“[I]f my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” (2 Chronicles 7:14)
The Church in America needs to wake up and smell the coffee! Our nation desperately needs healing, and this healing cannot come from our bitterly divided political institutions, our equally divisive news media, or our science and technology. Only the Lord can heal our land.
A video-recorded act of racially motivated police brutality on May 25 has caused a tragic death and both peaceful protests and destructive rioting in many of our cities, large and small. Do you think this is the last incident of emotionally charged injustice we will see nationally broadcast over social media?
A deadly pestilence called COVID-19 struck us several months ago and is still here. Over 100,000 people have died so far, many of them elderly and in isolation from their families, and we do not yet have a vaccine. Most of us may recover from the severe economic downturn, but many will not, and we have added trillions of dollars to an already excessive national debt. Given the mutability of these viruses and the recklessness of biochemical research in some nations, do we think this is the last deadly pestilence we will see? And when we use all or most of our “water” to put out the first “fire”, where will we find the water to put out the next one?
Our preoccupation with these two terrible problems can cause us to forget all of the other serious issues we were facing when these two arose, including immigration, drugs, pornography, unaffordable healthcare, sexism, pollution, radical political ideologies, radical gender definitions, and the fate of unborn children.
American Christianity has, like the Laodicean church, let the Internet, cell phones, sports, television, computer games, and our tickets to heaven lull most of us into thinking we are “still the greatest nation on earth” when in fact, we are riddled with sin and social sickness. (Revelation 3:14-19) But there is hope!
God can heal our land. If we pray, He can answer our prayers. But 2 Chronicles 7:14, much like the Lord’s Prayer, makes it clear our prayers will not be effective until certain conditions are met.
Condition #1 – The prayers to God must come from “His people”, the people called by His name. God wants to hear from Christians – His children who call Him “Father”. We are His chosen race and holy nation, assigned to witness and minister to this nation as His house of prayer and royal priesthood. (1 Peter 2:9; Isaiah 56:7) Yet our black churches and white evangelical churches, both bible-believing, are viewed today more as voting blocs than as servants of their King. We must remember who we are!
Condition #2 – We must shed our self-centeredness and humble ourselves before the Lord. We must remember who He is! The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, not the fear of public opinion. (Proverbs 9:10) He is the Creator and Judge of the universe: all-knowing, all-wise, all-powerful, all-present, all-loving, all-good and all-faithful. He has said He will heal our land if we do what He asks.
Condition #3 – We must repent of our wicked and compromising ways! Just as one example among many, racism is a deep, dark sin that violates both God’s revelation that all people are created in His image and God’s command that we love everyone He loves. Yet for centuries, the Church was part of the racism problem. Now we must be proactively part of the solution.
Our lack of agape love as the Church is a sin with more examples than I can list here, but I will ask how many times we have bypassed an inner-city area to avoid seeing, let along helping, the people who are hopelessly bound there in abject poverty. (Luke 10:25-37) Those people are many of our rioters today.
Condition #4 – We must seek God’s face, which means more than just seeking His blessing. (Psalm 24, 27) We seek what He wants, not what we want, so we can pray in His name and pray His will. (John 14:13-14; 1 John 5:14-15)
God hates racism. God hates injustice. He commands us to respect and pray for those in authority, including those in law enforcement: a hard and important job. But I believe God holds those who enforce and oversee the law to an even higher standard in obeying the laws they are called to uphold. (James 3:1)
God hates lawlessness, which includes riots and, ironically, sanctuary cities. (2 Corinthians 6:14)
In all we pray and do, we must hate what God hates just as we must love everyone God loves. (Amos 5:15)
Church, it is time to repent and pray!
God bless you, and God bless our community.