Page 2 - Good News September 2005 paper

IF MY PEOPLE …
IF MY PEOPLE …

“IF MY PEOPLE WHO ARE CALLED BY MY NAME gave him Scotland through sending over the land
will HUMBLE themselves, and PRAY and SEEK My what is known as the Presbyterian Revival.
face, and TURN from their wicked ways, then I will In the third place we have to seek God’s face. This is
hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal more than just praying. It means that we actually
their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14). come face to face with the Lord. God wants us to get
It should be clear from this Scripture how crucial the away from praying our own thing, and come to the
Church’s role is for the destiny of the nations. point where we can be fully available for the burdens
God promises that He will bring healing to the land, of the Holy Spirit.
IF His people will fulfil their calling and play their Seeking God’s face is not so much taking our
role. It is an amazing thought that there is a concerns to the Lord as it is learning to listen to what
possibility for our nations to experience the healing is upon His heart. It is the experience of many that we
power of God, and how we need that power among can be seeking God for a long time and wonder why
the nations today! we never find Him. The reason is that we seek Him
God has set up four requirements for His people to according to our mindset and tradition instead of
fulfil before He can come and heal the land. It is seeking Him according to His way!
important for us to observe that there are four, not We must learn to lay down all of our own self and
one! come before God with empty hands ready to hear
The first one is: humble yourselves! What would it His voice and do His will. That is what it means to
profit if we prayed and prayed and prayed, and God seek God’s face, and that kind of consecration and
did not listen to us? Unless we know how to humble availability is a requirement if we are going to see
ourselves before God, we can forget about being God heal our land!
heard in heaven. The fourth requirement speaks about repentance:
Remember the parable Jesus spoke about the Turn away from your wicked ways. God requires
Pharisee and the tax collector? The Lord did not true repentance as a prerequisite for the healing of
listen to the Pharisee. All his boasting and self- the land. It is my experience that believers do not
righteous prayers were totally ignored by God, fully understand what repentance is. We often
because his heart was full of pride. But the tax confuse it with forgiveness, but asking forgiveness
collector, who humbled himself before God, went and receiving it, is
home justified! not the same as
If there is anything God despises it is pride! “God repentance.
resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble”
(1 Peter 5:5). If therefore, we have pride in
our hearts, we have turned God into
our enemy and He will be resisting
us all the way. Without learning to
humble ourselves and to live in
humility, we shall never be able to
l a y
hold of the grace of God! Repentance requires more than
The second requirement is that. It requires that we change
prayer. There has never been a our way radically and stop doing
national revival anywhere in the the same thing anymore. That is
world at any time in history that the real meaning of the word
was not generated through ‘repent’: to change your direction!
prayer, and I mean real prayer: To confess a sin, ask for
massive, united and persevering forgiveness and receive it, is
prayer by a hungry and desperate something we can do over and
Church! We need to ask God to do over again, but that does not
great things for our nation mean that we have repented of it.
because He is a great God, worthy Unless we change our direction
of great petitions and well able to completely and turn our backs on
give us exceedingly far above our wicked ways, we have not
what we ask or even think! repented in the true, biblical
It is time for us to make concrete sense of that word. And until we
requests to God for our nation. turn from our wicked ways we can
Like the Scottish reformer, John not make a way for the Lord to
Knox, who came before God in a come and heal our land!
time of great need for Scotland [Extracts from:
and prayed: ‘Lord, give me The Powerhouse of God -
Scotland or I die!’ God honoured Johannes Facius,
this faithful man of prayer and Sovereign World, 1995]