Receiving the Power to Be
No Longer Defective and Powerless
No Longer Defective and Powerless
We Missed the Way, Why?
We have not been this way before, therefore many of us missed it. We missed the most important parts of 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 will I hear from heaven, forgive their sin and heal their land.
In the USA, few leaders taught us to humble ourselves or seek the face of God. The Israelites had a better idea of what this meant than we do. Or at least they had rituals that pointed the way. The modern Laodicean church is close to clueless about taking up our cross daily or dying to our will. We are more concerned about praying what we want and seeing God give us the outcome for which we prayed. “Turning from our wicked ways” is often superficial. When do we hear about giving ourselves and our will completely to Christ’s Lordship? Has anyone told you what it means to seek God’s face? Do those around you believe the correct politician, obeying certain rules, building ministries, or being vigilant about heretics is the way to God’s favor?
Look again and let us consider verse 13. God spoke this to Solomon at the dedication of the temple Solomon built.
13 “If I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among My people,”
This year the world experienced pestilence. In many nations locusts devoured and drought triumphed. In the USA we had an economic crash that rivaled the results of drought and locusts and we had pestilence. Yet when we prayed, we did not get the desired outcome.
When God speaks of humbling ourselves and seeking His face, we are not to ask for an outcome, we are to seek God for Himself. Would you like to see circumstances turn around? First, we need to learn the lessons He is teaching us. We want certain outcomes. We feel that our freedom is in danger without those outcomes. But what does He want? He wants our hearts and will withhold outcomes to get them. He tells us to turn from our wicked ways. What are those ways? One of them is praying only for an outcome when He tells us to humble ourselves and seek His face.
Many are disillusioned and afraid, but the Lord is saying our safety and supply of every good thing is in Him. We have never been this way before, and he desires to bring us into His glory. Ask Him today to show you your heart so you may repent of the lukewarmness that you can recognize in others but not in yourself. Then seek His face. This means intimate fellowship such as you have never known before. No more “well we have to start somewhere so give Him 10 minutes a day”. Seek Him to know Him as if your life depends on it because it does. This is not the time for quarter or half measures, as 2 Chronicles 7 shows us.
The time has come for laying down our lives in prayer for our own humility and repentance individually and as a church. The time is here to seek His face until He changes us and the nation, but especially us.
This is an instructional time. Only by Daddy holding back our desired answer with His demanding children will we learn who is really in charge. He said seek my face, and we thought He said seek an outcome. We must learn this lesson well and let our face-to-face encounter encourage us to continue to seek Him until we see the answer He wants for us, which will be far better than the outcomes we ask for ourselves.