Speaker: Greg Sanders

Passage: 2 Chronicles 7:13-14

THE IF INITIATIVE – 2 CHRONICLES 7

We’re not going to go to Revelation. I’m going to do something different. Feel like the Lord’s had us in a different pocket today. So, I’m just going to do my best to follow. It’s like when the Lord says, It’s a blues riff in B, watch me for the changes. It’s Back To The Future for all of you. 

How many are aware of a bill that got snuck through a couple weeks ago in Colorado? About transgender, deadnaming, all this stuff. I’m going to make some statements, and they might upset you, but they’re Scripture. 

Identity comes from God and God alone. If you don’t believe me, you can go to the beginning of Jeremiah, and the Lord makes a statement to Jeremiah that unilaterally translates over humanity. He said, “Before you were in your mother’s womb, I knew you.” The word for new you is yeda. It means to have experiential knowledge. It means you’re fearfully and wonderfully made. 

That means that your identity comes from Him alone. To choose an identity outside of what the Lord gives you is to put yourself in the place of God. Whether our culture embraces it or not doesn’t make it correct. 

The last gathering– older gathering, more established church– I would say this word came out as much more of a rebuke. I think this word to this gathering is more of a teaching. 

You see, because there’s a reason things like this happen in culture, and there’s a reason things like this can happen in culture. Throughout the history of God’s people, He will do something with them that’s really interesting: He tends to send circumstances and difficulty to test what’s in the heart of His people. 

We don’t love that. It’s not like there’s a line where we sign up for suffering, but the history of God with His people is He tends to use difficulty in the culture around them to draw a response out of them, or maybe it’s better said, to test a response. 

How many have ever showed up at school only to find out there was a test that day you didn’t know you were having? See, my goal is to make sure we all know the test so we know how to pass it. 

LIFE IN EXCHANGE

If you have your Bibles, let’s go to 2 Chronicles 7. I want to pick up in verse 13. At times– say that with me– at times. How many know what that means? Means whenever He wants. It means at any random moment in your life, the Lord may choose to do something, and it is at that moment that the test is upon you. 

“‘At times I might shut up the heavens so that no rain falls, or I might command locusts to devour your crops, or I might send plagues among you.” In other words, At times, I might send circumstances that are beyond your control. I might send things into your life that directly affect your comfort. I might cause things to happen that you don’t like. 

There’s no other way to read that. Now, if you’re in this room saying, Well, I didn’t sign up for that, yes, you did. We live in exchange: our life for His. There is one rule for the exchange, and that is complete surrender. He gets all of me, and I get all of Him. At the moment I exchange my life with Christ, I let go of my unique identity and I take on His. 

“I’m crucified with Christ, yet I live; yet this life I live, I don’t live according to the flesh. I live it according to every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.” That’s Galatians. Paul’s statement is: the moment I came into the Kingdom, I exchanged my life for His, and now this life I live is His life. 

It’s a really interesting thing that happens in the Greek. “I am crucified with Christ, yet I live. But this life I live–” the word I shows up multiple times, but he changes the word in the Greek. 

The first word that shows up is ego. How many know what that is? The next word he uses, where he says, “I am crucified with Christ, yet I live,” that word is a word that dictates being grafted into a family. It means my ego– my unique identity, my individualism– died the moment I came to Christ, and I was grafted into a family, and I now become Him. 

What does it mean to become Him? It means I take on His nature, I take on His character, it means the things that matter to Him now matter to me. It means when He and I have a difference of opinion, He wins. 

So, at times, I might shut up the heavens so that no rain falls. I might command locusts to devour your crops. I might send plagues among you. I might do stuff you don’t like. 

HUMILITY

Verse 14: “Then if my people who are called by my name–” isn’t it interesting? We always talk about “if-then” statements. Have you ever heard of those? If you do this, then this, then this will happen. This is a then-if statement. 

In other words, what happened before this was intended to produce a result. There’s a set of circumstances that are intended to create a reaction. What is the reaction? In other words, I set this up, and then if they do the right thing, here’s what I want to do. 

I would love to offer to you a simple idea: what the Lord releases in this that He wants to do, which is heal the land, forgive their sin, take care of their sickness, was in His heart from the beginning, but He’s setting up a test. The test is to see do they understand my Kingdom? Do they understand how I work? 

“Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves-” say that word with me, humble. What does that word mean to you? Others first? Could we just put a statement on: humility means it’s not about me. 

Say that to each other right now. Confess that to somebody, it’s good for you, especially your spouse. Humility means it’s not about me. Maybe you’re here with your roommate, say, Hey, humility means it’s not about me. I learned something new in church today. 

