2 Chron 7:12-14, Then the Lord appeared to Solomon at night and said to him, "I have heard your prayer, and have chosen this place for Myself as a house of sacrifice. If I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among My people, and My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray, and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. 
	We are at a break in our reading of the Bible together. We have just finished the Book of Leviticus and are about to begin the Book of Numbers. By the way, I am very excited about the reading of the Book of Numbers and look forward to seeing the marvelous truths of the glory of God that it contains. 
Our last study in Leviticus emphasized the fact that we need to be separated from the cravings and the lusts after the elements of this idolatrous age. We need to set our hearts and our minds and our focus and our attention on the fact that God is holy and therefore, we, as His people, are called to be holy. We are to obey and to honor Him in our day to day walk on this earth and not befoul ourselves with the loot and the treasures that are the idols of this realm.
Accordingly, I have been so very impressed of late to deal with something that seems to need urgent attention in the church today. It is the matter of our obedience unto God in true and effective prayer. We need prayer for ourselves, for our families, for our fellowship, for our community, and for our country. There is so so very much taking place within our society that is urgently bringing to the forefront the need for the people of God to learn how to pray after the heart and the will of God in the manner that will bring Him glory and blessing and honor and reverence. We need to call forth unto Him as His beloved children and hear from Him as our Beloved Heavenly Father.
Therefore, for the next number of weeks, however long that may be, we will be looking at what it means to pray, why it is so important to pray, and how to give ourselves over to prayer in our living fellowship with the Lord God Almighty. We will be reading scripture together, as usual, and we will be asking the Lord to manifest His heart unto us in our prayerful deliberation of that service of utmost importance. Our prayer life needs to be with the earnestness that is required from us unto the Lord and unto the needs of our brothers and sisters-in-Christ and for our nation.
That is the reason that we will begin with the passage of this morning. It will be the overarching umbrella of our study as it should be the daily examination of the heart of the church for the land in which God has placed us. It was at the dedication of the temple of the Lord, built by Solomon, and it was God’s response to the prayer of Solomon for the continued grace of God to be upon His people. That is what we should be seeking with all our hearts within our daily prayers for the church and for this nation. We are in a time and a society which are so desperately in need of revival and the renewal of seeking after the Lord God, upon Whom the very foundations of this country were centered at its birth.
The key phrase and promise is the truth that if …My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray, and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. This is the Lord’s call and command to His people then and to His people today. 
Notice the 4 key elements within this instruction to us. We are to humble ourselves. We are to pray. We are to seek His face. And, we are to turn from our wicked ways. So many of us think that prayer is simply speaking words from our mouths into the space around us, and that then satisfies what needs to be done as is required of us. 
The truth, however, is that there is so much more that is part of prayer than just mouthing some words without any true intent or focus on what is at the very heart of real and effective prayer unto the Lord. It begins with a humbling of ourselves, seeing and recognizing what is the truth of our standing before God. We need to humbly submit to Him in recognition that we are nothing and that He is everything. Then we need to seek His face, be in submission and subjection to Him. It is a reporting before Him as a private would report to a general, standing at attention and waiting for his orders. Our hearts wait before God in seeking what His will and His plan and His order is for us for the day. 
Then, there is that complete and absolute turning away from all wickedness and iniquity, choosing to fully align ourselves with His will and His way and His plan and His purpose and His holiness and His righteousness. It is then that we can pray with the knowledge and the absolute assurance that He will respond according to His heart’s endless measure of grace and mercy and loving-kindness and forgiveness.
As you may recall, we read a most similar passage in Leviticus, Lev 26, verses 40-42. In it, the Lord was telling His people what should be their response when they recognized their evil ways of living in the Promised Land, taking the idols and the vile actions of the nations surrounding them as their own. 
Lev 26:40-42, 'If they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their forefathers, in their unfaithfulness which they committed against Me, and also in their acting with hostility against Me — I also was acting with hostility against them, to bring them into the land of their enemies — or if their uncircumcised heart becomes humbled so that they then make amends for their iniquity, then I will remember My covenant with Jacob, and I will remember also My covenant with Isaac, and My covenant with Abraham as well, and I will remember the land. 
	Again, we have the promise of God to remember both the people and their land, if they will confess their iniquity, their sins against God and against His Holiness and against His Holy Ordinances. If they will come before Him with humble hearts, seeking to make amends for their sin, then God will both remember them and their land of dwelling. This is a core element of true and honest prayer unto God. There is the inherent awareness within it that we are sinners and that only He is Holy and Just and Righteous. We cannot come before Him if we think that we are deserving of His attention and His having to respond to us because we deserve to be obeyed. So often we pray to Him as if God were our servant and we demand those things that we want Him to do for us.
	Such audacious, self-seeking, self-serving insistence on our way from God is never going to amount to anything other than our absolute devastation as we are brought to the fact that God will never listen or respond in the manner that we want. We must fully recognize and appreciate the fact that we are only being heard by God because He so chooses to hear our prayers as we come unto Him in abject humbleness of heart and being. We need to know that He, Alone, is worthy and that we are here to serve Him and not vice versa. We submit to Him and we honor Him and we hold Him as the only One worthy of all praise and adoration and worship and glory and honor. We turn from our wicked ways and seek to have Him align us to His ways. Then we can come before Him and open our hearts in prayer and He will remember His so great promises to us in Christ Jesus and will remember our placement into the land of His selection for us.
