The Healing of Our Land

In Scripture the word "land" means more than an area of ground that we build our houses on or that we walk on. "Land" in ancient Hebrew is "erets" which means earth, world, country, nation, field and wilderness etc. Broadly speaking, it means everything concerning a country or a nation - People, government, the business world, homes, schools, universities, religious institutions and local Churches etc.

This message concerns the need of healing of every area listed above. All calamities and disasters, except those from trials (James 1:2 - 3) are brought about by the sins of humanity. The judgment of God came upon Israel because of their turning away from their God and served other gods:

"You or your sons at all turn from following Me, and do not keep My commandments and My statutes which I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them" (1 Kings 9:6).

The Judgment of God upon Israel at the Time of Solomon

The Lord appeared to Solomon after the completion of the temple:

"When I shut up heaven and there is no rain, or command the locusts to devour the land, or send pestilence among My people ....." (2 Chronicles 7:13, NKJV).

The list of God's judgment includes - Withholding of rain, sending locust to devour the land and sending pestilence among the Israelites.

God's Promises for Israel and the Church

The next verse is God's remedy for these calamitites:

"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 I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land" (2 Chronicles 7:14, NKJV, emphasis added).

Notice that God spoke to His Covenant people in the Old Testament - "My people who are called by My name". The above verse also applies to the Church, His New Covenant people, the Christians - All Christians are also called by His Name. Therefore, this promise applies to you and me as Christians. It is a Covenant promise to all God's people throughout all generations. Like all Covenants of God to His people this Covenant will neither fail nor go out of date.

The above verse says that God requires us to do four things. Then, if we do the four things He will do three things. If we do our part God promises to hear our prayer, to forgive our sin and to heal our land. Notice that God is not obliged to hear all our prayers in the sense of responding to them with His answers. God says if we meet His conditions then He will hear and respond to our prayer and forgive our sins. We need to understand that what stand between God and God's intervention in our land is not the sins of the unbelievers. Christians are largely accountable for the judgment of God upon our land. The third thing that God will do is to heal our land.

By just looking at the conditions of the land with all the problems and calamities we are now facing, surely we all agree that our land needs healing. All one needs to do is to read today's newspapers in any country he'll know what I mean.

There are problems in every area of humanity - Political, social, economical as well as problems related to religious beliefs. Religious beliefs and their sensitivities give rise to wars and rumors of wars. Then there are disasters everywhere, landslides, mudslides, mines disasters, planes and train crashes, earthquakes and hurricanes of immence magnitude. Then there are pestilence and strange diseases like the bird flu spreading quickly in many countries. Then there is the breakdown of human character. The movies industry glorifies and promotes homosexual activities, with directors and producers of such movies get the highest awards! What about the sins in the Christian Church? - "men of God" commit adultery and sexual sins; gay and lesbian "churches" pastored by gay and lesbian "pastors" are mushrooming; same sex marriage, rape, sodomy and abortion and divorce become a common life-style among "christians" in some countries. All these degrading activities are forbidden according to the Scripture (Romans 1:18 - 32 and many other passages).

God's Conditions for Healing of our Land

Let us study the four conditions listed in 2 Chronicles 7:14.

1. To humble ourselves

All through the Scripture whenever God talks about humility He places the responsibility upon us. Usually God does not make us humble except when we exalt ourselves (Matthew 23:12). We have to humble ourselves.

An angel of God spoke to Daniel, "Do not fear, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand, and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard; and I have come because of your words" (Daniel 10:12, emphasis added).

Daniel's prayer was heard because he humbled himself. The angel of God brought Daniel God's answer. This is the reason why "to humble ourselves" is God's first condition. Our prayer might not be heard unless we humble ourselves.

David combined fasting with prayer. Through fasting he humbled his soul and made his prayer more intense and more effective:

"I humbled myself with fasting; and my prayer would return to my own heart" (Psalm 35:13, emphasis added).

I believe the main reason why we need to humble our soul (or ourselves) is because of our ego - a part of our un-crucified Adamic nature. It is the self-exerting demanding part of the soul that always says I want, give me this, help me, bless me, and other things that we selfishly desired. It is the things in us that make us self-centered. This places a barrier between us and the Almighty God and we will not be able to maintain a right relationship with Him. Because of this our prayers are hindered. We need to humble our soul and bring it to subjection by the Spirit of God (1 Cor. 9:27).

2. To Pray

The second thing that God requires us to do is to pray. Notice that this comes after we have put our pride and ego under subjection. Someone has said, "We can't feel proud when we are on our knees"!

We pray out of humility, out of a broken spirit, out of a humble dependence upon God, out of the acknowledgement that we need God desperately to help us. If He does not come to our help there is no other source of help that can meet our needs.

God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble (James 4:6). That is why to humble ourselves must come first before we cry out to God. God will not hear our prayer if we pray out of arrogance, self-righteousness and self-sufficiency - like the Pharisees!

Paul said, "Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks to be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim. 2:1 - 4, emphasis added).

The first thing that we do when we come together (in a Church) to pray, is to pray for all men (believers and unbelievers), and for the government (all who are in authority). When we pray for a good government we are praying according to the will of God. If we know that what we are praying for is according to God's will, then we have the faith to claim it (1 John 5:14, 15). With a good government much of the crime, corruptive practices, evil and lawlessness in our country would be suppressed and healed.

3. To Seek His Face

The third thing that God requires us to do is to seek His face. To seek the Lord is much more than going to attend a prayer meeting for an hour or two. To seek the Lord's face is to seek Him diligently (Hebrews 11:6). Usually in a Church prayer meeting we seek things from God under the pretense of seeking God. When we are sick, we seek healing from God. When hard financial times hit, we seek money from God. When we are desperate we even bargain with God and say something like this, "Lord, if you'll help me in this situation I promise to attend every Church prayer meeting!" When our Church is in crisis and faces with serious problems we hold special prayer meetings to ask God to solve our problems not admitting that very often we are the problems in the Church!

The one who truly seeks God expects only one thing - God! He is looking for God and not just the things God may give him. The prayer of his life is, "God, I just want You!"

Thus said the Lord, "Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon him while He is near" (Isaiah 55:6).

Yes, the Lord is near, but before we can seek the Lord diligently, we need to break up the fallow ground of our hearts. We need to cleanse our hearts from "weeds" and "thorns" (from corruption, lust and all unrighteousness) so that the Lord can sow righteousness. God's righteousness can't be sown on hard grounds. We need to have a broken and contrite spirit.

"Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap in mercy; break up you fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord, till He comes and rains righteousness on you" (Hosea 10:12, emphasis added).

One of the ways we can do to break up the fallow ground is by fasting. We seek the Lord until He comes - until there is a definite and a specific response from God. Until He visits us, we see His arms stretch forth and we see definite evidence that God is moving to answer our prayer!

4. To turn from our wicked ways

The forth thing that God requires us to do is to turn from our wicked ways. Some of us might think that we have no wicked ways; we lead a blameless life and we go to Church regularly and give our offerings to God like all good Christians do. We love our Church and obey our elders, pastors and leaders and never cause any trouble. We never rock "the boat"!

In my mind there are at least three possible forms of wickedness - sin of omission, un-forgiveness and unproductiveness.

1. The sin of omission is the sin of failing to do the right thing when it is within our knowledge and means to do so.

"Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin" (James 4:17).

2. Another form of wickedness is un-forgiveness. The parable of the unforgiving servant is a good example of a servant who would not forgive his fellow servant (Matt. 18:23 - 35). A servant owed his master a large sum of money. But this servant was unable to pay his debt. So, the master had compassion and forgave him his debt. However, this servant would not forgive his fellow servant who also owed him some money. Then the master said to this unforgiving servant:

"You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant just as I had pity on you" (Matt. 18:32, 33, emphasis added)?

3. In God's sight an unproductive and lazy person is also a wicked person. In the parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14 - 30) a man said to the servant who had received one talent:

"You wicked and lazy servant, you knew that I reap where I have not sown, and gather where I had not scattered seed. So you ought to have deposited my money with the bankers, and at my coming I would have received back my own with interest" (Matt. 25:26, 27, emphasis added).

I might add that we can do all the "right" things in Christ and if we are too lazy to pray and fail to "deposit" our prayer on a regular basis, we are considered wicked!

Conclusion

In my opinion, all Christians should take God's challenge to do all the four things demanded by God - to humble ourselves, to pray, to seek His face and to turn from our wicked ways. We must take God at His Word by faith. It is interesting to see if God would hear from heaven, forgive our sins and heal our land or not - even in these end-time hours.

I believe He would - because of His promises:

"God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good" (Numbers 23:19)?

"Indeed I have spoken it; I will also bring it to pass. I have purposed it; I will also do it" (Isaiah 46:11).