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About Jesus Steve Sweetman Interceding
On Behalf Of The Church Over
the last few decades many groups have sprung up calling Christians to
pray for their nation. Weekend
prayer vigils and marches proclaim 2 Chronicles 7:14 as their theme.
"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 will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal
their land." In
light of this passage I would like to remind you of an ongoing
conversation Moses had with God. One
aspect of Moses' ministry was interceding on behalf of God's people,
which was the purpose to this conversation. While
Moses was meeting with These
words disturbed Moses immensely. He
pleaded with God not to destroy His own people.
Moses figured God would look bad in the eyes of the world if He
killed God
was so upset that He told Moses to just leave Him alone and go to The
idea of Israel losing God's presence really bothered Moses. He
pleaded with God again by saying, "if
your presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here."
(Exodus 33:15) Moses
knew what the church should know. We
can't move ahead in God's will without Him.
Moses
continued to intercede by saying, "what will distinguish me and
your people from all the other people on the face of
the earth?" Again,
Moses understood something we should understand.
The thing that distinguishes us as God's people from others is
His presence in our midst. Without
God's presence we're no different than anyone else. If
you read Exodus 32 and 33 you will see that Moses both knew God's heart
and shared His feelings. Like
God, Moses loved God's people so much that when he saw their present
state, he was both sorrowful and angry.
If God and Moses had not loved Israel, they would not have been angry with them.
God's type of anger presupposes the existence of love. Not
having God's presence was too much for Moses to bear.
Like the apostle Paul, (Romans 9:1 - 3), Moses had unceasing
anguish over the state of God's people. Exodus 32:33 states that if
Moses could have been blotted out of God's book in order to save Moses'
sorrow and anger led him to intercede on behalf of I
know that many people don't share my thinking on the present day state
of the church. The more I
study the Bible, and the more I believe I see the heart of the Lord, the
more I see the need for intercession to be made on behalf of God's
people, the church. The
majority of Christians don't view the church through the lens of the
Bible, so they don't see the unscriptural state the church is presently
in. So in my thinking, we
fail to know God's heart on this matter.
Thus, we fail to share His feelings, and so we fail to intercede
on behalf of His people, and we suffer for it.
Moses
did not intercede on behalf of a secular nation.
He interceded on behalf of God's people.
This is what intercessory prayer is all about.
2 Chronicles 7:14 was directed to God's people, not a secular
state. The text reads,"
if my people will humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from
their wicked ways…" It
does not read, "if your secular nation will humble itself…"
It was God's people that needed to repent in Moses' day, and it's
His people who need to
repent today.
If
there is any hope of our nations turning to Jesus, it will come through
a repentant church, and there's lots to repent of.
I therefore suggest the we begin to pray, begin to intercede on
behalf of God's people, the church.
Only then will our nations have any hope of turning to Jesus.
The
church represents the Lord Jesus Christ to the nations.
If we fail in this task, Jesus won't be represented, and the
nations will remain as they are.
May we somehow find the grace and ability from our Lord to share
in the concerns of His heart in this matter. Then
we can intercede on behalf of God's people as we should.
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