Why repentance is crucial

An important question is why repentance? Why must we repent to see revival?

Repentance means turning from one's sins in one's heart, agreeing with God that our sin nature keep us from heaven. It means agreeing with God on the penalty for those sins, that He took the punishment for them on the cross. Including our future sins, hence He tells Christians in 1st John 1:9 if we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

So, when we pray seek God's face in ending oppression, bigotry, and all the forces of evil which have crept into this country, along with those which were there from the beginning, we see that we must first decide in our own hearts we want to repent of our own sins. God knows our hearts, and wants to see that we are truly wanting what we asked for. If we don't, of course He is not going to grant it to us.

So, we ask for His forgiveness and we repent, turning away from those sins we have in our hearts, even those things we may not know are sins. There may very easily be things that because of our sin nature, we have harbored. 

God doesn't expect us to remember every time we were mad at someone who cut us off in traffic but who maybe had a very good reason, like they were rushing to the hospital to see a dying relative. It's for sins like such rushing to judgment that Jesus died for us and rose from the dead because we each have a sin nature. When we don't know what those sins are, we simply seek God's forgiveness and ask Him to point our hearts to follow His moral compass, accepting his ways are right. God made this world perfect, but by one man sin entered into the world and death by sin. All the evil and killing and bigotry and depression came after that.

So, let us pray for this country, seeking God's forgiveness for our failures, and then, for those of others who have turn from the absolute right and wrong which He established from the foundation of the world. And, then, let us pray especially for God to return our nation to that right and wrong once again, and to defeat the spirit of wickedness and rebellion which permeates our society.

Though this was directed toward Israel, yet it is still possible for God to heal us just as he promised them in 2nd Chronicles 7:14: 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 will I hear from Heaven and I will answer their prayer and I will heal their land. If you have called upon and trusted in Jesus Christ as your Savior you are called by his name. The church has not replaced Israel, but it has been grafted in, so that we can be sure God will hear our prayers.

We must simply turn from our wicked ways, and seek His face, seek him to bring a repentance revival to our land.