Author: John Page 131 of 172

Jeremiah 24:7 “And I will give them an heart to know me, that I am the LORD: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God: for they shall return unto me with their whole heart.”

The blessings of God are greatly disproportionate to those which we deserve. For simply declaring ourselves His people, we get the Lord Himself as our God. By being one of His, the Lord molds our hearts so that we can draw ever closer to Him. Yet, we should never take the responsibility of being His people lightly.

Being one of God’s people means that we are expected to be faithful; we are expected to have strong testimonies characterized by distinction from the world around us. The Lord has no expectation of the unsaved to act anything other than unsaved. They are not expected to be salt and light to the world around them; however, we are. Absent our salinity and luminosity, the world should be expected to drift away from God. When our nation strays from God’s plan then there is only one population group to blame – those whom God would call “my people.”

PLEASE PRAY FOR GOD’S PEOPLE IN THIS LAND TO ACT AS HIS PEOPLE SHOULD. God offers us a heart to know Him. Instead, our hearts have strayed and the nation has naturally strayed along with us.

Haggai 1:2-6 “Thus speaketh the LORD of hosts, saying, This people say, The time is not come, the time that the LORD’s house should be built. Then came the word of the LORD by Haggai the prophet, saying, Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your ceiled houses, and this house lie waste? Now therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts; Consider your ways. Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes.”

If the responsibility for revival and healing in America falls upon God’s people, then where are those who would rise to the occasion and answer the call?

Sadly, American Christians are missing in action, and have been for several decades as the nation changed all around us. We have been busy seeking our own prosperity. We have been busy seeking our own security. We have been busy seeking our own stability. Yet, we have less prosperity, security and stability than we had in the past. It is as if we have been filling a bag with holes.

This is nothing new. In Haggai, God’s people were too busy to finish God’s work. They claimed that it was not yet time to be faithful. They were busy making themselves comfortable instead of making God’s work complete. Yet, their hard work for themselves lacked results. It was as if they were trying to fill a bag with holes.

God has called us, His people. Whenever we ignore His calling for our own purposes, then our labor will be in vain. PLEASE PRAY THAT GOD’S PEOPLE WILL PRIORITIZE GOD’S CALLING OVER OUR OWN COMFORT. No matter what level of comfort we try to create for ourselves apart from God, it will be lacking. The bag we are trying to fill on our own is riddled with holes.

II Chronicles 7:14 “If my people, which are called by my name, shall 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.”

Revival in this nation and the healing of our land is based on God’s contingent promises. Yet, it is important to remember that God places the mantle of responsibility to meet the contingencies upon us, His people.

Revival and healing will not come from government. Revival and healing will not come from entertainment. Revival and healing will not come from the courts. Revival and healing will not come from politics. Revival and healing will not come from the media. Revival and healing will not come from policies and programs.

Instead, revival and healing will only come from God as the result of the obedience of His people. God is calling you. God is calling me. We are His people, and the responsibility for revival and healing is ours alone. If revival and healing never come, it is not the fault of the world. It is our fault.

We must not expect anyone else to carry the load. We must not expect change in our absence. We must not shift responsibility to others. God is calling His people to His plan for His purposes. We must answer.

PLEASE PRAY THAT GOD’S PEOPLE WOULD MOBILIZE IN PRAYERFUL FAITHFULNESS. We must look no further than the mirror to determine the solution to our nation’s problems.

Isaiah 48:17-19 “Thus saith the LORD, thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel; I am the LORD thy God which teacheth thee to profit, which leadeth thee by the way that thou shouldest go. O that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments! Then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea: Thy seed also had been as the sand, and the offspring of thy bowels like the gravel thereof; his name should not have been cut off nor destroyed from before me.”

These verses, though they omit the word ‘if’, contain a contingent promise nonetheless. As God typically does, He asks a little and gives a lot. In order to receive peace, righteousness, fruitfulness, and longevity the people only had to hearken to the Lord. All they had to do was pay attention.

God’s words are available for guidance, providing wisdom in the way that we should go. We profit from His teaching. We gain from his direction. We benefit from his Word.

The input is our attention, while the output is the best of God’s blessings. PLEASE PRAY THAT AMERICAN CHRISTIANS WOULD PAY ATTENTION TO GOD’S DIRECTION. IF we hearken unto Him and His commandments, THEN we will see amazing blessings unfold before us. We must pay attention.

Genesis 18:26 “And the LORD said, If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes.”

Genesis 18:32 “And he said, Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak yet but this once: Peradventure ten shall be found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for ten’s sake.”

The terms ‘contingent promise’ or ‘conditional clause’ sound grandiose, as if the conditions must be magnificent in order to produce a meaningful outcome. In reality, the Lord asks very little from us. The magnificence lies in His output and not in our input. The ‘if’ is minute, and the ‘then’ is massive.

Abraham’s intercession for Sodom highlights this point. The fulfillment of the conditions originally required only fifty righteous people in the entire city. This already small requirement diminished to forty-five, then forty, then thirty, and then twenty. In the end, the Lord would spare the entire population IF only ten were righteous. The conditions went from very small to miniscule, while the outcome remained significant.

The small nature of God’s conditions demands an extra measure of individual responsibility (see the prior post – https://prayatlunch.us/free-riders/). Since the ‘if’ is so small, your contribution may be the difference between conditions fulfilled and conditions failed. Consider the following illustration related to Genesis 18. Maybe there were nine righteous found in Sodom, and one individual who was on the fence. Maybe that person thought that they could remain undecided or undedicated without consequence, straddling righteousness and worldliness. In the end, their decision to stop short of righteousness yielded horrible consequences. One person’s disobedience made all the difference.

PLEASE PRAY THAT EVERY CHRISTIAN WOULD RECOGNIZE HIS PERSONAL ROLE IN FULFILLING GOD’S SMALL CONDITIONS. You may be the proverbial tenth person in God’s plan for America today, and your absence will make all the difference.