What Can We Do?

Far from encouraging a fatalistic mindset, 2 Chronicles 7:13–14 provides God’s people with an action plan for aligning our hearts with the heart of God in times of crisis, “At times I might shut up the heavens so that no rain falls, or command grasshoppers to devour your crops, or send plagues among you. Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land.”

1. Humble ourselves – We can submit our ambitions, our reputations, our possessions, and our emotions to God as the sovereign ruler.
2. Repent – We can examine our own hearts and repent of any sin we may be harboring.
3. Renounce evil – We can assess our national culture with the intent of separating ourselves from any cultural mindset that contravenes God’s moral commands.
4. Prayerfully seek God – We can seek God’s will for our lives and for our nation.
5. Engage culture – Implicit in all this is that we should also challenge those around us to follow these steps of evaluation, repentance, and submission.
6. Trust God’s heart – We can fall to our knees to intercede for mercy upon our nation, asking that God will grant us more time to influence those around us with the transforming power of the gospel. We can trust that God’s heart is not to judge but to restore a righteous relationship with His people and ask that He will grant us more opportunity to accomplish this.

If enough citizens internalize 2 Chronicles 7:13–14, perhaps God will relent, just as He did toward Nineveh: “When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it” (Jonah 3:10).

This article comes from Heart of a Forerunner: How to Be a Relevant and Influential Voice in a Wayward Nation

Download your free copy here.