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 have begun a study on the elements of effective prayer within the church. Prayer is something that has been neglected or misused or abused or simply misunderstood by so many people. There are numerous teachings on prayer, how to pray, when to pray, what to expect when prayer is offered, and so forth. Our concentration in these studies is what the responsibility of the Church is as we come to God in prayer. It is a matter of that which honors and pleases and blesses God in the communication of His people. We are seeking to know Him and to know His will in order to give ourselves to His development of the greater depths of our living relationship with Him.
	As stated last time, we are using this passage as the umbrella under which we come to God in obedience to His urging in our prayer lives. The heart of this passage encompasses much of where we need to be in our increasing understanding of prayer. We need to humble ourselves, pray unto Him, seek His face, and turn from our wicked ways. This is some of what we dealt with last time and we will pick this up again as we continue with the consideration of what happens when we so respond to God, as was true of King Manasseh as recorded in 2 Chron 33:10-13. Please open to it as we will read it together. 
	2 Chron 33:10-13, And the Lord spoke to Manasseh and his people, but they paid no attention. Therefore the Lord brought the commanders of the army of the king of Assyria against them, and they captured Manasseh with hooks, bound him with bronze chains, and took him to Babylon. And when he was in distress, he entreated the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. When he prayed to Him, He was moved by his entreaty and heard his supplication, and brought him again to Jerusalem to his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord was God. 
    	Notice that Manasseh, as so many of us tend to do, entreated the Lord and humbled himself before God only after he was in such a desperate and life-threatening distress. We tend to think that we can make it on our own, with no need for God until we can’t. We ignore God, as did Manasseh in not paying any attention to God and even encouraging his people to ignore God as well. Then, when we are in trouble, we desperately call out as a last measure of despair in the frantic hope that God will hear and respond. Manasseh urgently implored for God to hear him and to release him from his violent and painful captivity, and the Lord answered that prayer. Note the fact of the last part of this passage, Then Manasseh knew that the Lord was God.
	As the Lord proved Himself, Manasseh’s heart and mind changed focus. Prior to his capture, Manasseh ignored God, and paid no attention to Him. After the Lord answered his desperate pleas for help, Manasseh knew that the Lord was real and that He truly did answer prayer. His heart was changed and he tried to do right in the sight of God the rest of his days as king. As we are told in verse 18 of this 33rd Chapter, Now the rest of the acts of Manasseh even his prayer to his God, and the words of the seers who spoke to him in the name of the Lord God of Israel, behold, they are among the records of the kings of Israel.  
	The Prophet Ezekiel, in Ezek 33:10+11, encouraged the nation to turn from its evil ways because the Lord does not take any pleasure in the death of the wicked. That is why He responded to the prayers of Manasseh, as well as to so many of us who have committed evil and then repented and called out to God in prayer and supplication in the midst of our torment and shame. 
Ezek 33:10+11, "Now as for you, son of man, say to the house of Israel, 'Thus you have spoken, saying," Surely our transgressions and our sins are upon us, and we are rotting away in them; how then can we survive? "'  "Say to them, 'As I live!' declares the Lord God, 'I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways! Why then will you die, O house of Israel?' 
    	This passage indicates why those who think that God delights in the punishment of transgressors are so terribly in error. They falsely present a picture of a Holy God of Judgment Who is looking down on men with bolts of lightning watching like an eagle searching for prey, for those whom He can blast with His judgment. This is not an exaggeration of the picture of God as the gleeful distributor of retribution that has been painted in so many sermons and doctrines. He has been preached as the dispenser of hell fire and brimstone upon those who sin and do not repent. 
	While we know that those who do not call upon Jesus as Lord and Savior, thus snubbing the freely offered gift of eternal salvation will suffer the terrible consequences of their abject failure to respond to the grace and the mercy of God, we still see Him in the light of this Ezekiel passage …'As I live!' declares the Lord God, 'I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways! Why then will you die, O house of Israel?'
	This is reiterated for us by the Apostle Peter in 2 Peter 3:9, where it is so plainly stated. 2 Peter 3:9, The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance. God does not take pleasure in the death of the wicked. The truth is, however, that in the presence of His Holiness, all sinfulness and evil and wickedness will be utterly obliterated. That is why it is so vital that we are covered by the righteousness of Jesus Christ. 
	The Apostle James, in James 4:8-10, so encourages us to consider the Holiness of God and the sinfulness that resides in us and to ask Him to work in us to bring us into the reality of what it means to be in the presence of the Holiness of the Lord God Almighty. To commune with Him in prayer and supplication means that we recognize our sinfulness and ask Him, with all our hearts, to make us those men and women who draw near to Him in humbleness of mind and being, seeking after His cleansing in the manner of our lives. 
James 4:8-10, Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you. 
    	In this knowledge of the desire of God for none to perish, we are greatly encouraged in Lam 3:31-50 in the manner of how God brings us to the place where we learn how to pray humbly and contritely after His heart. This is by the tremendous manner of His hand upon our lives, working to make us realize, as did Manasseh, that The Lord is God. 
Lam 3:31-50, For the Lord will not reject forever, For if He causes grief, Then He will have compassion According to His abundant lovingkindness. For He does not afflict willingly, Or grieve the sons of men. To crush under His feet All the prisoners of the land, To deprive a man of justice In the presence of the Most High, To defraud a man in his lawsuit — Of these things the Lord does not approve. Who is there who speaks and it comes to pass, Unless the Lord has commanded it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High That both good and ill go forth? Why should any living mortal, or any man, Offer complaint in view of his sins? Let us examine and probe our ways, And let us return to the Lord. We lift up our heart and hands Toward God in heaven; We have transgressed and rebelled, Thou hast not pardoned. Thou hast covered Thyself with anger And pursued us; Thou hast slain and hast not spared. Thou hast covered Thyself with a cloud So that no prayer can pass through. Mere offscouring and refuse Thou hast made us In the midst of the peoples. All our enemies have opened their mouths against us. Panic and pitfall have befallen us, Devastation and destruction; My eyes run down with streams of water Because of the destruction of the daughter of my people. My eyes pour down unceasingly, Without stopping, Until the Lord looks down And sees from heaven. 
