in 2010, Chuck Missler was wrapping up his commentary on the book of Hosea in which Hosea the Prophet spent 14 chapters explaining to the Northern Kingdom what God was about to do in judgment against them if they did not repent as a nation. Since the Northern Kingdom did not repent, Missler brings up a pretty good question. In Isaiah 55:11, God declared that "His Word would not return void but accomplish that which he pleased." If that's true, then what was accomplished by the book of Hosea since the Northern Kingdom didn't repent? Could it be that God intended for His Word through Hosea to accomplish repentance in future nations that needed to repent? Like... the United States?
The above video from Chuck Missler's expositional commentary on the book of Hosea was published about the same time 2nd Chronicles 7:14 started popping up all over the place on billboards, on bumper stickers and on yard signs in people's yards. What escalated this phenomenon in 2010 was the sudden and drastic realization that an ancient evil which everyone used to know and understand, an ancient evil which many had believed to be defeated and gone forever, was being resurrected and placed into power right under our noses by unwitting accomplices of an electorate stripped of all truth and apparently prevented somehow from even receiving it. Something dark and spiritual was preventing sound wisdom from getting into the hearts and minds of the electorate so that by 2009 and prevailing in 2010, the ancient and well established evil had aggressively taken power in the highest office of the land with nothing and no one to stand in it's way. This ancient evil was classic socialism.
Don't be distracted by partisan allegiances. This is not a Republican vs Democrat argument. Both Democrats and Republicans used to be united against socialism because they both knew what it was. But it would seem that a socialist agenda from foreign shores has managed to slowly infiltrate our entertainment, our schools, our courts, our churches and finally our political systems over such a slow and gradual process of implementation that we hardly noticed it until it was too late. After more than 50 years of "re-education" and re-programming of the masses, it's become almost impossible to warn anyone who has been deceived by the socialist agenda.
Everyone used to know and understand what socialism was: how it worked; why it's dangerous; why leaders of government often promote it; how they use various tactics of deception to get voters to buy into it; what those tactical methods are; how they always target the needs of the poor, the anger of the rejected, the naivety of the young and the ignorance of the uninformed to gain power; and how it ALWAYS turns a free people into a slave nation via the voluntary surrender of personal freedoms in exchange for government-supplied security, food, shelter, or healthcare. It's an ancient, classic and deceptive system of tyranny that everyone in the United States used to be protected from and well informed about because it has always followed a classic pattern in order to gain power. We knew what that pattern was and we never thought it would happen here. But we should have known because that classic pattern always starts with the removal of God from the culture. We should have known. The few who DID know were outnumbered in 2008 and now if you were to tell most anyone that a politician was a socialist or promoting socialism, you might get a shoulder shrug or worse, a smirk. Because you see, "Socialism is a stupid word that old farts, rednecks, religious nuts, racists and homophobes use to define progressivism" according to the current propaganda machine.
The economic, social, historic and Biblical ignorance of today's American population is staggering!! Many of these people are now in positions of authority, making all of the life-changing decisions for the rest of us. They go to the polls every election cycle and vote according to the craving of their belly rather than the discernment of godly wisdom. They go to our schools to teach our kids everything but the truth. They go to the courts to defend the wicked while prosecuting and judging the righteous. They go to many of our churches to teach their congregations everything EXCEPT THE BIBLE. They go to the Supreme Court to manipulate and rewrite law to fit according to their base desires with no allegiance whatsoever to the Constitution or to the truth. They go to Hollywood to produce movies and TV shows to teach the rest of the nation what's socially acceptable (according to them) and what's socially unacceptable and wicked (according to them), with messages and deceitful tactics so satanic and stealth that most Christians have no idea how infiltrated their own home probably is of witchcraft and ancient paganism in the name of art and entertainment.
By 2010, many Christians finally began to realize what Paul had been saying all along in Ephesians 6:12: our problem is spiritual wickedness in high places and therefore requires a Spiritual solution. Therefore, several campaigns were launched in 2010 to take 2nd Chronicles 7:14 seriously and multiple ministries began promoting serious prayer commitments, focused on the spiritual welfare of this nation. On Independence Day 2010, I saw the following sermon on television from Charles Stanley. I had heard many a sermon from Charles Stanley throughout the years, but never one like this! Messages like this are what inspired the "Prayer: America's Only Hope ~ 2nd Chronicles 7:14" signs that have been placed on bumper stickers and yard signs since 2010.
Many a Christian since 2010 has committed themselves to prayer for our nation, joining in these prayer campaigns and placing yard signs in their lawns publicly declaring their allegiance to God and to prayer. But unfortunately in the past 5 years, things have only gone from bad to worse. Since Dr. Stanley's sermon, we've gone through 3 election cycles and nothing has stopped the tide in which he spoke. The spiritual and economic ideas of socialism have increasingly become law. Individual judges within the Supreme Court have overruled and overthrown the U.S. Constitution with multiple rulings.
