If You Humbly Seek God
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if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.
2 Chronicles 7:14 (WEB)
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We make conditional promises all the time.
It’s the basis of all commerce in the world.
Do this thing for me and I’ll do that thing for you.
It shouldn’t be a surprise to see God making a conditional promise to us too.
The kicker here is that, on our own, we cannot perfectly fulfill this promise. No matter how good a job we do at humbling ourselves, praying, seeking the Father, and turning from our wicked ways … it’s not enough for perfection.
Yet it seems to be enough for a merciful God to step in and offer forgiveness and blessings.
Ultimately, the work of forgiveness was completed in Christ.
So we can now do all of these things to the best of our ability and rely on Christ’s work to fill the gap.
Also, since we’re living in the new covenant and have the Holy Spirit Himself living within us, we now have the power to actually walk in these promises.
In theory, we could perfectly walk with the Holy Spirit’s help.
Alas, we are still sinful creatures in the process of being made more and more mature.
Perfection is unattainable here on earth.
Which doesn’t make the goal useless, but means that all of these things, all of these promises, come about through 100 percent reliance on God.
…which they did anyway.
It’s just obvious now.
— Ricky Ketchum
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