part 5 of the “7:14” series
In this series of posts, we have been looking at 2 Chronicles 7:14. In this verse, God is addressing His people – ALL people – and encourages them to do some things. He encourages and urges His people to be humble, to be prayerful, and to seek Him. Each one of those things so far in that list could have been their own series of posts. We continue in this series with the next word – turn.
Over the last several years, the Founding Pastor (who is now retired), of my church has been using an illustration that has stuck in the minds of the people of the church. This illustration that he does, while elementary at the surface, goes deeper and deeper each time he does it and each time you think about it. He also would do this illustration at random and at points when you would least expect it. But he knew the importance of this simple illustration. He would say (and this is a rough idea of a quote) “if you point your feet in one direction and head off that way you will end up over there.” The idea behind the illustration is that you will go in the direction that you point your feet. As I said elementary, I know, but it is such a powerful thought.
There are people, myself included, that walk off in a direction and they get upset because they wind up somewhere they do not like. Jonah is a good example of this. God told him to head off and go to Nineveh. So Jonah pointed his feet and went the opposite way of where God told him to go. He found himself in the belly of a whale. I don’t believe that this made Jonah very happy. But Jonah calls out to the Lord from the belly of fish and God had the whale “vomit Jonah onto dry land.”[1] Now that is an image and a story to tell.
But it is not just necessarily the direction we choose to walk in physically. This can also be the decisions that we choose to make. We make a decision that points us in a direction and we continue to make decisions that keep us on the trajectory and we find ourselves upset at where we are and what has come of our life. David’s life has a good example of this as well. David had made a decision and was not on the battlefield where he should have been. He had made a decision on his life and was headed in a direction. While he was home, he had an affair with Bathsheba. Bathsheba was the wife of Uriah, who was in David’s army. David sent for Uriah to try and cover what he had done. But Uriah did not go home. David even partied with Uriah and he still did not go home. So David sent Uriah back to the battlefield with a letter. In the letter, Joab was instructed to put Uriah in the front line, and when the battle was at the fiercest point withdraw so Uriah would be killed. So David has Uriah murdered and took Bathsheba to be his wife. As punishment for what David had done, God did not allow the child to live. David was upset and I do not blame him.[2] He had made a choice and did not like where the choice took his life. God did bless David with another son named Solomon and Solomon became the wisest man alive.
These are just two examples from the Bible of people pointing their feet in one direction and winding up in a mess. In the book of Haggai, we find these words…
“Give careful thought to your ways.” (Haggai 1:5+7)
The way that our life goes is the way that we choose for it to go. We point our feet in a direction and head off that way. But if we have pointed our feet in a direction that is not good and we continue to head off that way, well then we cannot get mad when we get to the end of the path and have the outcome that we chose.
One of the only ways we can change course and stop going in the direction that we headed, that we do not really like in the first place, is to stop and do what Haggai 1:7 says and then TURN around. If we don’t like the way we are going, we can stop and turn around head back in the other direction. We can turn around and seek the face of God and go back in the direction that He had for us. We can turn around and pray for the help of God. But stopping and turning around takes humility. We have to be humble enough to admit that we were going in the wrong direction and that we need the help of God every single day to keep us going in the right direction.
This is why “humble yourself” is listed first in this passage because the rest of the stuff in the list requires some level of humility to do. We have to be humble in order to pray the kind of prayers that we need to be praying. The kind of prayers that are not focused on us. We need to be humble in order to seek God’s face because we don’t have all of the answers. We need to humble to turn from our ways and go in the ways of God and the ways that He had for us.
This is what God is urging us as people and as a nation to do. We need to turn around, seek His face and ways, and pray for this nation. But first, we need to be humble enough.
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[1] Jonah 1 and 2
[2] 2 Samuel 11 and 12
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