(Excerpted from Cheryl Gnagey's Spiritual Healing: The Surrender That Brings Victory, Chapter 9)
"If you have ever wondered what it is that you have to do when you surrender , verse 14 [of the well-known verse of 2 Chronicles 7: 13-14] will clear up any any confusion you may have experienced.
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 and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
God is not asking you to just simply say a prayer in which you tell Him that you are surrendering a sin or idol to Him. He expects you to live out 2 Chronicles 7:14 by humbling yourself before the Creator of the universe. You are to talk to Him about your sins and idols. You are to seek His face by surrendering your will to His. As you seek Him, you will discover afresh and anew the call to obey Him. If you constantly gaze into the eyes of the Savior who offered Himself as the ultimate sacrifice and model of surrender, how could your response be anything other than repentance? Turning away from what is sinful in your life is entirely different than merely telling God how sorry you are that you have sinned and asking His forgiveness. To repentantly turn away from your sin is to do a 180-degree turn, away from the direction you had been heading. This is surrender! This is true worship!
God has called us to a repentant, heart-surrendering concert of prayer, to be on our faces before Him, the One whose very face we seek. Until we find ourselves prostrate before Him, we will likely continue to wander in our self-made wildernesses, stagnant and unfulfilled, never reaching the 'land' that He has promised us. Surrender is the key to passing through the 'veil' and into the daily presence and will of God, dwelling in the Holy of Holies!"
Second Chronicles 7:13-14 is written as a conditional statement--'If My people will....then I will....' The way God states this clearly shows us that if we desire for Him to respond to our prayers for forgiveness of our sinful ways, and to bring spiritual healing of our hearts where our sin and idols dwell, then we must respond to God's call to repentance by actively humbling ourselves before Him, praying diligently for the removal of sin, seeking His face by searching out what the Scriptures tell us to do, and then turning away from the sin by obeying what we have been told. "If My people will . . . then I will!"
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