Breakthrough Prayer 2022 Day 19
Day 19 Friday January 21
We are praying today to better followers of Jesus Christ so that in turn we may be better leaders, influencers, and difference makers in our families, neighborhoods, work, and church.
Our reading begins with a question. What great nation is there that has God so near it, as the Lord our God is to us, for whatever reason we may call upon Him?
We must always remember and never forget that though the believing remnant may be marginalized in the national dialogue we remain in a position of strength because of our relationship with the Father through Jesus Christ. We have access to the Father through prayer and we have been given authority to bind principalities and powers and to lose the kingdom of God on the earth.
This means that while the nations may rage against the Lord and His anointed, The Lord remains the Lord and His will can never be thwarted. In Psalms 2 it goes so far as to say that the Lord laughs at those who attempt to marginalize, erase, or cancel His authority delegated to His church. Never forget that we are the Bride of Christ in training for reigning.
Our reading continues with the great prayer of Solomon in 2 Chron 7:14 that we hear quoted constantly. “If My people who are called by 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.”
We have interpreted this to be a prayer meeting where we ask God to bring those who are worse than us more into line with us. When we study God’s response to Solomon’s request, we discover that Solomon repeated a pattern.
The pattern begins with the covenant God made with His people. When Your people sin against Your commands and are suffering from the curse of putting You away from their belief and behavior. Pay close attention to who the focus was on. When Your covenant people sin against You and then return to You with all their hearts, Hear from Your throne in heaven, forgive them, and take up their cause.
The stark reality is until God’s people humble themselves, and repent for their rejection and rebellion against God’s rule and seek His face or His image and likeness and return to Him with all their hearts there really is no promise or hope of healing to claim.
The real question is how bad will it have to get to get the attention of the people that are called by the name of God? I pray that we seek to learn from Israel’s decline from God in times of prosperity and comfort and determine that we will follow God with all of hearts.
The Psalmist reminds us that God eyes saw the substance of our being when it was yet unformed, and God imagined all the days of our life before one of them had been. It is true that God has incredible plans for our life and future. The question we must ask is how many of His days have we lived? That leads to another question, what in the world are we waiting for?
The book of Hebrews reminds us that as recipients of the better covenant of the grace of God in Jesus Christ, we have something Solomon could not even imagine. We have Jesus as our High Priest who passed through the heavens and makes our confession concrete. Because we have a High Priest who can sympathize with us because he has been tempted in every way but is without sin. We therefore have a standing invitation to come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and the grace to help us in our time of need.
This is a better covenant and promise than Solomon’s because our High Priest is without sin and has promised that when we humble ourselves to come to His throne and seek His face with our petitions, we will receive the mercy of forgiveness and the grace of the promised Holy Spirit to teach us, guide us, and empower us.
Could there be anything on earth more precious than becoming a place that God has chosen to put His name, honor His covenant, and dwell? This begins in prayer when we repent and invite Jesus into our lives and continues through prayer as we seek the continued instruction of God that we may be covenant keepers enabled by the Holy Spirit.
Determine today to establish PRAYER to seek the face of God as the most PRECIOUS activity that you could ever engage in.