Day #4: “Praying for Renewal”
During 40 Days Praying Together we will be asking you to pray for three things. Today we will look at the second of those things.
(2.) Please commit to praying daily that God would renew his churches across our land.
Here are some background thoughts on that prayer request.
2 Chronicles 7:11-16 Thus Solomon finished the house of the Lord and the king’s house. All that Solomon had planned to do in the house of the Lord and in his own house he successfully accomplished. 12 Then the Lord appeared to Solomon in the night and said to him: “I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice. 13 When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, 14 if my people who are called by my name 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. 15 Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer that is made in this place. 16 For now I have chosen and consecrated this house that my name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there for all time.
I became a Christian in the summer of 1997, before my final semester of college. One of the features of Christian culture in the late 1990’s was a strong interest in the topic of “revival.” I attended a large men’s gathering in Washington D.C. the following fall and the whispers of revival were in the air. As over 1 million Christian men gathered in the nation’s capital, many people wondered if this was the beginning of a large scale renewal movement. One of the passages of Scripture featured at the time was 2 Chronicles 7:14. In it we see a promise that God will hear his people when they cry to him and bring renewal to “the land.” I have since grown in my appreciation for the need to be careful when we appropriate OT promises to the experience of the church. For example, the context of 2 Chronicles 7 includes Israel as a nation/state, a physical temple and particular promises for Israel in the promised land.
At the same time, I have grown in my appreciation for the ongoing relevance for the general principle found in 2 Chronicles 7. God’s people need constant renewal, lest the church descend into listlessness and deadness. As I think back to 1997 and draw parallels to today, I am surprised at how little I hear people talking about revival. This is in spite of the fact that the Church is without a doubt in far worse condition than it was 27 years ago. The last two and half decades have been bad for the Church in America. In retrospect, 1997 was close to a high-water mark in our recent history. Since then, Christians have been increasingly marginalized in public life. More importantly, American Christians have struggled internally. We’ve been rocked by scandals and internal conflict. The changing structures of modern life and the assumptions of our secular age present new challenges. Statistically, America has experienced over the last 25 years the largest religious change in American history. During that time, 40 million Americans, or 16% of the adult population, stopped going to church.*
The anecdotal evidence of this change is pervasive. Our city is full of empty churches, many of them having been repurposed as bars or condos. Most of us know people, or have family members who stopped going to church. Sometimes this seems to be an unintentional slide away from the religious life. On other occasions there is an intentional rejection of faith altogether.
This is not the first time in history that God’s people have experienced decline in spiritual vitality. The Old Testament is full of examples where God’s people slide into faithlessness and experience religious decay. Fortunately, there are many stories of strong rebounds. The book of Judges is full of cycles, wherein Israel falls away, experiences pain, cries out to God and is saved by God’s work through one of the judges. Our text in 7 Chronicles is meant for just that sort of thing. The letters of the New Testament are often written to encourage churches back to faithfulness. In particular, the address to the seven churches in Revelation shows that some need significant correction or they risk losing their spiritual vitality all together. They are called to “remember their first love” and “stop being lukewarm” (Rev 2-3.) Church history is full of examples when the Church needed to be restored. We are covering that history during the Adult CE class this Spring, so join us on Sundays at 9:00 am if you are interested in learning more. In history, the times that God renewed the church came to be called “revivals.” Though that term has taken on different connotations over the years, at the root of it, a revival is a sovereign work of God to renew his church and restore their spiritual vigor. While we cannot control or start a true revival on our own, there are certain things that we are called to do when we recognize that spiritual renewal is needed. Let’s look in more detail at 2 Chron. 7:14.
If my people who are called by my name 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.
There are things that we are called to do:
- Humble ourselves
- Pray and seek God’s face
- Turn from our wicked ways (repentance)
There are things that God alone can do:
- Hear from heaven
- Forgive sins
- Heal the land
Translated to the New Testament era and viewed through the lens of Church history we can summarize it in this way. Historically, renewal movements (revivals) have been preceded by humility and dependent prayer. They are also associated with a strong renewal on the authority of God’s word and result in repentance. This in turn leads to a renewal in the church. Which in turn leads the church to have a greater impact on the world around it, through the power of God’s Spirit.
During our 40 Days Praying Together, we want to pray that God would give his church a deep concern for our spiritual weakness. Instead of trusting in human ingenuity or political power, we pray that God would cause his people to “seek his face” in humility and prayer. Let’s also pray that God’s word would prompt sincere repentance and renewed life in his churches. That through our faithful witness we would seek healing in our land.
*From The Great Dechurching, by Jim Davis and Michael Graham. The phenomenon is so pervasive that the authors felt the need to coin a new term, describing a person who stopped going to church. That new term is “dechurched.” Unlike the term “unchurched”, which describes people who have never been in church, “dechurched” is not yet recognized by Microsoft Word as a real word. To put this in perspective, the authors compare this to our changes in church growth relative to the total population. However, in terms of total numbers, the 40 million who have “dechurched” is larger than the number of people added to the church during the First Great Awakening, the Second Great Awakening, and the Billy Graham Crusades, combined. (p5)