“If my people, which arc called by my name, shall 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” (2 Chronicles 7: 14).
In these words we have what may he called God’s prescription for a blessing. The reference is primarily, of course, to Israel, but the truths are applicable to us as Christians. As Christians, we need the blessing of God. No church can prosper without it. People may come in crowds; they may bring their substance in abundance; we may bear a testimony, and it may he orthodox; but this is not enough. We must have beside all, the blessing of God. And what is the blessing? I answer, the felt presence of God in our midst, moving in our hearts, molding our lives, and operating with a successful influence for good upon others. We need the· supernatural or, rather, the Divine character as the supreme element in our living.
WE ARE TO HUMBLE OURSELVES
Humility was the one great moral quality of the Son of God. He never exalted himself. His way to exaltation was in the dust. If we are called by His is name, we ought to possess His character. Yet there is a great deal or vain boasting among us as Christians; we have much confidence in self and too little in God.
One of the first steps to attain a true humility is to own our failures. This is so hard and few are willing to say they have failed. They are willing to speak of it in private conversation or in testimony, but if some one else should accuse them of the very evil they have confessed, how angry they would be. It is not so much that we are to own failure in outward confession as to recognize it honestly in the soul as a sad fact. If we will only be real in doing this, God will set before us, with no sparing hand, our very sinfulness, until we are prone to cry out in loathing at the revelation of self. But to this point we must come if we would know anything of God. Only when we are thoroughly demoralized does God come to us. Only in our weakness is His strength made perfect.
PRAYER
There is nothing a child of God so needs to be engaged in as praying. Prayer is the Christian’s vital breath. Prayer tells how near we live to God. A man who is living near to God is in a constant attitude of prayer. A man who is not walking in a state of prayerfulness is always blundering and falling by the way. How little real praying there is among Christians. Prayers are made, and prayers are said, and public prayer is observed; but in many cases it is only an oration to God, or a wailing confession before others, of our secret troubles, or a covert complaint against the providence of God, or an “eloquent” appeal to some listening ear in the audience. How rarely there is any praying in the home circle. Many families have no altar at all; others have suffered theirs to fall into actual neglect. There was a time when faith was new and love was fresh, that the members gathered around an open Bible in the name of the Lord and felt the power of such holy meetings all through the battle of the day. But now the husband has to hurry out to business, the wife is not up, or it is late. One thing after another hinders. The truth is, there is no prayer in the heart, and words of prayer on the lips of a prayerless heart is a crime too terrible to talk about. Many never think of returning even silent thanks above their daily food.
In prayer two things are required: 1) A hungering after God Himself. Many pray for temporal blessings; pray when they get into trouble. How few yearn and thirst in prayer for the felt presence of God. There can be no true prayer until we have this desire for only ” … they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness … shall be filled” (Matthew 5:6); 2) There must be an absolute, real dependence upon God, not a mere abstract belief, but the same familiar confidence in Him as in an earthly parent. Only so can answers come- only when we are abiding in Christ, and His Word in us, is the communication complete between us and God.
We ought not to take a step without prayer, and as frequently and freely as we consult our mortal friends, we should consult our heavenly and eternal Friend. Consult Him in the most trivial matters. Oh, if we only took everything to God in prayer before we stepped out into action, what needless pain we should avoid.
WE MUST SEEK HIS FACE
Jesus Christ is the face of God. Seeking to make Christ the aim and object of our daily living, seeking to incorporate His character into ours is seeking the face of God. Too often as Christians, we take the best we have or can get and use it for ourselves, the rest we give to God. This course is evil- can only end in evil. We must make the honor and glory and service of the Lord first. Consider what He has done, is doing now, and will yet do for us. By all these considerations, our hearts ought to be so fully taken up with Him that we should have room for nothing else.
WE ARE TO TURN FROM OUR WICKEDNESS
We may be outwardly very meek and proper; we may assume humility as a garb; we may pray with a loud voice; we may talk of devotion and speak freely of a “precious” Saviour, but how do we act how are we living? That is the vital point. A man may be very orthodox in his tongue and a very devil in his feet. There is such a thing, too, as a Christian walking in wickedness. David did; Peter did – and they paid terribly for it. So will every Christian who does not repent and tum to the Lord. If the judgment does not come now and here, it will then and there, at the Judgment Seat of Christ in the loss of reward, in the loss of a crown -loss, surely of some sort. We are to tum from everything that has in it the appearance of evil.
If we observe these four rules: prayerfulness, humility, consecration, and godliness, the blessing of God will come to us as individuals and as churches. If we so lived as thus to become the dwelling place of God’s blessing, what a healing power we should be in the land.
