A Big Two-Letter Word for the New Year

If My people who are called by My name shall 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.

(2 Chronicles 7.14, NKJV)

What if the new taxes on insurance companies through ObamaCare force premiums (which are now forced on citizens) to even higher levels?  What if Iran completes the process of producing weapons from its growing stockpile of weapons-grade uranium?  What if Muslim terrorists make this year's Winter Olympics in Russia an event we all wish hadn't been held?  What if the Supreme Court hear's Utah's appeal on gay marriage and makes it the law of the land?

It doesn't take much speculating to cause us to want to jump straight to the end of 2 Chronicles 7.14 and to yearn for, pray for and believe God for a healing of our land.  All Bible-believing Christians want so see America healed.  We've been sick too long.  Our spiritual immune systems have been weakened to the point of succumbing to any and everything that attacks the heart of Christian truth.  We desperately desire healing for the morality and justice of a nation and for its once supportive environment for Judeo-Christian values.

One big two-letter word stands between us and the reality of coming to that realization.  I used it four times in the opening paragraph of this blog.  It is the simple word...

If.

But wait. Our hope is not in insurance premiums coming down or the success of failure of ObamaCare.  It's not in the international repentance of Iran or in the peace of the Winter Olympics or in the fight over gay marriage.  Our hope does not rest in the outcome of these or myriad other "what if's" on ABC World  News Tonight or Fox News Today.  While our hope for eternity is secure, our hope as Christians in this world for this day does rest in that little word "if".  Because, you see, before we get to the forgiveness of sins and the healing of our land, there is that Divine If.  This If does not blot out the unconditional love of God; rather it enforces it.  So says Hebrews 12.6 (NLT):

For the Lord disciplines those He loves and punishes each one He accepts as his child. 

Jerry Falwell may very well have been right about 9/11 being God's punishment on America, if not directly, then indirectly for surely God could have stopped it.  He didn't stop it any more than He stopped the Holocaust -- the most wicked event of history -- or any more than He stopped Babylon from ransacking Jerusalem and bulldozing His Holy Temple.  What's the use then?  Why not just throw up our hands and resign ourselves to the unstoppable events which will come our way?  The reason is as simple as it is sure.  There's a great If for God's people.  It is the If of conditional healing for "our land" for those who are serious about the conditions of this memorable promise of God.

Before the hearing from heaven.  Before the forgiving of sins.  Before the healing of any land.  Before all these things God requires us to humble ourselves, to pray and to seek His face.

This If which comes in the context of Solomon dedicating the Temple in Jerusalem is subservient to a larger If which He had given Israel in the commissioning covenant at Sinai:

Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep my covenant, then you will

be a special treasure to Me above all people... (Exodus 19.5, NKJV; emphasis, mine)

After 1,500 years of refusing to do those very things, Jesus proclaimed that the Kingdom of God was being taken away from Israel on the cross (Matt 21.43):

The Kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation who will bear fruit...

Have we... have you... have I been any more faithful than Old Testament Israel?  Do not we, you and I have our idols that come before God in the living and devotion of our daily lives?  What testimony would our checkbook and automatic debit authorizations give to where our devotion lies?   Have we not failed to take the gospel to the lost.  And as a Southern Baptist have I assumed that my Christmas gift to the Lottie Moon International Missions Offering fulfills that requirement?

The biggest If of the coming year does not involve ObamaCare, Iran, Islamic terrorists or gay marriage.  The biggest If of 2014 is whether or not I will live as a faithful follower of Jesus Christ, obedient to what he commands me to do and faithfully shunning those things He forbids.  It's the biggest If for you, Christian friend.  It's the biggest If for "our land".