What I would say is here, humility means whatever the Lord says that’s going to happen after this is going to require humility. It means, in order to step into this promise, in order to step into this grid, you have to figure out it isn’t about me. 

Which means selfishness is going to get in the way of this index. I will not be able to do what the Lord gives me to do here if I’m selfish: if I care about how I feel more than I care about how He feels; if I care about how I see things more than I care about how He sees things. You guys tracking with where I’m going? 

RESPONSIBILITY FOR PRAYER

“Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face.” There’s a bunch of ands, and we’re gonna look at them. Number one is pray. Punchline for this whole thing. 

What’s going on around us in our state is primarily the responsibility of the church for not praying. Because the Lord’s promise is He’ll heal the land if we pray. And so we might not like bearing that burden, but that’s what the Scriptures teach. When the Church does her job, the world around her changes. Just going to let that one linger for a second. 

And so, we want to get up in arms. We want to speak out. I would love to give you something really simple. Social media isn’t the place you were given a voice. Before the Lord is where you were given a voice. If we would put the same emotional energy into our prayer lives as we do into our complaint lives, we would change the region.

I’d love to call a simple fast: get off of social media. Get off of Facebook, get off of X, get off of all of it, and just pray. Try it for six months and see what happens. I love it. That was a very honest reply. I got off of it seven years ago, changed my life. It was amazing. 

Why? Because you get drawn into things, and you start to care about things the Lord doesn’t care about, and you start to lose the perspective the Lord actually has. Because you get pulled into dumb arguments, vain accusations, and people saying stupid things, and it’s really hard to not respond stupid with stupid. 

So, the only way to not do that is just don’t do it. Just vacate the premises. Just run away. I know all the arguments: It’s how I do my business. Great. Love it. I’m just offering an idea. You do you. Because here’s the concern I have: I don’t care what medium it is that’s causing you to not pray, but we’re not praying much. 

Fifteen years Vintage has been in existence. For all fifteen years, we’ve had a prayer gathering every week. This is not about a prayer gathering. What I’ve noticed is prayer gatherings are the single hardest thing in the world to draw people to. 

Now, this is not a new problem, it’s not a Colorado problem, it’s a Jesus problem. Jesus is in the garden with his disciples, and He says to them, Really, you couldn’t give me an hour? Because they fell asleep fifteen minutes into the prayer time. 

I’m just going to go on record and say, if prayer is hard when Jesus is next to you, it’s probably still hard. If having the King of Glory in your prayer time doesn’t cause you to want to rise up and pray, prayer is probably a tough thing for us as humans. Let me give you a secret: prayer is not about want to; prayer is about willingness. 

If we really understood this passage, we’d be more excited about the prayer gatherings than we are the Sunday morning gatherings because we’d realize those gatherings change the world. Those gatherings change our homes. They change our neighborhoods. They change our workplaces. 

Because we have this authority where we can come before the Lord, and based on this passage, no matter what’s going on in the world around us, we can chalk all of it up to, Oh, the Lord must be seeing if we’re going to pray more. And our response is just to pray. 

I very rarely get on soap boxes. I very rarely share a lot of my own opinions. Just try to keep it to Scripture. I’m going to step up here as a soap box. Go to my old platform. This idea that we are to rise up militantly and yell and scream and speak out in our culture is absolutely hogwash. There, there’s my soap box. 

ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN

What is right is that we are to go to the prayer chamber, we’re to get together to pray, we’re going to cry out for things that we see that are wrong. Why? Because Jesus taught us, when the disciples come to Him and they say, Will you teach us to pray? 

Why would they ask Him that? Because they realized for three years, they’ve been walking with Him, and He carried something different than they knew how to access. He could shift atmospheres in a way they didn’t know how. And so they say to Him, Since we’re your buddy club, will you show us how to do that? Teach us that trick. 

And He goes into a dialog that we’ve turned into this beautiful formality, “Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Your name,” and we’ve just turned it into this liturgical prayer. What He’s doing is explaining to them how to properly align themselves with Heaven so they could pray properly. 

And at the end of it, He drops this absolute nugget. He says, “On earth as it is in Heaven.” What does that mean? Means everything I see on earth that doesn’t align with Heaven, I’m to take before the throne and speak Heaven over it. I’m to cry out for Heaven to invade earth, I’m to cry out for Heaven to invade politics, I’m to cry out for Heaven to invade my city. 