	In a most familiar passage, Deut 4:29-31, we have the promise from God that He will be found of us when we seek Him with all our hearts. That contains the emphasis on the fact that …with all your heart and all your soul… means that we are coming unto Him in contriteness of spirit and being which is humbled and asking for forgiveness and turning from our ideas and from our thoughts and from our plans and from our course of corruptness. Rather, we beseech Him to align us to His thoughts and to His ways and to His so perfect plan in Jesus Christ. 
Deut 4:29-31, But from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find Him if you search for Him with all your heart and all your soul. When you are in distress and all these things have come upon you, in the latter days, you will return to the Lord your God and listen to His voice. For the Lord your God is a compassionate God; He will not fail you nor destroy you nor forget the covenant with your fathers which He swore to them. 
To know that God …will not fail you nor destroy you nor forget the covenant with your fathers which He swore to them… fully means that we will know God in all His faithfulness and loving-kindness and Omnipotence and Omniscience and Omnipresence all the days of our lives and for all of the eternal ages to come. There is no way that God will fail to honor those prayers which are from the hearts and souls of those who return to Him and listen to Him and obey Him in Jesus Christ. That openness of being and heart of seeking will always find the answer in Him. He will respond with the fullness of Christ to everyone who calls out to Him and asks for His so great salvation.
The next passage is the warning that Moses spoke to the people as recorded in Deut 30:1-6, as they were going forth into the Promised Land. It is as valid and vital today in our lives as it was to that chosen generation of the Children of Israel. Please open to it in order to read it together. 
Deut 30:1-6, "So it shall be when all of these things have come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I have set before you, and you call them to mind in all nations where the Lord your God has banished you, and you return to the Lord your God and obey Him with all your heart and soul according to all that I command you today, you and your sons, then the Lord your God will restore you from captivity, and have compassion on you, and will gather you again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you. If your outcasts are at the ends of the earth, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and from there He will bring you back. And the Lord your God will bring you into the land which your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it; and He will prosper you and multiply you more than your fathers. Moreover the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, in order that you may live. 
    	Again, there is the call to come unto the Lord God with hearts and souls that are willing and desirous to turn from all wickedness and to obey Him fully in His every precept and ordinance. He will have compassion on us and on our family and on our land if we are subject to His Righteousness and His Holiness through obedient service to Who He is and what He has done. 
There is a just requirement laid upon the people of God, set before our very heart of hearts. God requires that He is both Savior and Lord. He must be to us Our Redeemer and Our Master. He will not share His throne of authority in our lives. We will either live unto Him or unto ourselves. When we pray and nothing seems to be happening, let us examine our hearts and our minds and our lives for the determination of where our allegiances are placed. If we are serving ourselves rather than the Lord God Almighty, then we will know why our entreaties and our requests never leave our rooms. God is not honored in prayers that are self-serving and seeking to elevate our lordship of our lives over His Lordship. Rather, there will be a rending and a tearing apart of the very fabric of our existence to the point of absolute surrender to His will and to His way and to His Sovereignty, alone.
Please turn again to 2 Chronicles. This time 2 Chron 6:36-41. Let us read together the working truth of what God has to do to bring our hearts into line with His will in order to answer the very petitions of our broken and contrite hearts. 
2 Chron 6:36-41, "When they sin against Thee (for there is no man who does not sin) and Thou art angry with them and dost deliver them to an enemy, so that they take them away captive to a land far off or near, if they take thought in the land where they are taken captive, and repent and make supplication to Thee in the land of their captivity, saying,' We have sinned, we have committed iniquity, and have acted wickedly'; if they return to Thee with all their heart and with all their soul in the land of their captivity, where they have been taken captive, and pray toward their land which Thou hast given to their fathers, and the city which Thou hast chosen, and toward the house which I have built for Thy name, then hear from heaven, from Thy dwelling place, their prayer and supplications, and maintain their cause, and forgive Thy people who have sinned against Thee. "Now, O my God, I pray Thee, let Thine eyes be open, and Thine ears attentive to the prayer offered in this place. Now therefore arise, O Lord God, to Thy resting place, Thou and the ark of Thy might; let Thy priests, O Lord God, be clothed with salvation, and let Thy godly ones rejoice in what is good. 
  	As is evident, one of the core aspects to prayer for our country, for our church, for our families, for ourselves is that we are coming to God based on the fact that He is the Lord God Almighty and that He Alone is Holy and that He, Alone is Righteous and that He, Alone is Just. We are the ones who need to humble ourselves and to bring unto Him our fealty and our service for His plans and for His purposes and for His will to be accomplished. It is never a matter of what we want of ourselves, but always the reality that we live to serve and to honor Him. That will be in place as we offer our hearts and souls and beings to be utterly in obedience to Him in the course of how we live and interact with all those whom He chooses to bring into our lives.
	Lord willing we will continue with the further delineation of the foundational truths of what it is to pray effectively as we continue forward in His Word of instruction and encouragement. So be it!
Then the Lord appeared to Solomon at night and said to him, "I have heard your prayer, and have chosen this place for Myself as a house of sacrifice. If I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among My people, and My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray, and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. Amen

This morning’s benediction is Deut 16:10+11. Then you shall celebrate the Feast of Weeks to the Lord your God with a tribute of a freewill offering of your hand, which you shall give just as the Lord your God blesses you; and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God, you and your son and your daughter and your male and female servants and the Levite who is in your town, and the stranger and the orphan and the widow who are in your midst, in the place where the Lord your God chooses to establish His name. Amen.