The cost of everything has gone up, unemployment is rampant, the quality of healthcare has decreased immensely as the cost of it has sky-rocketed, employees of low wage jobs can't afford the cost of their healthcare benefits so that they can't afford to go to work. It's actually cheaper to be unemployed than to be employed!
There have been several riots and school shootings, earthquakes, droughts, wildfires and floods.
In 2015, the Supreme Court declared state's bans on gay marriage to be unconstitutional, forcing the legalization of gay marriage in all 50 states. Individual Christians who've chosen not to participate have been thrown in jail while militants have knocked on church doors saying, "Your next!"
Several cities across the land have publicly and officially endorsed the worship of Satan by lifting up statues in honor of Lucifer and Satanism in public government places, mocking America's freedom of religion.
Our government for the first time in our history, recently garnered a nuclear deal with Israel's enemies while refusing Israel's leaders to have anything to do with the talks. We're giving Israel's enemies everything they want and we've even threatened Israel that WE WILL OPPOSE THEM if they attempt to do anything to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities. No time in our history has America turned it's back on Israel like we have in recent months.
Then, as if killing the unborn isn't horrible enough, it's been uncovered that the killers are carefully carving out the body parts to sell on the black market. Victor Frankenstein had nothing on Planned Parenthood. This is no different than what the Nazi's did to the Jews who were tortured and experimented upon for the Nazi's so-called research. What's worse is that there is very little outrage. The release of this new grizzly information about what's going on at Planned Parenthood hasn't altered any positions for those who are pro-abortion. The most physically dangerous place in all the world for an American to be is inside his mother's womb. One in four pregnancies end in infanticide. This is our nation's holocaust. We often gasp when someone mentions the 6 million Jews who were slaughtered under Hitler's Germany. That's nothing compared to the 60+ million that have been slaughtered inside their mother's womb in the United States of America since 1973.
This is the United States of 2015. God has not yet healed our land and things have spiritually gone from bad to worse. Why?
If God hasn't healed our land as He promised in 2nd Chronicles 7:14, then it can only be because His people which are called by His name, have failed to meet the conditions of the promise. That's the only answer. What are those conditions? Let's re-examine them closely.
"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."
If my people, which are called by my name...God is addressing those who choose to publicly affiliate themselves with His Name. In 2nd Chronicles, He was addressing His chosen people, the nation of Israel. In our context, those who are called by His Name would be those who claim to be Christian, named after Jesus Christ; those who are called by His Name.
shall humble themselves...I know way too many publicly professed Christians who don't have a problem with Planned Parenthood, who don't have a problem with the legalization of gay marriage, who don't have a problem with an anti-Christian government but would rather fight Charles Stanley for daring to preach the sermon he just preached. Their problem isn't with Charles Stanley as they might think, their problem is with the truth. Instead of humbling themselves before God after being convicted by the truth, they took to Facebook and Twitter to express their anger at Dr. Stanley. I remember it well. For many Christians, free healthcare is more important than the truth. For many Christians, their political party is more important than the truth. For many Christians, a president that reflects their ethnicity is more important than the truth. Many of these types of Christians can't see beyond the failure of their choices. Their pride won't let them. They've latched onto Jesus as Savior, but won't accept Him as Lord. I personally know some Christians who from this sermon onward never listened to Stanley again because of what he said in this sermon.
The 1st requirement to growing in your relationship with the Lord is to get over yourself. The Biblical lingo for this is "humbling yourself before God" but basically all that means, is to say, "God, you have the right to tell me I'm wrong about whatever you want." Too many of us try to grow in our relationship with the Lord with all kinds of limits to what we're going to agree with and how things are going to be. The audacity of our hand-on-the-hip, finger-wagging attitudes towards God while simultaneously presuming we have a healthy relationship with Him is laughable at best, and shameful at worst. Either way, it does not meet the 2nd Chronicles 7:14 requirement of humbling ourselves.
and pray...The most incredible and advantageous gift that God has ever given to His children is the privilege to pray with confidence and without fear. Prayer isn't some mystic ability that only the learned can perform, it is simply the ability to communicate with the God of the universe at the most basic of all levels. If you know how to talk over a telephone, then you know how to pray to God. Prayer isn't an incantation which prompts God to move the way we want, but rather, it's a live conversation of both speaking and listening to a God who desires to build a relationship with us. When we get alone with God somewhere and be still, God will speak to our heart. The last thing Satan wants is a Christian praying because that's when things get real. But prayer won't work without first humbling ourselves as already mentioned. Without humility, prayer is just a bunch of noise.
and seek my face...This is where I think a lot of us mess up. If we're not careful, all of us will tend to turn our relationship with God into a religious ritual. God isn't interested in a ritual, He wants us to experience the awareness of His presence, find out what He wants in regard to whatever He wants to talk about, and for us to get all of this straight from Him in such a way that we know that we've heard from Him and no one else.
