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 I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

2 Chronicles 7:14

All of us have been broken in some way; all of us need healing.  We are certainly broken from sin, but we may also have other hurts, wounds, or scars as well; our nations suffer accordingly.

But there is hope.

God can heal us from our brokenness; this we know, and yet sometimes we might wonder when He’s going to get started.  This reminds me of a time when I was in a church leadership meeting and one of my fellow leaders asked a question that was on all of our minds: “We have done everything that we know to do as leaders, when is God going to send us the increase?” It was true; we had done everything that we could do as leaders in the church so that our church could grow spiritually, and yet the progress was slow.

One of our group spoke up and said the thing that nobody wanted to think about: “We have done what we need to do, but God won’t send the increase until we are ready to handle it.  We think we are waiting on God, but God is waiting on us.”

We began to pray.  We began to meet every Sunday morning, and every other time we met, to pray together before church began; to pray that God would send people who need to hear the gospel, that God would bless our people, that God would use our efforts to His glory and to accomplish His purpose… And the increase in spiritual maturity, not to mention numbers and healing came.

So often Christians sit and wait upon God.  We talk of God’s timing and not ours, and some of us even learn to be very patient indeed.  But has it ever occurred to us that God is patiently waiting on us to pray?  Let us humble ourselves before God, seek Him out and ask for His forgiveness and healing, not only for ourselves but for others.  We know that He is faithful, and we know that He is merciful and loving, so why would we doubt that He will respond and heal us and heal our land as well?  Maybe it just isn’t enough to complain about the problems around us, maybe we need to get to the place where God has been waiting for us so that His healing can begin.