There has been a message that God has been burning in my heart. This is a message for the Church or body of Christ. There is a movement out there right now to repent for the deeds and sins of the Church. It is great to repent, but also it must be heartfelt and not just a wonderful time hearing speakers and going through the motions and never changing.
True repentance takes action. Repentance with no action is just saying you are sorry. When we repent to the Lord and ask for forgiveness there needs to be change. We can no longer stand to live like the world and say we are a Christian in the same breath. Living like the world will only bring destruction, and we will not grow in the ways of the Lord. God wants us to be so focused on Him that we be life-changers to those trapped living in this world.
Many use the scripture found in 2 Chronicles 7:14 that says,
“And 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, will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
I will come back to this passage of scripture because there are things in it that are key to bring healing that many are missing.
When we look at 2 Chronicles 7:11-22, we see it is about God’s promise and blessings to King Solomon who finished the temple and completed it the way the Lord wanted it.
The Lord appeared to Solomon at night and told him the following in verses 12-13, “I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for Myself as a house of sacrifice. 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,” and then the Lord follows with verse 14, “And 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, will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
God is telling Solomon if the people start acting like their old selves then He would do things in order to bring repentance. If they saw the warnings and repented, then God would once again hear the prayers made from the temple. However, we see in verses 19-22 what would happen if they walked away and turned from the statutes that God had created. God said He would uproot them. He was giving them a warning that if they did not repent and turn away that they would be uprooted from the land and God would leave the temple. Why this warning? Because the children of Israel had a history of worshipping idols and turning their back to God when times were good and then would cry out and repent when times were bad.
God wanted the children of Israel to be so focused on Him that they would not go back to their old lifestyles. He wanted intimacy and relationship with His people, but He said if you keep doing what you’re doing, then I will leave, and you will be uprooted from this land.
God always gives us a chance to repent before removing the hedge of protection from around us. We can’t live in the world and as a Christian at the same time. We see in Revelations 2 that God told the church of Ephesus that they were testing every apostle and finding those that were false, and that they were against the deeds of the Nicolaitans. The Nicolaitans followed the teachings of Nicolas of Antioch. He was in the occult, converted to Judaism, and then converted to Christianity. His mindset was that there was no separation between the occult and Christianity, and you could practice the occult, Jewish traditions, and Christianity at the same time. He allowed the occult to operate in a Christian church. This was false doctrine.
The Nicolaitans were living in sexual immorality and did whatever they wanted to do. When I read this, it reminded me of some of the church today and the hyper-grace movement where it doesn’t matter what you do because you have been saved by grace, and grace will cover your sins. As long as you are happy doing what you are doing then God is happy with you. This is such rubbish, and so false. We should never release false doctrine from the pulpit. We see that the church of Ephesus lost its first love. This is the church today. (That is another topic for another day.)
Let us look back at 2 Chronicles 7:14. It says, “and My people who are called by My name.” This should grab our attention. If you are a believer, then this is talking to you. This is not just for your pastor or church leadership; this is for every believer.
Let’s see what it tells us to do. It says we need to humble ourselves, pray, and seek the face of God, and turn from our wicked ways. Then God will hear our prayers and forgive us our sins and heal our land.
So again, God wants us to humble ourselves, pray and seek His face, and turn from our wicked ways. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? This is something that takes action on our part. It is something that we as individuals, congregations, and the body of Christ as a whole must do.
We have allowed pride to enter into our lives and pulpits., we would rather curse and speak ill about others that God is moving through (pride) instead of praising God for using them (humility). We have gotten to a place of a mindset of, “What can I do to get praise? What can I do to fill my church?” We expect, “If God is going to move, He will move at our church first.” We have a hard time when God instead moves in the church down the street. We have to remember when we partner and allow pride to move in our lives, then we are partnering with Leviathan, which is a principality and the god of pride. Humility requires us to take action. We are to take captive the thoughts of pride and instead speak in humility. We must uplift each other instead of cursing each other.
I am not saying we cannot speak out against unsound doctrine that will cause harm to the sheep rather than helping them grow. We have to speak out of a good heart instead of one tied to offense and bitterness.
The second thing we must do is pray and seek the face of God. This is intimacy. This is praise and worship and coming before the throne of grace to spend time with the Father. We can fight and war in the spirit, but if that is all we do then we are missing the wonderful presence and embrace of God.
Ecclesiastes 3 says, “There is an appointed time for everything.” So, there is a time for war and a time for peace and to be in the presence of God. God’s nature is love, and He wants to love us and be intimate with us. When all we are doing is engaging in spiritual warfare, then we are missing the intimacy with God. I have heard pastors say those that go after the presence of God are seeker-friendly churches. Churches are made fun of and ridiculed behind their backs, all because they are going after the presence of the Lord.
Well, I ask, are they seeing great moves of God? Don’t get me wrong, there has to be balance. The church that we were a part of in Minnesota had balance to it. We knew when it was time to war and we knew when it was time to soak in the presence of God. We saw many things happening which were amazing. So, don’t be afraid to go after the face of God. David was a man after God’s own heart, and he was a dancer, worshipper, and he rested in the shadow of the ark. He did it because He loved the presence of God and he didn’t care what it took to get there. It is time we seek the face of God in greater measures once again.
The third thing we must do is turn from our wicked ways. Turn means to stop doing it, stop walking into the same sin over and over again. We need to turn 180 degrees and walk away from the sin we have been committing. This isn’t just saying I repent for my actions but rather it requires we stop sinning. Grace is given to us to help us to stop sinning. It wasn’t given so we can sin and be automatically forgiven by God’s good grace. FALSE! Grace is to help us sin no more. Don’t abuse the grace of God.
We have allowed the junk of the world into our lives and our churches. We are speaking things from our pulpits that are contrary to the Word of God. Are we speaking one thing and living a completely different life? True repentance means we stop sinning and work on walking a holy, righteous, and redeemed life. We cannot allow sin to enter our lives and especially our pulpits. We need messages once again to bring forth conviction.
If we want revival, then we need walk out humility, prayer, intimacy with the Lord, and true repentance, and then we have the guarantee that God will hear us and will heal our land. That is revival in our lives, our families, and in our churches.
Revival can start with one person. Are you willing to be that one?
We need a change, and it requires us to be that change.
God bless you all,
Eric Schroeder
Great message!!!!!