Our church has experienced some exciting situations in the past week, and those experiences have led me to seek the Lord’s leading on what to preach. And because I’ve always strived to be responsive to the Holy Spirit, today’s message, you will find, does not share the title nor scripture of the one printed in your bulletin.
About ten days ago, we came together for a monthly ministry meeting, and the subject of the school came up, as it often does. There was, for the first time in my time here, real discussion about the school ministry. The main result out of that meeting was a newfound awareness of on the part of the church to search for the will of God through fervent prayer. After listening to the fine message by chaplain Pritt given last Sunday, and the words of those who felt led to speak before the congregation emphasize this need and reality even more. Then, just this past Wednesday, in our church council and deacons meetings, two themes prevailed through both discussions: prayer and revival.
Prayer and revival. Revival and prayer. Two sides to the same coin. Peanut butter and jelly. Macaroni and cheese. Bert and Ernie. Laurel and Hardy. We’ve been talking about prayer and revival for fifteen months here, and for all the talk that has been had, we’ve seen little in terms of prayer and even less in terms of revival. Oh yes, we’ve got the same 25 people showing up each week for our prayer meeting. And I thank God for that 25. And I absolutely believe God (can and) will do more with 25 people devoted to prayer than he will with a church of thousands going through the motions. So please do not hear me being critical to anyone who has made a commitment to being a prayer warrior for the kingdom. The problem we’re experiencing, in my observation is because we have confused the mechanics of prayer for the purpose of prayer. Too many of us seem to think just because we close our eyes and bow our heads and say a few words and wrap it up in a bow that says “In Jesus’ Name I pray,” then God is somehow bound by a magic spell to answer our prayer. This isn’t prayer, any more than my going into the capitol building and shouting “helloooo” to hear my echo is me addressing congress.
In this spirit, I believe God has given me a message today that we may be corrected on what God wants and expects from us if this church ever is to experience spiritual victory and the accomplishment of all that God has planned for this church. My prayer is that All of God’s people will hear His word and be convicted and encouraged wherever the Spirit reigns.
Today, I don’t have a fancy three point alliterated message for us. I only have one verse of Scripture that we will receive from the Holy Spirit and examine for understanding and submission. The scripture is this, found in 2 Chronicles 7:14:
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 heal their land.
The reason why the Lord has given me this verse, I believe is two-fold. First of all, I believe He has given this passage because it is one of the most popular scriptures in terms of all the “talk and rhetoric” of revival and prayer. Christians all over this church, all over this country will be quick to quote this scripture in the conversation that says, “we just need to be praying for revival.” Whenever this scripture is said, its almost always followed by “amens” and “that’s right” but I’m not so confident that it is often followed by actual prayer. So, let’s break it down and let the Lord speak to us, so that we may, as James says, be doers and not just hearers of the word, so that we will not deceive ourselves.
First off, God addresses the promise of 2 Chronicles 7:14 to “my people who are called by my name.” He is talking to us! We need to understand this – God is not waiting, as Richard Harris says, “for the pagan, mean, evil, depraved, ruthless, decadent lost sinners to come to him so he can heal the land.” He is waiting for His people. Those who are called according to His name. He is waiting for His bride, the church. God understands that it is the nature of people in darkness to behave darkly. It is the nature of man to be a sinner. It is the nature of one who is a slave to the world to behave the way their master dictates. But God has issued the clarion call, “my people, who are called by my name!”
How many of you here are Christians? Raise your hand. That word “Christian” is the name of God. It’s not your name. It’s His Name. Jesus is the Christ. If you are a Christian, then you are a follower of Christ. And if you are a child of God according to His name, then God is talking to you! He is waiting for us to get to a point where we can handle and receive God’s blessing. He’s waiting for us to become “bless-able.” But we’re not behaving that way. We are the children of God behaving like we are the sons of the adversary. We are children of light who prefer to live in spiritual darkness. We are children of truth, who choose to deal with lies and deception. We are children of the King who reject the prosperity of heaven for the poverty of the flesh. And as long as we conduct ourselves in this manner, we will not hear from God, and we will not receive the fulfillment of His promises of blessing.
