If my people.....2

2Chron 7v14 ‘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, I will forgive their sin and heal their land.’

If my people…will pray, and seek my face
We return to this most important verse of Scripture.
There must be more than this
Is there more to life than this?
We have got so used to doing church in the way we do it, and have become so resigned to the church’s decline in size and influence in our society that we think nothing is ever going to change.

Well, I want to say something and I want to nail this down.
Nothing will change unless we do something. Evil triumphs when good men do nothing.
But if we get serious about our Christian Faith, and start to prioritise God’s Kingdom in our lives, then we will be opening the door to the love and power of God. And.. I am going to say to you with all boldness this morning… ‘Glory belongs to God, whose power is at work in us. By this power he can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine’. Eph 3v20
“No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love Him” (I Corinthians 2:9).
You ain’t seen nothing yet!

When things are in a mess…
This is the context of our verse.
When things are in a mess… ‘ 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.’
Do you need convincing that things are in a mess? Let me assure you that things are going to get a lot lot worse unless we, God’s people act.
It’s not up to ‘them’ to act, whoever ‘they’ are.
It’s up to us, the people called by His name, to act.
How?
By humbling ourselves. We talked about humility last morning service I was here,

By prayer,
We looked at that last Sunday night.
We pray to the Father,
through the Son,
by the Spirit,
against the devil,
with the saints,
in faith,
nothing wavering,
with persistence,
without ceasing,
using the Lord’s prayer,…

The third phrase is for today:
And seek my face. This is closely linked with prayer.
Let’s explore together some verses in the Bible.
First of all FACE. Seek my FACE.

In the Old Testament, Israel believed that to look upon God’s face meant instant death.
However, here’s a couple of verses:
Numbers 6:25
The Lord bless you and keep you: The Lord make His face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you: The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace.
Psalms 119:135
Make thy face to shine upon thy servant; and teach me thy statutes.

Do we want to seek His face?
How do you see God’s face when He looks upon you?
Oh that we would seek His wonderful, loving face. What blessing would be ours.

Let’s explore ‘SEEK’ in the Bible.
SEEK my face,….
Deuteronomy 4:29
But if from thence thou shalt seek the LORD thy God, thou shalt find him, if thou seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul.
Ezra 8:21
Then I proclaimed a fast there, at the river of Ahava, that we might afflict ourselves before our God, to seek of him a right way for us, and for our little ones...
Psalms 63:1
O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is;
Psalms 70:4
Let all those that seek thee rejoice and be glad in thee: and let such as love thy salvation say continually, Let God be magnified.
Isaiah 55:6
Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near:
Jeremiah 29:13
And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.
Hosea 10:12
break up your fallow ground: for it is time to seek the LORD, till he come and rain righteousness upon you.
Matt.6.33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
Heb.11.6 And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

Seek my face.
Believers must make time and space to fully and effectively encounter the God who is ‘more ready to hear than we to pray’.
Prayer at its highest is a two-way conversation.

Richard Foster says:
Prayer catapults us on to the frontier of the Christian life. Of all the Spiritual disciplines prayer is the most central because it ushers us into perpetual communion with the Father.

Jean de Chantal says:
…..spend the appointed time of prayer quietly and peacefully, doing nothing in God’s presence, content simply to be there.

O. Hallesby , in his great classic ‘Prayer’, begins the book by quoting Rev. 3:20, ‘Listen, I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me’. (NRSV)
To pray is to let Jesus come into our hearts…..
It is well known that it is more difficult to hold one’s breath than it is to breathe….The air which our souls need also envelops us at all times and on all sides. God is round about us in Christ on every hand, with His many-sided and all-sufficient grace. All we need to do is open our hearts.
All he needs is access. He enters in of His own accord, because He desires to come in. And He enters in wherever He is not denied admittance. As air enters in quietly when we breathe….so Jesus enters quietly into our hearts and does His blessed work there.

A modern contemplative uses the same metaphor:
….. words from a Lenten Hymn ‘while I breathe I pray’…….made this clear. I saw my life, looking back, as having a single common thread – the prayer that God has been praying in me even when I have not been praying. I cannot exist without prayer as the breath of my life.

The art of praying resides in slowing up sufficiently to be able to bathe in God’s warmth and light. Sunbathing…….And the central problem with that in our restless culture is the difficulty of turning up and staying there, in the sun.

So we see the need to discover this important area of prayer and in quiet contemplation experience the living Christ at work in our lives, making us more like Him. This is the filling, joy-imparting, sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit within.

Joyce Huggett describes her own experience of the work of the Holy Spirit, and her prayer life is transformed from incessant petition to a discovery of God’s inner presence:
…'.
I could no longer fight off the new surge of life with which He filled me. I have no words to describe what happened. I simply remember that I tingled with joy. The next day I was buoyant with this joy……I no longer felt hungry in prayer. I could not stop myself praying……But the nature of the prayer had changed. It ceased to be a string of requests, a tirade of questionings, beseeching and plaguings. Instead, the sense of the presence of God’s life within stunned me into silence. This awed silence gave birth to wordless praise. wordless adoration and wordless consecration of my life to Him. Silence. Wordlessness. This was what the monk had been describing to me. A fresh touch from God.
I believe this is the place to begin with our prayers.'

We cannot ‘live’ spiritually without prayer and worship. If we neglect these disciplines we shrivel up and die in spirit, we become worldly in outlook and self-centred, and our relationships suffer.

Serving Christ in the world and evangelism are essential but they are no substitute for prayer and worship, and we will achieve little if we do not begin with God.
On the other hand if we take time to pray we will grow and flourish spiritually, God will indwell us by His Holy Spirit, we will know for certain our sins are forgiven and no guilt will remain, we will cease to be anxious, we will long for others to experience for themselves the ‘abundant life’ we have discovered, we will have our eyes opened to see through God’s eyes and to feel some of His pain which will lead us to into compassionate living and self-sacrifice.
We will have seen the face of God, and know His will.

If my people will pray, and seek my face, and turn.. then will I hear, will forgive, will heal

Can we do that now? Really seek His face...