Restoration Comes After Repentance

Here we are in this familiar passage, where Solomon has completed the house of the Lord and the kings house. Temple of God has been dedicated and now God appears to Solomon in the night to answer his prayer. We read in chapter 6 several request that Solomon ask of the Lord. He offers a prayer that looks like a contingency plan. This isnt the first time we see God present with a contingency plan. In Genesis 18 Abraham ask God for a contingency plan when He was about to destroy Sodom. 50 righteous, 45, 30, 20, 10. Yet here we are some 13 years later God answers Solomon’s prayer with a contingency plan of His own.

I want to show you God’s position in concerning our restoration.

God’s Push For Repentance

God uses difficulty in the lives of His people to push them toward repentance.

Drought, shut up- restrain, hold back, stop.

Destruction, devour- to destroy, ruin, consume eat.

Disease, pestilence- plague, epidemic disease with a high rate of death.

God’s Process For Repentance

God gives His people a four part process for repentance, you cannot do one without the others.

Humility, humble- to reduce themselves in rank, character, or status.

Prayer, pray- to address God, to make a request of Him.

Seeking his presence, seek- to search for something, to desire to be in the presence of God.

Changing their behavior, turn- to repent, to turn away from sin and returning to God.

God’s Promise For Restoration

God promise to restore His people after the process of repentance.

He will hear from heaven. He hears their prayers on earth. But it will have to line up with His will in heaven.

He will forgive their sin. Forgive- to stop blaming or taking an offense into account. He will pardon them, release them, remove the guilt.

He will heal the land. Heal- to repair something, conceive of in terms of healing

Repair the land from drought, destruction and disease.

God will restore your finances

God will restore your relationships

God will restore your health

Brothers and sisters, there will be no restoration, until there is first some repentance.

Jesus as an example of the process.

Humility- although He was in the form of God, He did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped

Prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane sweat like blood dropping to the ground

Would go find a desolate spot to spend time in the presence of His Father

Behavior, He did not sin

Although he did this He still had to die one Friday, yet God restored Him Sunday...