And some of you here today will be quick to say that you’ve been forgiven for all your conduct and so you justify bad behavior incorrectly under the encompassing grace of God. And if you are tempted to make that mistake, I encourage you to hear the next words. God declares, “if you will humble yourselves.
And if He’s waiting for us, what is in the world is He waiting for? He’s waiting for us to humble ourselves! He says, “If you will humble yourselves….” He’s making it clear here that God’s people have a paramount need to humble ourselves. And if I ask “do you know what it means to humble yourselves?” I’m not being clever or mean spirited. I’m honestly asking, because some people do not have a clue what it means to be humble. They don’t know what it takes to move from a high and lofty estimation of one’s self, and to humbly lower themselves, so that they are thinking of themselves appropriately.
To humble ourselves mean to rid ourselves of pride. What does God say about pride? He refuses to answer prayer because of pride. It causes sinful words to fall from our mouths. Pride inevitably brings about shame. Its fruit is contention. It deceives. It generates violence. And most important, the Lord has set Himself in opposition to the proud. He hates it and will bring low those who are filled with pride.
As bad as pride is, you would think it would be so obvious to recognize. But pride thrives when cloaked as false humility. In fact, Paul sternly warns the Christians to not be defrauded of their reward by those who are guilty of false humility. And false humility is Satan’s tool to indulge the desires of the flesh using sweetly-worded but never-fulfilled motives. And the tactic is so effective because often, God’s people don’t want to look ‘mean’ by challenging or confronting something that sounds so good and nice. And when that occurs, sin dwells in the camp of the Lord, and the cause of the Kingdom suffers.
We must rid ourselves of pride. We must confess that our ways are sinful. We must declare – no way but God’s way! We must say, “I don’t care if I have to go back to ground zero, to step one, to ‘point A,’ I will humble myself and deny and reject and repent of anything that has come between me and my Savior Jesus Christ.
We also must rid ourselves of self-sufficiency. So many Christians, and dare I say, too many of us, are self-sufficient. We claim to want to glorify God, but only if we can do it for Him. We say we want to trust Jesus, but we hold on to our money and our time and our talents like they are non-renewable resources. Friends, this is just not possible. We bring no glory to God on our own. We bring nothing but our availability to the table when it comes to bringing Glory to God. Anything that we have in life we only have because He has given it to us, and we must therefore release our grip of death upon it or it just may turn around and choke the life right out of us! God brings glory to Himself, and He has ordained to use man to accomplish this. But He has no fellowship with the proud, He sets Himself against the proud in opposition, and He will glorify Himself at the expense of the proud if the proud will not humble themselves.
Then God says, “pray.” Again, we do such a good job talking about prayer. But too few are really doing it. We still have people who will show up faithfully for business meetings to make sure their vote is counted on a ministry where they’ve got a vested interest, but they won’t make the time to come pray with their church family the other three Wednesdays a week. We have people who are quick to decry the evils of this world and Satan’s seemingly firm grip on the things of this world, but would never dare to engage the enemy through fervent prayer.
Maybe we need to be reminded what prayer is. Prayer is nothing less than the vehicle that moves us from our will to God’s will. Prayer doesn’t inform God of our motives; it is to align us to His purpose. Praying is submitting oneself to God’s perfect will, no matter what His will provides. It means accepting God on His terms, not challenging Him to accept us on ours.
I tell you this, too. We must – must – cease offering prayers that the Lord cannot answer. When we ask God to bless people (namely ourselves) who are mired in sin, the Lord cannot answer that prayer. And if you want to counter, “the Lord can do anything,” I’d argue that the Lord cannot do anything that is in contradiction with His character and nature. He hates sin. He will not bless sin. He will judge it, though, and we are told to flee from His judgment, not ask for it! Furthermore, we can no longer ask God to bless ministries – any ministry – that has born fruit of dissention and animosity. He simply will not do it! And I tell you this – its not the ministry’s fault. It’s the people’s fault. Ministries – even ones that still manufacture good works – can lose the blessing of God when the pride of people leads that ministry to be operated in the flesh than in the Spirit. And God’s people cannot presume upon God that He is obliged to bless something that He left because He opposes the pride of those who are stewards over it.
