That Verse You Love: Worry less about rain, more about God's kingdom

My wife and I planted a tree in our backyard in July of 2011.

I am not a farmer or rancher, and I did not grow up in West Texas.

If you are, or if you did, you wouldn’t have. That tree never made it.

Being an urbanite from Central Texas, the drought already in motion had escaped my attention.

But then drought stories moved to the front page, lawn signs started popping up calling for prayer, my tree died and the drought caught my attention.

Many of the lawn signs during that drought quoted 2 Chronicles 7:14, which says “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.”

But this popular verse does not stand alone.

God is speaking in the verse before 2 Chronicles 7:14, and he speaks for seven verses after.

We hate when people we like are quoted out of context, but we never bat an eye when God - as well as people we don’t like - are quoted out of context — and, even within the verse, we ignore some key conditions.

The first condition we ignore is that this applies directly to “My people who are called by My name.”

That’s Israel. Not America.

Not San Angelo.

Israel.

In this context, God is responding to the feasts and sacrifices held when Solomon’s temple was completed and dedicated.

God promises Solomon that whenever he disciplines his people Israel, he will mitigate the damage caused to their land if they humble themselves, pray, and repent from wickedness.

God goes on to say that he will always hear prayers from the temple in a special way, commissions Solomon to be the kind of king his father David was, and warns him that the temple would be destroyed if Israel turned away from him.

So, in context, it seems God intended Israel to do their humbling, praying and repenting in the temple Solomon had just built.

If we quote 2 Chronicles 7:14 as a sure-fire promise for ending a West Texas drought, then we need also to make a trip to Jerusalem, win World War III, destroy the Dome of the Rock, rebuild the Jewish temple, and pray there. (I know that sounds absurd. It’s supposed to.)

The promise of 2 Chronicles 7:14 is a simple conditional response. Every time Israel humbles themselves before God as a nation, prays, and repents from evil practices, God will send rain. God never made such a guarantee to West Texas, and we should not act as though he did.

The proper way to understand the Old-Testament promises to Israel, as followers of Jesus, begins with searching for an underlying principle to apply.

As a rule of thumb, principles about God, revealed in promises to Israel as a nation, may be most accurately applied to the believer as an individual.

So, if we individually humble ourselves before God, pray, and repent from our own sin, God will meet our needs. Jesus promises this explicitly with he says, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all this will be added to you.” (Matthew 6:33)

But 2 Chronicles is much more convenient to quote than Matthew 6:33, because we can print the words “pray” and “heal” in a bigger font to justify an easy formula for rain.

So often, it gets boiled down to “if we pray, it will rain.”

That may be true, but that is not what God said, it’s not what he promised, and it’s not what he wants from us.

Most often, it only rains because God “sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” (Matthew 5:45)

God said first he wanted Israel to submit to his will as their king, and to adopt a repentant attitude. A repentant attitude says, “I do not measure up, but by God’s grace, I might be useful” instead of “I’m ok.”

And added to that, prayer.

If a Christian were to follow the actual formula God gave, they would be seeking God’s Kingdom, and his righteousness, as a logical outcome. Even if that plan didn’t include rain.

God calls us to be willing to give up even good things to serve him. In response, he gives something deeper and better.

Stop worrying about rain, or making ends meet at the end of the month, or anything else. Humble yourself before God, pray, and repent.

That is, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all this will be added to you.”

What do you think?