[This Reflection was published in the weekly news bulletin of Horley Baptist Church, 05/Apr/2020]
Below is an excerpt from an online post that spoke to me this week …
“If My people will
1) HUMBLE THEMSELVES AND PRAY,
2) SEEK MY FACE AND
3) TURN FROM THEIR WICKED WAYS”
God promises to heal the land. (2 Chronicles 7:14)‘That tells me we can be out of sync with God in three ways, we may seek and pray but if we don’t TURN, we still haven’t got the message. My growing view and I’m not enjoying it, is that REPENTANCE, turning, is a key issue here in our present situation. We’re praying all right, but turning? The church has the key to this, not the unbeliever.
What if we are in a desperate state before Him, made worse by the fact that we think “we are all right, it’s the others”; what if we cannot see ourselves naked like the King who was in His altogether? What if we are stone deaf to the Holy Spirit? Yes, we are positionally ‘in Christ’, yes, we are the beloved of God. BUT, what if we are immature in the WAYS of God and we have some growing to do – fast.What if it’s back to basics? What if every Christian asked the Lord to show them where they needed to repent, to turn away from what He didn’t like in their lives – their wicked ways, and sincerely asked how to get into alignment with HIM? Regular confession: keeping short accounts with Him. What if the cumulative effect of unconfessed sin is like one vast landfill site stinking to heaven? Graphic but that’s the picture I got…unconfessed sin, is sin that is unforgiven. He’s not obsessed with it, but it needs acknowledgement and cleansing – it’s the only way we grow beloved. Finding out where we don’t fit with Him, where we are out of sync…could shake us out of our complacency.’
— Beryl Moore, Bible Teacher and Visionary, Sovereign Ministries.
Why did the post speak to me? I think it was the words “My people…” that stood out. This verse is directed at those already in Christ, but I wonder if we sometimes interpret it as “If the world will humble itself and pray, and turn from its wicked ways”. I shared the above with some prayer friends, and below is how one of them responded. He has given me permission to share his response here:
“Lesley, I was thinking about that very passage yesterday, and how it’s hard not to see this situation as punishment/correction. Of course, my main focus was on businessmen, politicians, and basically everyone who doesn’t think like me. So it’s a huge wake up call to read this and remember, it starts with me – I need to humble myself before God again, and ask him to show me where I need to take a log out of my own eye. So, in such a rationalistic age, perhaps even a miraculous end to the virus would soon be explained away. But a changed Christian community might cause more pause for thought. And seeing as we are all scattered servants now, if we allow God to change and remould us in the light of what’s happening, we can let our lights shine to a better way of being.”
So what is my response, your response? I like to think of it like gardening. When I regularly weed my garden, it thrives and the beauty of the good things in it, shine through. But when I leave the weeds to take hold, they choke everything around them, and the garden looks uncared-for, messy, struggling. Can we all ask God each day to show us what needs digging out, so that our lives, our witness, our relationships, our church, our service are a wonderful array of colour and beauty that transforms the world around us?
~~~~~~~~
.
Return to weekly Reflections
Jump to Index of Bible Passages
Contributed by Lesley Edwards; © the Author
