With the pandemic running wild and getting worse, what can we individually do to heal this world? Growing up, my sister and I sang a song that gives us the answer to that.
Nuggets
- It is only after we choose God that we become His people – the elect – the children of God.
- We are called to imitate God’s character — have compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forbearance, forgiveness, and love.
- There is a three-part process for coming to God for forgiveness: in humility, in prayer, and by seeking.
- We are told in Scriptures that God hears our prayers.
- Before God does anything else, He has to forgive the sin that brought the judgment in the first place.
- God will forgive, and God will heal.
The world has been hit by a huge plague for the last several months. People are hurting and dying. This week, two people in my church have tested positive for COVID.
If My People was one of my favorite songs that my sister and I sang growing up. (And, it was probably the hardest piano part that I could actually play.)
If My People
Vocalist: Elaine Guthals
Keyboard: Louise Guthals Weiss
It is based on a verse in the Bible — a verse we definitely need as a nation, as a world, to take to heart and do right now. Let’s look at it and the verse right before it.
“When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people. If 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. (II Chron. 7: 13-14 ESV)
Let’s break verse 14 apart and dissect it.
If My People
“You have been set apart as holy to the LORD your God, and he has chosen you from all the nations of the earth to be his own special treasure” (Deut. 14: 2 NLT)
We’ve talk a lot about what it means to be one of God’s My people. God created us and chose mankind to whom to show His love. After we disobeyed Him, He has provided His plan of salvation for all who will accept.
God brings the plan of salvation to everyone (I Tim. 2: 4). If we don’t choose God, we don’t get the gift of salvation. We aren’t His people.
But God still leaves us with free will. We still have to choose – daily – whether we are going to follow Him for our lifetime — or even that day — or not.
It is only after we choose God that we become His people – the elect – the children of God. We choose God and become children of God when we asked Jesus to become our Lord and Savior (Jn. 1: 12). Our faith makes us heirs of God (Gal. 3: 26). Our inheritance is a reward for doing God’s Will.
The defining aspect of being God’s elect is we are all to be holy. Holy means to be set apart, perfect, and pure.
God chose us because He loves us. He didn’t choose us because of anything we did or didn’t do with regard to His laws and commandments.
He chose us because we chose to submit to Him. He adopted us because we put our lives into His hand.
Glossary
Which Are Called by My Name
“everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made” (Isa. 43: 7 NIV)
God’s people bear His name. “So that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations that bear my name – this is the declaration of the LORD; he will do this” (Amos 9: 12 CSB).
The Jews put great stock in a name. It identified some aspect of the person’s character.
God has lots of names.
And these are just some of them.
We are called to imitate God’s character. We are called to have compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forbearance, forgiveness, and love.
To read a related devotion, click the appropriate button below.
Glossary
We become His people by working to change our character to be like His. We do that by having a relationship with Him.
Shall Humble Themselves
“Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up in honor” (Jas. 4: 10 NLT)
There is a three-part process for coming to God for forgiveness: in humility, in prayer, and by seeking.
Yes, we are back to humility. Humility is a character trait stressing dependence on God and a modest view our importance with respect to others.
But we’ve normally just talked about personal humility. What Second Chronicles 7: 14 is talking about is national humility.
When all are part of the illness, all have to be part of the cure. Raymond wrote, “NATIONAL TROUBLE SHOULD CAUSE A PEOPLE TO CONSIDER THEIR WAYS, and to seriously reflect upon their national sins.”
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We can’t overlook why humility is needed. People have sinned. Sin is actions by humans that disobey God and break one of His laws and commandments, goes against a purpose He has for us, or follows Satan’s promptings.
Winters called humility a state of mind. We find this humility when we look at God and see what we are not.
We look and see we have reason to be humble. We look at God’s purity — and see our impurity. We see His perfection — and see why we need to ask forgiveness from God.
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God has to see that we are contrite and sorry for the sins we have committed. But be careful. This has to be a genuine sorrow. It can’t be a we’re-only-sorry-because-we-got-caught type of sorry. Or a we’re-only-sorry-so-You-will-take-this-away type.
Reynolds said that we have to have a godly sorrow. That is one that “… sets the soul God-ward.”
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Pray
“And we are confident that he hears us whenever we ask for anything that pleases him” (I Jn. 5: 14 NLT)
Prayer is a two-way communication with God. It is how we start and grow our relationships with Him. Winters wrote, “Prayerfulness is one of the main characteristics of a godly life.”
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How do we pray? Humbly
What do we pray? Acknowledging
We talk to God through prayer, and He talks back through the Holy Spirit. We get to know Him by spending time with Him and communicating with Him. We communicate with Him through prayer.
We build that faith by spending time with God in prayer. To comprehend, we have to have knowledge. To have knowledge, we have to seek God – hear His Word, read it, study it, meditate on it, and memorize it. All through that, we need to be in prayer, asking God to provide the meaning.