    	Here is the counsel of the godly teacher to search our hearts and to recognize that we are the ones who cut off our communication with God. We are the ones who sin and transgress against His Holiness. We are the ones who need to repent and to confess our sins and to seek God to forgive us and to cleanse us from all our unrighteousness. We are the ones who live in a state of constant rebellion against the right and just and proper Law of Heaven. It is as we open our hearts unto God, repent of our wickedness and our deceit and our failure to abide with Him that He will hear and bring us back into the joy of His fellowship. 
This cannot take place when we are puffing up our chests and proclaiming that there is nothing in us that needs to be dealt with, that we are fine and that He is the One Who has withdrawn His grace and His mercy and His loving-kindness from us. No mortal being can stand before God and do anything other than tremble and fall to his knees and confess man’s abject unworthiness and selfishness and sinfulness in the face of Most Holy God. He is the One Who has offered His Only Begotten Son to become our sin and to die in our stead and to become the only avenue of salvation through His glorious resurrection for any who will call upon His name.
	The Writer of the Proverbs, in Prov 28:13, sums it all up in very succinct terms. Prov 28:13, He who conceals his transgressions will not prosper, But he who confesses and forsakes them will find compassion. 
When we try to hide from ourselves and from others the transgressions of our lives, deceiving ourselves with the incredulous idea that we are good men and women who need no salvation, we are not going to be prosperous in the thing that really matters, our eternal relationship with God. We may be very prosperous in the worldly matters and affairs of this physical life, but that is all fleeting and without any influence before the Lord God Almighty. The acclaim of man is nothing. It is the compassion of God in Jesus Christ that is everything of value, now and forevermore! Without Christ, we are lost and God will have no option but to declare that He does not know us and will cast us into the doom that we truly and justly deserve. 
	However, if we honestly search our hearts and inspect our minds and investigate our attitudes and evaluate our behavior and examine our thoughts, we must confess that we are not worthy of His so great love. We will agree with God that we do not deserve anything other than His judgment for the manner in which we have defied and rebelled against Him. If we then turn from our sins, calling out to Jesus to save us from ourselves, we will find God’s compassion enveloping us fully. We will be able to talk freely with Him and enjoy intimate fellowship with Our Loving Heavenly Father, with Jesus, Our Lord and Savior, and with our Comforter and Guide, the Holy Spirit. We will be able to pray after His heart and after His will and after His plan and after His purpose. We will also discover, in our prayers, His desires will become our most earnest desires. 
	This is the encouragement of the Prophet Isaiah as recorded in Isa 55:6-11, if you would please turn to it. Isa 55:6-11, Seek the Lord while He may be found; Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, And the unrighteous man his thoughts; And let him return to the Lord, And He will have compassion on him; And to our God, For He will abundantly pardon. "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Neither are your ways My ways," declares the Lord. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts. "For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, And do not return there without watering the earth, And making it bear and sprout, And furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; So shall My word be which goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me empty, Without accomplishing what I desire, And without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it. 
    	We need to seek the Lord and call upon him while His time and forbearance permit. We need to confess, in complete agreement with Him, that we are sinners in need of His salvation and His cleansing work in our lives. We must then turn from our wickedness and ask Him to be both our Savior and our Lord. 
As should be abundantly clear in our hearts and minds, the saving grace of God in the giving of His Only Begotten Son is a prerequisite to our effective prayer life. If we are not one of His children, through the redemption that is ours in believing upon Jesus Christ and His death on the cross and His resurrection for our personal and specific benefit, then God has no obligation to hear our prayers. That is the prime and key element to any and all of our prayers. We come to God in effective prayer only in our living relationship with God through His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ, sent to die in our stead.
	Then there is the matter of His Lordship in our lives wherein we desire to be utterly cleansed from the sin and the filth that remains of the old nature that is no longer to be part of our lives. We must desire to both confess our need for His cleansing and then ask Him to help us live in complete obedience when the desire to sin and the temptation to sin and the doubts about our spiritual essence surface. He will be faithful and just to work in our lives with every manner of His Omnipotence and His Omniscience when we turn to Him and earnestly ask Him to be our Lord with complete obeisance on our part. He will always hear and respond to that prayer with every outpouring of grace and mercy and strength and forbearance and patience and endurance and love.
	Again hear the words of the Lord as voiced through the Prophet Isaiah, this time as recorded in Isa 59:20+21. Isa 59:20+21, "And a Redeemer will come to Zion, And to those who turn from transgression in Jacob," declares the Lord. "And as for Me, this is My covenant with them," says the Lord: "My Spirit which is upon you, and My words which I have put in your mouth, shall not depart from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your offspring, nor from the mouth of your offspring's offspring," says the Lord, "from now and forever." 
	He will absolutely respond in the full measure of His Heart of Love to all who belong to Him through the redemption of Christ. He will hear and absolutely respond to every prayer from those who desire to turn from their transgression and live lives that are honoring to Him and to His glory, alone. That is the basic foundation of what constitutes effective and true prayer in a living communication and relationship with the Lord God Almighty. 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 Matt 21:8+9. And most of the multitude spread their garments in the road, and others were cutting branches from the trees, and spreading them in the road. And the multitudes going before Him, and those who followed after were crying out, saying, "Hosanna to the Son of David; Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest!" Amen.