“If My people, who are called by my name, shall humble themselves, pray, seek, crave and require of necessity My face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land. 2 Chr.7:14 (Amplified)
There is something comforting about familiarity especially as one grows older and finding our bearing in an increasingly chaotic world seems a tad difficult. Routine becomes important to us and becomes a guarantee of normality, as we try to secure ourselves from the vagaries of the dynamic world around us. So, we do the same things over and over again, day after day, until we go to the great beyond. Well, that is life or is it senility that is guaranteed to end in death?
As expected, normal transmission will resume in most churches as the congregation return from their summer break and as usual the leaders would have prepared the programme for the next ten months leading to next summer, the same thing they have done for the previous years. Preparations would have been done in the hope that this year will be better than the last, but there will always be that nagging feeling that it will be business as usual as people resign to the mind-numbing fact that as it was the year before, so shall it be this year and the next and the next, as the Church continues in the groove to which it has become accustomed, the way a tram sticks to its track.
Newton’s law of motion states that an object will continue in its path unless forced by a greater force to deviate. The reality confronting us is that the Church will continue in the monotonous, lack lustre road to senility that it is currently on unless something happens to knock us off that path into the fullness of God’s plan for our generation. People will be forced to eat the stale and oft-recycled spiritual food presented to them every week until they begin to gag as they become increasingly conditioned to the situations confronting them rather than breaking out of it in the power of God. So, what can we do to prove the spiritual equivalent of Newton’s law of motion and thus take advantage of God’s readiness to bless us? The answer is embodied by the two words ‘If’ and ‘Then’. It simply means that God’s action is conditional and contingent on our own action of humbly seeking His face in prayer. So, how do we humble ourselves? It is by fasting as we earnestly pray to God and thus create the ambient condition that is conducive for His move in our world. Now I am not advocating another programme, as I am of the view that we already have too many programmes for our own good. I also believe that these programmes are distracting us from what we ought to be doing – praying and seeking God as individuals and congregations. In fact, it actually calls for us to push aside our well-laid programmes as we seek God in prayer asking for His programme for His Church. We need a prayer revolution. If we continue to programme God out of His own Church, how can we expect Him to show up and bless what we are doing in which He had had no previous say?
God’s promise to move in our world is based on one condition – we the Church must first seek Him in fasting and prayer. It is only then that He would be inclined to hear us and move in our world. Anything else is a waste of time. So, fast and pray.
Prayer:
Lord, you’ve made clear your condition for moving in our world, move us today to both will and do of your good pleasure. Help us to humble ourselves in fasting as we earnestly seek your face in prayer for our land in Jesus name. Amen.