Notice the passage doesn't just say, "Seek God" but "Seek My Face" as in "Get in My Face". This is an aggressive search for an awareness of God's presence and an awareness of His infinite, penetrating attention toward you personally. We know it's real according to the Scripture, but seeking His face means finding out what that's like by experience. You can't experience this just by squeezing God in on Sundays and Wednesdays. THAT IS NOT SEEKING GOD'S FACE.
It's amazing to me what we will put in place of spending time with God alone in prayer and meditating on His Word. We'll watch every episode of 10 seasons of this TV show, then 9 seasons of that TV show, then 8 seasons of that other TV show in less than a year before we'll spend just one single hour reading anything from the Word of God. Satan's got us so addicted to our modern-day idols that the Bible just keeps sitting on the shelf collecting dust. Oh sure, we've hammered our "2nd Chronicles 7:14" signs in our yard and thumbed-up all the posts of Christian patriotism we find at Facebook, but we won't do what it takes to personally seek God's face.
and turn from their wicked ways...This is where I believe most all of us are failing. After I first watched Dr. Stanley's sermon in July of 2010, I began praying every single morning while reading the Word of God and praying for this nation as I believe most Christians did at that time. But something happened to me every time I read 2nd Chronicles 7:14 before praying for the nation. I began to realize that I had some things in my own life that God wanted to deal with. And the more I tried to ignore those things, the more I found myself not being able to pray for the nation. Then I realized, that's the whole point of 2nd Chronicles 7:14.
If I want God to remove corrupt judges from our courts who are outlawing righteousness and enforcing wickedness, then I must first allow God to remove the corruption in my own judgments that usurps my own will over God's Will. This isn't easy to do, but that's where humility comes into play. We have to acknowledge that God is right and we're wrong and confess whatever those things are and begin to lay them down. That's what it means to "turn from our wicked ways." Too many of us Christians want the rest of the nation to turn from it's wicked ways without us privately turning from ours. But that's not the way God wants it.
Want God to stop abortions in our nation, then guys, quit looking at porn. Human wisdom says one has nothing to do with the other but the Wisdom of God in 2nd Chronicles 7:14 says that if you will turn from YOUR wicked ways, then God will heal your land of it's wicked ways. Quit privately rationalizing it away. Lay it down.
Do you want God to stop the government from confiscating everyone's income and spending it on things that go against your faith? Then you need to quit blowing $100 a month on lottery tickets to get rich or anything else you know in your heart that you shouldn't be investing money which God has given to you.
Before God will fix our nation, we've got to let God go to work on us and have His way. If we do that, then and only then...
...then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.I personally don't know how big the number of Christians who follow through with 2nd Chronicles 7:14 has to be before God acts. I'm sure some believers in Hosea's day did repent and they were saved, but most did not and the Northern Kingdom was overthrown. Many believers in Israel repented and became followers of Christ in the first century, but the majority did not. The followers of Christ were saved but the land of Israel fell in 70 A.D. as prophesied by the Lord Himself during His ministry.
Bill Salus (like Chuck Missler) thinks it's too late for America. We may have to throw away our 2nd Chronicles 7:14 signs and replace them with Hosea 4:6 and Jeremiah 7:16.
While many good Christians share our views written out in this post, most Christians in America do not. Most Christians in America today would rather focus on individual issues of personal and emotional importance rather than worrying about which direction the nation is going or whether or not God has something to say about it.
When I think of what makes up a lot of the so-called Christian body of America, those agreeing with the Supreme Court in 1963 which extracted God from public society, those agreeing with the Supreme Court in 1973 which began the American Holocaust against the unborn, those agreeing with the Supreme Court in 2015 which outlawed Christian opposition to gay marriage, who then turn around and go to church every Sunday, singing songs of worship, praying for God to watch over their families, their futures, asking Him to provide for them and meet their needs... I think of God's response in Isaiah 1:12-15:
"When you come to appear before Me, who requires of you that your unholy feet trample My courts? Bring no more offerings of vanity; your hollow offering is an abomination to Me; the Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot endure. I hate your festivals and hypocritical feasts and solemn meetings. They are an oppressive burden to Me; I am weary of bearing them. And when you spread forth your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. Yes, when you make many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood."
Warnings such as these were written to inspire conviction and repentance. If American Christians continue on the course we've been taking without humility, without prayer, without seeking His face, and without turning from our wicked ways, then don't expect anything to change any time soon.
But if we HAVE implemented 2nd Chronicles 7:14 AND WILL CONTINUE to humble ourselves, if we continue to pray, if we continue to seek His face AND TURN FROM OUR WICKED WAYS, then there will always be hope that God is working behind the scenes to build up an awakening for National Repentance & Spiritual Revival. If Nineveh could humble themselves, pray, seek God's face and turn from their wicked ways, then so can the United States. It hasn't happened yet, but it could.
This is not a physical battle, it's a spiritual battle. It must be waged using spiritual weapons because if we should ever begin to see evidence that a Spiritual awakening is dawning, then expect to see with it all the powers of Hell rising to fight to keep the ground they've gained over the past 50+ years.
