If My American People Pray?

One of the more popular texts applied to America is 2 Chronicles 7:14 .  You see a lot of Christians and Christian leaders use this text and apply it to America.  The reason this text gets applied to America is because of the prevailing thought that our country- specifically our country’s leadership and policies- is moving away from God and what God would want.  You can take any issue- abortion, same sex marriage, the economy- and we’ll use it as evidence of our country moving away from God and then we’ll quote this text as the means or the inspiration for bringing our country back to God.  Now, I am not about to say or comment on our country’s direction or begin to assess whether God is happy with our country’s direction.  But when come across a text like this, we first need to understand its primary purpose was for Israel- Old Testament Israel- God’s people.  As we’ll see in the next couple weeks of the Story, God’s people- and her kings- will ping pong between obediently following God and straying away from God (similar to what we saw happening in the book of Judges).  So this text is a reminder first to his people.  Secondly, this isn’t a text for America, anymore than it is a text for Canada or Australia or South Sudan.  This text isn’t special for America as a country  It is special for people who follow Jesus- wherever they live.  If we look at the issues facing us as a nation, as followers of Jesus, we can apply this text to our own lives and seek God.  We can apply this text as groups of Christ-followers- as churches- and seek God in this way as well.  Too often we see our nation heading a direction we don’t like and we surmise the way to stop that direction is to try and pass legislation to reverse the course.  But the legislation is only effective when there is an ethic- or when there are values- that support that legislation.  This text is about changing values- changing hearts- not passing laws.  And if we as followers of Jesus would put as much or more effort into making sure our own hearts were changed by the gospel and then spreading the gospel to other people, perhaps we’d see more of the changes we hope will occur through legislation and government.