I’m to see laws that are passed that are wrong and begin to pray them down because the weapons of our warfare are not what? They’re not carnal. The weapons of our warfare are not physically tangible. And I hold the Bible, yes, the Bible is a weapon. But your weapons and my weapons are in the spirit realm, which means when we see things that are off and wrong, we are to pray them down and to change them with prayer. 

SOLDIERS OF GOD

And so, “If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves–” and the next one is, “Seek my face.” What’s that mean? It means they got to want to know me. They got to want to know what matters to me. 

Can I just say this to you? If you have an opinion that Jesus doesn’t support, you’re wrong. If you hold a political opinion that the Scriptures don’t support and you’re a believer, it has to change. Wow, it got quiet. Because we’re under the authority of Heaven. I’m a soldier, last time I checked. 

Paul will teach it this way: endure hardship like a good soldier. Why would he say that? Because we’re soldiers. What’s a soldier do? Whatever the boss says. What’s it mean when a soldier disobeys orders? What’s the term we use for that? What happens to a soldier who disobeys orders? They get thrown in the brig. They get in trouble. Why? Because what soldiers do is obey orders. Anybody ever heard somebody be called a good soldier? Because they know how to obey, and they turn from their wicked ways. 

Which means what I see happening is the less we pray, the more we’re going to deal with wickedness. You want to see holiness increase in your life? Pray more. Commit to prayer. You want to see your passion index become manageable? Commit to prayer. You want to see the government of God in your life? Commit to prayer. Because prayerlessness and wickedness are inextricably linked. Think on that one for a second. 

“Then I will hear from heaven, I’ll forgive their sins and I’ll heal their land.” Church, when a bill or a law can get passed in our culture underneath our nose at 1 am on a Sunday, we have to take it as a circumstance that the Lord’s testing us with. 

PRAYER IS OUR RESPONSIBILITY

What will we do? Will we pray? Will we respond the way He says to? Will we check our hearts and say, Hey, what’s going on in me, Lord, that I’ve become so apathetic that I didn’t even care? What’s going on inside of me that I don’t see this as a big deal? 

You see, because I see an index that those situations are supposed to cause me to check my own heart first: What wickedness is in me that needs to be dealt with? What arrogance is in me that needs to be put down? I deal with those things, and then I begin to pray, and His promise, I love. He’s not mad, He just says, Cool, I’m going to reach out and heal. 

This situation around us, Colorado has become the front-runner for all of this stuff. Is the church in Colorado going to become the front-runner in prayer? Will we respond the way the Kingdom says to respond, or will we just allow it to go by? What are we going to say when we stand before the Lord? When He says, Why did this happen on your watch? I didn’t have a lot of time. That’s a lie. 

I know this is a tough word. Believe it, I gave it a lot harder last gathering. I want us to understand what we’re responsible for in the Kingdom: what’s going on around us is our responsibility as the people of God. Prayerlessness is our sin; prayerfulness is our responsibility. 

This is not a goad to get prayer gatherings filled– although it should happen. My hope and my goal is that each of us section out a chunk of our day where we sit and we look at what’s going on around us, we take it before the Lord, You said, On earth, as it is in Heaven. That’s not your Kingdom, I’m crying out right now, on earth, as it is in Heaven. 

You see, because the reciprocal of that is: If my people, who are called by my name don’t pray, then wickedness prevails, sickness prevails, He doesn’t heal the land. 

Whether we like it or not, He has placed us into an index, and we have to respond. To not pray is a response. Neutrality is an illusion. We either respond correctly or incorrectly; those are our options. 

Stand with me, please. Now, we always do bread and cup. I love it because it’s a great way to reset my heart before the Lord every week. I think we have something in front of us that’s worth taking before the Lord. 

I want you to take before the Lord a question: am I willing to humble myself and pray? I want you to ask the Holy Spirit to assess your prayer index. Am I carrying the needs of the world around me before the Lord, or have I gone asleep at the wheel? 

I don’t want to have to make this emotional, I want it to be honest, I want us to look at it and go, Yeah, I got to work on this. Or maybe you’re like, No, I’m doing awesome with this. Praise God. Love it. 

Jesus, we just stand before You, understanding the promise that’s available to us. That You love to listen to our prayers. You love to hear our hearts. What You’re looking for is a church that will respond correctly in the season You put her in. 

So, Lord, we ask Your forgiveness right now for what’s going on in the state around us. Because ultimately, You put us here to bring purity to the land through prayer, to bring holiness to the land through prayer, to bring the fear of the Lord to the land through how we live. 

So, Holy Spirit, would You bring conviction where necessary, clarity where necessary, as we take the bread and we take the cup? Jesus’ name. All right, let’s take bread and a cup.