Our prayers should be about praying to worship God. It is coming to Him as Sovereign God. It is through this fervent, frequent prayer that we grow. We do this when our prayers are focused on God, not on this world and our wants and needs.
Glossary
Seek My Face
“You have said, ‘Seek my face.’ My heart says to you, ‘Your face, LORD, do I seek’” (Ps. 27: 8 NIV)
Winters christened this passage a philosophy of revival. He wrote, “A revival implies religious declension, and is itself such a waking up of the spiritual life of the Church as leads to the conversion of sinners.”
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Was Winters correct!!! The verses that we’ve looked at haven’t pinpointed exactly what those sins were. There are some verses that give us a hint as to what the declension caused.
- He can withhold the rain (II Chron. 6: 26).
- He can send a famine in the land (II Chron. 6: 28).
- He can send pestilence, blight, mildew, locust or caterpillars (II Chron. 6: 28).
- He can have our enemies besiege us — or the modern-day equivalent (II Chron. 6: 28).
- He can send a plague (II Chron. 6: 28).
- He can send sickness (II Chron. 6: 28).
When these judgments happen, we should seek God. Remember, God wants the relationships. We are His children, not strangers. That is why we are told to seek His face.
We know how to seek God’s face.
Searching for and Seeking God
Hearing His Word (Rom. 10: 17).
Reading His Word (Rev. 1: 3).
Praying to Him (Heb. 4: 16).
Studying His Word (Ac. 17: 11).
Meditating on His Word (Ps. 1: 1-2).
Memorizing His Word (Ps. 119: 11).
Turn from Their Wicked Ways
“Come, let us return to the LORD; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up” (Hos. 6: 1 ESV)
Let’s chase a rabbit and look at Judas a second. Judas was the disciple who betrayed Jesus.
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The thing is that, after Jesus died on the cross, Judas got bit by the remorse bug. “Then Judas, his betrayer, seeing that Jesus had been condemned, was full of remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders. ‘I have sinned by betraying innocent blood,’ he said” (Mt. 27: 3-4 CSB).
Judas got some of the Rs right — regret, remorse. But he didn’t get to the Big R — repentance. Repentance is expressing sorrow for breaking God’s laws and commandments by making the commitment to changing ourselves through obedience so that we no longer do the wrong things.
Glossary
Giving back the thirty pieces of silver wasn’t enough. Living a life doing all the do’s and not doing the don’ts wouldn’t have been enough.
We must confess to God. “Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy” (Prov. 28: 13 ESV)
Confession takes humility. No where in the Scriptures does it say Judas prayed to God, asking for forgiveness.
Then we have to turn away from the sin. We can’t keep giving in to temptation. Being a child of God does not give us license to go on willfully sinning.
I Will Hear from Heaven
“But truly God has listened; he has attended to the voice of my prayer” (Ps. 66: 19 ESV)
We know God sees us. “The eyes of the Lord are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good” (Prov. 15: 3 ESV).
We are told in Scriptures that God hears our prayers.
- “We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly person who does his will” (Jn. 9: 31 NIV).
- “For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil” (I Pet. 3: 12 ESV).
- “And since we know he hears us when we make our requests, we also know that he will give us what we ask for” (I Jn. 5: 15 NLT).
- “You will call to me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart” (Jer. 29: 12-13 CSB).
I Will Forgive Their Sin
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (I Jn. 1: 9 ESV)
Before God does anything else, He has to forgive the sin that brought the judgment in the first place. It would be useless to allow the sin to go on unforgiven. We wouldn’t gain anything.
Yes, God is all about the sin. His priority is our spiritual condition.
God doesn’t want us to be spiritually dead. Spiritual death is the separation from God that occurred as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s original sin.
Glossary
Heal Their Land
“He forgives all my sins and heals all my diseases” (Ps. 103: 3 NLT)
God will forgive, and God will heal. As Matthew Henry said, “Pardoning mercy makes ways for healing mercy.”
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Raymond made a good point — and worldview people will probably argue this point. Whether people pray or not — whether they pray humbly and submissively or not — things will get better.
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But at what cost? They are looking at it through the lens of this world and it’s worldview.
Yes, this world will have pandemics — and then things will get better. There will be hurricane and floods — and then things will get better. We could go on and on.
But this world will one day go away. “… The earth and the heavens fled from his presence, and there was no place for them” (Rev. 20: 11 NIV).
The only way this world will be truly healed is when it is replaced with a new Heaven and a new earth – one where sin will no longer reign.
So, we ABCD. We pray. We obey. We submit.
The ABCDs of Salvation
If you have not become a believer in Christ, please read through the
Plan of Salvation and prayerfully consider what God is asking you to do.
A – admit our sins
B – believe His Son Jesus is our Redeemer
C – confess God as Sovereign Lord
D – demonstrate that commitment by making any changes needed in our lives to
live the way in which God has called us
The Disciple’s Job Description
What do you think?
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