To Heal Our Land, Repentance Is Required

In the third decade of the twenty-first century, the church in America is in trouble. It’s obvious. Even believers who do not pay much attention recognize this. It shouldn’t be this way, but it is. The question we need to ask ourselves is why?

Although church membership is in decline, those who identify as born-again Christians continues to be a sizeable number. In sheer volume, there are probably more Christians now than at any time in our nation’s history.

So, what’s the problem? Why has our Christian influence become marginal at best? Why are we weak and tepid, when we have been called to be hearty and strong? What is it about us that is different from earlier, more robust generations?

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That we are not where we are supposed to be seems obvious to most. Perhaps this is why one of the most often quoted Bible verses comes from II Chronicles. “If My people who are called by My name will 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” (II Chronicles 2:14, NKJV).

Almost universally, we desire for our land to be healed. To accomplish this, we have no difficulty humbly ourselves before God. We call on His name regularly. We seek His face in prayer. We are good at all of these things but, what we are not good at, is turning away from our wicked ways. For twenty-first-century Christians, repentance is an anachronistic concept from the distant past. It’s an archaic term devoid of meaning. Instead, what we desire, what we insist upon, is what earlier generations referred to as “cheap grace.”

For us, the enlightened believers living in post-modern America, we want Almighty God to be faithful to us, while we simultaneously disregard anything that even hints at us being repentant. Even though the promise from II Chronicles is an if-then clause, we dismiss the reciprocal aspect. Because we disregard this, our land remains unhealed.

Where we fall short is accurately summarized in I John. Specifically, we have issues in three areas, which the following passage describes perfectly. “Do not love the world nor the things in the world . . . For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world (I John 2:15a-16, NAS).

Our problem, however, is a little more complicated than simply loving the world instead of the Lord. We do love Him and want His blessings, but we also want what the world has to offer. We want both and mistakenly believe we can have what we crave. To make our desires appear to be God’s will, we truncate His Word to make it conform to what we want it to say, rather than accept what it actually says. Essentially, we believe our enlightened worldview is superior to God’s revealed truth. This is our problem in a nutshell.

Take lust of the flesh for example. Instead of standing strong for biblical truth, we have allowed the legitimization of perversion to sweep our nation. We have done this so thoroughly that the depraved, having become strong and emboldened, have gained the upper hand. We have demurred for so long that, in our societal defeat, we have been intimidated by the advocates of the LBGTQI agenda. We have become accepting of that which the Bible deems to be unacceptable. In this area, we no longer consider repentance from our false position to even be an option. Essentially, we have legitimized depravity, calling it normal rather than what it really is, sin.

Where the lust of the eye is concerned, Christians have done even worse. For millions, materialism and the conspicuous consumption of capital has become equated with the fruit of God’ Spirit. The love of money, which the Scriptures’ refer to as the root of all evil, has been completely disregarded by the purveyors of the Prosperity Gospel. Twisting the truth to feed their avarice, these false teachers equate financial blessing with love, joy, peace and patience. This belief has become so engrained in us that most Christians are clueless that such a mindset is contrary to the Word of God. Being ignorant of our sinfulness, in the hardness of our hearts, we don’t even realize that we need to be repent. To even suggest that we do seems laughable to millions of deceived believers, especially those who embrace this false doctrine which seems to dominate Christian TV.

When it comes to the boastful pride of life, the lifestyle of modern-day Christians is absolutely no different than that of non-believers. Being honored by the world, being known as “all that and a bag of chips” is what motivates us, not walking humbly before the Lord. Non-Christians would never consider washing feet, but neither would most Christians. We might say that we would, but we rarely serve anybody other than ourselves. That’s the truth. Talking the talk is not walking the walk. In our day-to-day lives, there is no virtually no distinction between us and non-believers, and there should always be. That there isn’t, not only dishonors us, but also the Lord.

Because we live and act like the Laodiceans in Revelation, rest assured our fate will have a similar ending. Being neither hot nor cold is no way to live. Doing so is a poor representation of Christ-likeness. If we continue on the course we have been following, we can recite II Chronicles 2:14 all we want, but our land will never be healed.

What we need, what us requited, is both societal and personal repentance. Nothing short of this will have even a smidgen of value. To achieve the level of contrition required always begins at the individual level. When enough people have truly repented, and only when this happens, can societal change occur. Therefore, my prayer for you and for me is this: Let the change begin with me.

 

—Jack Watts

JACK WATTS is a prolific multi-genre author. Most of his twenty-five books are available on Amazon. Jack lives in Atlanta, has five children, eleven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

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