2 Chronicles 7:14 Part 2: Prayer

Ok seriously, i never meant for this to become a series... but i decided to break it down to more bite-sized pieces for those who perhaps still read all this...

"pray"

Before we pray, we need to humble ourselves. Because true prayer is done out of a place of dependence. True prayer is a response to what God has already done by showing our degenerate condition and how much we actually need Him. Many times, we approach God and end up telling Him what to do and vomiting out a whole lot of stuff under the sun... while He may listen to them, how many of them actually touch His heart, let alone move His hand?

There is a humbling thought in prayer; that a holy transcendent God, should respond to the cries of man... even to the extent that we, people called by His name, should exercise the privilege of being His representatives on earth, administering His justice and divine will and bringing about His divine intervention in the affairs of man...

Prayer is not something we initiate; it's not something simply done void of God.. in fact, it is done as a response to God moving us. In fact, we cannot hope to move God unless we ourselves are first moved by Him. And He can't move us unless we humble ourselves.

In praying for revival, many times we become the very answers to what we ask for. We humble ourselves in that place of prayer and God uses that time of waiting upon Him to mold and shape us to be His vessels. Our own prayers mold us and shape us because they are our response to God moving us... as the clay responds to the hands of the Potter. In fact, God shapes us according to the very thing that God initiates in our heart, the very burdens that we carry before Him. If we do have a spark in our hearts that God initiates that we respond to Him in prayer because of it, it's because He wants to work that particular virtue/vision into us.. that we, becoming one with it, will be the very answer to our prayers, even by the life that we live- cos that is what we are- living sacrifices. The priesthood offered sacrifices, we offer our prayers- which are our sacrifices as we begin to live that prayer out.

It disgusts me everytime we reduce such a holy act of union and communion to a mere regurgitation of a shopping list. "God help me with my exams" "God do this and that... etc..." And God may oblige us just because He is good. But to remain like this in our prayer life reflects our lack of maturity. If we stagnate on such prayers void of God, it likely reflects the fact that we are not growing in true experiential knowledge of Him that is transformational and bears good fruit!

That's why it's important to check our own hearts and humble ourselves.. cos if don't, we simply start giving God orders... there's a difference between true prayer and giving God orders.. we would have reduced Him to an idol that we can control and manipulate, kept in a box.. and if He doesn't answer our prayers, or answers them not in a way we expect, then we'd get angry with Him...

and there are 2 extremes by which we abuse this privilege of prayer... the first is that we don't pray at all, because we don't see the need to, because we are so void of the life of Christ that there is not even a desire to go deeper... we don't pray because we are not humble enough to see our need for Him... the other way we abuse prayer is when we pray a whole lot of junk and make a whole lot of selfish requests.. and that consumes our lives and thoughts so much so that we miss out on the communion with Him and we miss out on doing the father's business, in stewarding His purposes upon the earth... and of the 2 extremes, i think the latter is worse, having taken a holy event and made it profane by the use of it... prayer without relationship is void, useless, legalistic, hypocritical, just an external exercise, a form of spirituality but no substance... a counterfeit... better no cosmetics at all than wearing cheap makeup! true relationship with God must change the way we pray! and humbling ourselves allows God to restructure our prayer-lives...

Prayer is done out of an attitude of dependence, from a place of humility, from a place of abiding... where the life of Christ flows and changes us... and God changes the way we pray.. and the way we live... and that prayer becomes answered in our living, not so much by our multitude of words... the disciples said "teach us how to pray" and Jesus then gave them a model prayer that descibed more how one should live than just a simple chain of requests and petitions... we need to have that same humble attitude as the disciples if we want to experience the depths and heights of encountering God in prayer!

God bless! :D

2 Chronicles 7:14 Part 1: Humbling Ourselves

I really find that writing helps me a lot to meditate on a verse and consolidate my thoughts... so i hope to chew on this verse as i write down my thoughts on it... tried "chewing" on it on my bed yesterday but ended up falling asleep... i guess this should be far more effective...

For those who would be willing to receive this into their spirits...

2 Chronicles 7:14 (New International Version)

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 and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

"will humble themselves"

It's interesting to note how God speaks- if He comes in to say "if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves", it certainly means one thing- that they're not humbling themselves! and why would that be so? considering the fact that we know that we are utterly helpless to have saved ourselves if not for the grace of God? what have we missed in the Christian walk that we have failed to see the desperate need that we have to abide in Him? We fail to see two things. Firstly, we fail to realize that not only are we saved by grace but we are also kept by grace. That means the maintainance of this whole Christian life and walk (which is by far impossible on our own and by our human standards) all depends on Him. And not living a humble walk is a reflection of our failure to abide. It is symptomatic of a much deeper problem that has other grave implications- if we fail to abide, by what power and substance are we living our lives? We dry out spiritually, we fall into sin, we find that our whole Christian walk becomes meaningless and we live below the standard that God has for us. The bottomline is that failure to humble ourselves reflects a descent into degeneracy of life. We become Christians just in name but not in substance, having a form but denying its power. We may be called by His Name... but is that all we have? A label void of the life of Christ?

The second problem is related to the first one. Failure to humble ourselves shows an incomplete conversion. We may know Christ in name but not in Person. Because if so we would be changed to become more like Him. And He humbled Himself to the ultimate, having left His throne in heaven to be born as a man, dying as a sinner but resurrected as Lord and Saviour. And we see this in our church in Singapore where people become Christians because of expediency- a free ticket into heaven? Failure to humble ourselves means receiving His grace but not allowing it to work fully in our lives until we are transformed by it.

And so if the goal of this verse is revival, we find that revival starts with an acknowledgement of our degenerate condition and our desperate need for Him. And even doing so will be a work of God in itself because how true it is that we are blind to our own condition until the Holy Spirit shows us! And when he does reveal it, then we are on our way to a true and lasting spiritual awakening... because it can only be His hand that moves us! People can manufacture emotional worship but only God can bring about true conviction of sin and conversion of character. Let us consider if we are merely people called by His name but yet to live His life.