On the heels of prayer, God says, “seek my face.” The only way we as Christians, our ministries, our church is pleasing in the sight of God is if we humbly, fervently seek His face. You cannot have a proud heart and see the face of God. You cannot entrench yourself and say, “we will not change, we will do it my way,” and expect to see God smiling upon you. Only by seeking His face can we see ourselves as we truly are. Only by catching the glimpse of the Father can we see the error of our ways. Flesh loves pride. Ego breeds the pharisaic ‘holier-than-thou” attitude. Only when we behold the countenance of our high, holy, perfect, pure Father God do we recognize the truth. This is who we are: sinners in need of forgiveness. Fallen people saved by grace. Redeemed believers who are called, commanded, and accountable to be ambassadors of Jesus to this lost and dying world.
God says we must turn from our wicked ways. He is calling us to repent. We must turn from our ways. They are wicked. Ways that attack our brothers and sisters in Christ are deplorable, disgusting, and wicked. We must turn from them! We must turn away from the words and deeds that destroy the fabric of unity of our church. We must turn from the ways that advance our own cause at the expense of the body. It doesn’t matter how much you support any person, any ministry, any cause. If you have said or done anything – ever – to damage this church, whether you intended to or not, you must repent!
And I say this, too. It doesn’t mean just saying “I’m sorry.” I’ve discovered that “I’m sorry” and and a $10 bill will buy you a small coffee at Starbucks, and leave the clerk thinking you felt bad you didn’t have a $20 for the next larger size. “I’m sorry” are two cheap, hollow, ineffectual words that do more harm than good if they are said in a spirit of repentance. Repentance is much more than just being sorry. It is true remorse that you have offended the other. You are only repentant if you are grieved in your spirit that something you said or did inflicted harm on another. Repentance means that not only are you full of regret, but you will be intentional about not inflicting further damage on that person again.
With this in mind, I say this – if you think you are a Christian just because you said “I’m sorry” to God, you may be full of false hope. The standard that God has set is repentance. Jesus said, “unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” You must turn from your wicked ways, you must forsake evil, and pursue the ways of God by the leading of His Holy Spirit.
If we do not turn from our wicked ways, we will experience two inevitable results. First of all, you’ll see that nothing will change. The ministries that struggle now will continue to struggle. The battle for commitment will continue to seem like a losing one. The peace, the joy, the fellowship – they’ll all continue to be tidal experiences, coming and going, rising and falling based upon the crowd you happen to be with at the moment. And if our church still refuses to turn from its wicked ways – individually and corporately – God will remove His hand of grace and provision from it completely. And if He ever does that, our church will join the cemetery of churches filling Florence that are alive but dead, open but closed, gathering but not communing. May we commit to not letting that become the destiny of our church. May we today establish a firm resolve to humble ourselves, to pray, to seek His face, and to turn from our wicked ways.
If we will do this today – God has given us this promise: “I will hear from heaven and I will heal their land.”
Oh, that we would grasp the beauty and majesty of this promise. He will hear our prayer. He will turn to face us. He will return to fellowship with us. He will revive our Spirits. He will restore us to prominence. He will heal our land. He will cure us. He will commune with us.
My heart’s cry for fifteen months has been that the Lord would hear our prayer. That he would end the infighting. That He would bind the enemy. That He would prosper our ministries. That He would grow His kingdom through us. That He would stir up the hearts of our men to be leaders. That He would pour His Living Water to quench the fires of contention. That He would heal our land. I believe in my heart that you want that, too. But we must humble ourselves. We must pray. We must seek His face. And we must turn from our wicked ways.
And we must be willing to spare no expense for this to occur. Today, I expect the Holy Spirit to move you from your pews. I have asked God, I have begged God to convict you of your hard-hearts. I have asked God to convict your spirits of apathy. I have implored God to reveal your actions and attitudes of pride. I’ve asked God to do these things not so one side or the other can say “AHA!” but so the congregation can say, “amen. Lord, hear our prayer!” God is eager to heal us. His Holy Spirit is aggressively moving today so that we can have renewed fellowship with Him. Today, this church must commit to undoing years – and I mean years – of evil, wicked ways – making it right with whomever has been harmed – no matter what the expense. What this church does today, individually and corporately, sets the agenda for its course of the future.
at home with the two older children, while Kelli is away in Nashville, I've learned a couple of things:
