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“When your
people Israel have been defeated by an enemy
because
they have sinned against you and when they turn back
and
confess your name, praying and making supplication
before you
in this temple, then hear from heaven
and
forgive the sin of your people Israel and bring them
back to the land you gave to them and their
fathers.
2
Chronicles 6:24-26 (NIV)
Solomon built the temple and prayed
a dedication prayer over it. He stood on a platform in the center of the outer
court and prayed. He commended God for keeping His promise to David to allow a
permanent home be built for the arc of the covenant. Solomon also requested God
to keep the promise of always having a descendant of David sit on the throne of
Israel.(see 2 Chronicles 6:12-16)
Solomon continued to pray, renewing
a covenant between God and the nation Israel. In this prayer, he asks God to
hear the nation’s prayers after they have confessed His name, turned back to
Him, and repented of their sins.
Why is this important to Solomon? He
knew the nation and its people will sin and fall away from God. Are we like the people Israel? Yes, we are.
We as a nation need to confess our sin to God, repent of our ways, and seek His
forgiveness.
In our
21st Century world, we are not unlike the people of Israel. We fall short of God’s expectations of us and
we sometimes don’t care. We have “more important” things to do than sit or
kneel and tell someone we can’t see that we had done wrong. We might choose not
to because we don’t really believe we have. We find other false gods to spend
time with.
The sad
thing about how we, as a society spend our lives is that, one day soon, our
nation will have to answer for what we have done. We need to be ready.
We need to pray as a part of this. You never know what might happen as a result of us getting down on our knees and praying for our country. Good reminder.
ReplyDeleteKaren: Thank you for your comment. We are studying a book in Sunday school that underlines this need for prayer. More about it later.
Delete"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." II Chronicles 7:14 This verse is just as true now as it was back then in Solomon's day. I pray that our nation will wake up and realize that we need to turn back to God before it is too late. Thank you for this message today. We need this reminder.
ReplyDeletePam: Thank you for stopping in and for your warm thoughts, We are definitely needing God to take care of the issues of our society. But we have to ask Him to. We have to realize that we are not as good as we think we are. That, yes, we have to repent of things we have done, as a nation, that dishonor Him. God is the ONLY way we can make it through these fallen times.'
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