Lord, Hear from Heaven

2 Chronicles 7:14

“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 heal their land.”

This is the passage for the beginning of our 40 days of fasting and prayer for “ReviveOhio-AuglaizeCounty.”  God seems to be using this revival emphasis to bring many souls to Jesus, almost 500 in DarkCountyso far.  I certainly want to experience that kind of out-pouring of God’s spirit in our county and in our church.  Asking myself the question, as I studied the passage this morning, “What is keeping us from meeting these conditions, so God can forgive us and bring revival to America? “ Truthfully, I am asking what is keeping Hillsdale from meeting these conditions?

I fear we are not really praying.  God reminded me of that when I received a prayer call from the Church yesterday.  I heard the request, thought for a moment about who she is, then went on about my work.  God said, “You didn’t pray.”  I stopped and begin to pray. I realized we are hearing many requests for prayer, or are promising friends that we will pray for them, but then hurrying on with our life without actually praying for them.  It is not that God is not answering our prayers, we are not stopping to pray.

I fear we are not seeking God’s face, that is, searching for His will, what He wants to do and wants us to do.  We are not seeking His blessings, nor what we must do to receive His blessings. We are glad to get them, but we do not actually seek them. We are certainly not seeking that kind of personal intimate relationship with Him.  It’s a “church thing” and the rest of the week is our life, lived our way, unless we need Him for something special.

Of course, we admit to no wicked ways.  We rarely stop to consider if God sees any wicked ways in us.  Since we are “as-good-as” most other Christians, we suppose God is as pleased with us as we are of ourselves.

Then I began to realize that the real problem is PRIDE.  We truly struggle with being humble, especially of humbling ourselves.  That makes it a responsibility, and not a condition of life that is because we are a Christian.  The word is offensive.  It means low-lying, lowly, cast down, of low degree.  But we are Christians.  We are better than . . .   Oops!   Our pride is showing.  Somehow we have come to see being humble as “being spiritual”as in doing spiritual and religious stuff.  We do not see it as an attitude toward self, and certainly not something we would intentionally do.  We want to feel good about ourselves, to “keep our head up” and not “esteem other better than” ourselves (Phil. 2:3). 

However, look carefully at that verse, “Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory (pride), but in lowliness of mind (humility) let each esteem other better than themselves.”  Pride means haughtiness, arrogance, vainglory.  One of the Greek words translated “to boast” combines two concepts, “great things” and “to lift up the neck.”  In other places it is translated as “high minded.”  Sounds ugly doesn’t it.  - - If we could only humble ourselves.