January 16 Call on Christ

2 Chronicles 7:14 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.
 
WE continue with pointing to prayer’s power to ignite revival as we view excerpts from “Firefall 2.0 How God Shaped History through Revivals” by Malcolm McDow & Alvin R. Reid. “Revival”, remember, is not an event. It is a spiritual resurrection of the soul, turning from sin’s death to becoming alive in God. From Firefall 2.0:
 
God stands always as the grand architect of spiritual awakening. As we study spiritual movements in history, we also recognize that revivals are the products of the cooperative efforts between God and His people. Renewal requires both the supernatural and the natural.
 
In the supernatural, God invades the lives of His people, exercises His sovereignty, releases His power, and fulfills His purposes. In the natural, the Christian fulfills the requirements of 2 Chronicles 7:14: humility, prayer, seeking God, and repentance.
 
When Christians cooperate, God produces revival. God’s reasons for His divine interventions are preparation, proclamation, and preservation. 1) In preparation, God rearranges the trajectory of His people, preparing them to fulfill their Kingdom mission. 2) In proclamation, God empowers His people to proclaim prophetically and compassionately His divine reconciliation. 3) In preservation, God intensifies discipleship, intensifies evangelistic outreach and conserves results.
  
   See the points here: Revival is a God-initiated interaction with mankind to point mankind to our Creator. Jesus said it this way, “Come, follow me.” (Matthew 4:10) When we faithfully follow the Lord, we are walking with him. The “with” is key. With him as a disciple, you become one who speaks and acts as Jesus. You interact with him, taking on his character. This is revival. Coming alive in the living Lord. We are no longer with sin, but with the sinless one.
   See what happens. With Jesus, we become more humble to say, “I need Jesus.” In that humility we pray to seek his “will be done on earth as it is in Heaven”.
   Even more, humility leads to repentance to pray, “Forgive me my sins. Lead me not into temptation. Deliver me from evil.” That’s revival language. It is revival faith and expectation.  
   Do you begin to see how Jesus’ teaching on prayer is teaching you toward revival? Praying as Jesus prayed will lead you toward God, who promises, “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.”
   This is sure: We need God’s healing over our land – our homes, our cities, our nation and our world. In the next few lessons, we’ll see a specific example of prayer igniting a mass revival in the United States.
 
Prayer: I pray I will be humble to seek your face, Lord, and to turn from my wicked ways. In Jesus’ name, amen.