I'm going to be talking to you about an upcoming prayer meeting in Plymouth that, in my opinion, at least in my life, is going to be one of the most pivotal prayer meetings I have ever been involved in as a believer in Jesus Christ. In September 1620, 102 freedom seekers left England to embark on the voyage of a lifetime. They left their known world behind and boarded a small ship named the Mayflower, heading to the unknown new world. The pilgrims fled Britain in search of a new life and religious freedom. The journey was beyond comprehension, but after 66 days, the Mayflower laid rest on the American shore. Eventually, they settled in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
The pilgrims were bone-weary with little strength. They faced potential enemies and harsh weather, but were sustained by a promise from God, a new land where every person could worship God freely. It's at Plymouth Rock where they first gathered and prayed for the future of America.
But in the intervening 400 years, what have we done with our freedom? Here's Carter with this special message titled, Lord Forgive Us. Now I want to start with 2 Chronicles chapter 7, and I want to take a look at one of the most profound prayer meetings in the Old Testament. It's the meeting that happened after Solomon built the temple, the place where God would dwell, and took a moment to dedicate it.
It's the moment when the fire of God came down so powerfully that the glory of the Lord filled the temple, and the priest could not even enter the house of the Lord because the glory of God had filled the Lord's house. Now 2 Chronicles chapter 7, beginning at verse 12, says then the Lord appeared to Solomon by night and said to him, I've heard your prayer, and I've chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice. When I shut up heaven and there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among My people, 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 will forgive their sin and heal their land. Now My eyes will be opened and My ears attentive to prayer made in this place.
For now I have chosen and sanctified this house that My name may be there forever, and My eyes and My heart will be there perpetually. Now I said earlier and I repeated again that it was God's response when He appeared to Solomon by night to a prayer meeting that in my opinion has been one of the most profound prayer meetings in Old Testament history. It was a response from God about what He was willing to do if the people that He loved were to falter or to fail in the future.
Now I want you to go back with me just one chapter to chapter 6, beginning at verse 12. And here is what happened when this particular house which was going to be God's dwelling place on the earth, where He was to be the God of a people that were set apart for His purpose and to bring glory to His name. And this was to be the dwelling place. This was to be the house where people would come in and pray and He would be God to the people if they would agree in a sense to be the people of God. Now as this house was being dedicated where the presence of God was going to dwell, the Scripture tells us that Solomon in chapter 6 and verse 12 stood before the altar of the Lord in the presence of all the assembly of Israel and spread out his hands.
He made a platform five cubits wide, three cubits high, and he set it in the midst of the court and he stood on it, knelt down on his knees before all the assembly of Israel and spread out his hands toward heaven. Now it's important to understand something that Solomon was gifted with a wisdom that was beyond any other person I think in the history of the world except for Christ Jesus Himself. God gave this man a profound wisdom. It was in this wisdom that God gave unto Solomon that he started to pray and I have to believe because it is the prayer of wisdom, Solomon knows something about the heart of God that God had instilled in him.
The two of them in a sense, may I say it this way, were in indirect communion one with another. It's so important that when we pray that we understand that the heart of God as we said in the beginning is to be good and to show mercy. It's not in his heart to judge, it grieves him when he has to judge a people or a nation. Even through the prophet Ezekiel one time he said the place had become so wicked there was nothing left but to judge the nation but he said I sought for a man to stand in the gap and make up the hedge that I should not have to judge the nation but I found none. In other words God couldn't find somebody that understood his heart, that understood that he was willing, if we were willing to be an honest people before him, if we were willing to humble ourselves and pray and seek his face and turn from those things that he reveals to us that have offended our relationship with him then he promised that he would hear and he would forgive and he would bring healing. You're listening to Pastor Carter Conlon with his 2020 special Lord Forgive Us.
In 400 years what have we done with our freedom? Now here again is Carter Conlon from Times Square Church in New York City. Now Solomon is on this scaffold before the people and primarily really before God, talking to God as one man and he said Lord God of Israel in verse 14 of 2 Chronicles 6, there's no God in heaven or on earth like you who keep your covenant and mercy with your servants who walk before you with all of your hearts and in verse 16 he says therefore Lord God of Israel keep what you promised your servant David my father saying you shall not fail to have a man sit before me on the throne of Israel only if your sons take heed to their way that they walk in my law as you have walked before me. Now Solomon goes on to say in this place of prayer when in verse 21 he said when you hear the supplication of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray towards this place hear from heaven your dwelling place and when you hear forgive and verse 22 he says if anyone sins against his neighbor in other words God forgive us when we've stepped outside of the boundaries of what you say our lives are to be and what our behaviors to look like or in verse 24 he said if your people are defeated before an enemy because they've sinned against you and they return and confess your name and pray and make supplication before you in this temple then hear from heaven and forgive the sin of your people Israel and bring them back to the land which you gave them and to their fathers. He says in verse 26 when the heavens are shut up and there is no rain because they have sinned against you when they pray towards this place that would be the temple and they confess your name and turn back from their ways he was saying God hear hear their prayer and forgive them because they are your inheritance. Verse 28 he says when there is a famine in the land pestilence or blight or mildew or locusts or grasshoppers when their enemies besiege them in the land of their cities whatever plague or whatever sickness there is you think of something coming into the cities but perhaps is bringing fear into the hearts of a lot of people and Solomon says if this should happen if we should find an enemy in our cities if we should find things going on in our streets that cause us to be afraid he said whatever prayer whatever supplication is made by anyone or all your people Israel when each one knows his own burden and his own grief and spreads out his hands to this temple then hear from heaven your dwelling place and forgive and give to everyone according to all his ways whose heart you know for you alone know the hearts of the sons of men. He says when the foreigner comes from a far country and is really curious about who you are and what you're able to do Solomon said please hear their prayer and answer it. Verse 34 he says when your people go up to battle against their enemies hear from heaven their prayer and their supplication and maintain their cause. Verse 36 he says when they sin against you for there is no one that does not sin and you become angry with them and deliver them to the enemy and they take them captive to a land far or near. I mean I think about America today my friend and are we not far from where we started and what we were intended to be as a nation and we'll talk about that in just a moment. Verse 37 says yet when they come to themselves in the land where they were carried captive and repent and make supplication to you in the land of their captivity saying we have sinned we have done wrong and have committed wickedness and when they return to you with all their heart and with all their soul in the land of their captivity where they've been carried captive and pray towards their land which you gave to their fathers the city which you have chosen toward the temple which I've built for your name then hear from heaven your dwelling place their prayer and their supplications and maintain their cause and forgive your people who have sinned against you now my God I pray let your eyes be open and let your ears be attentive to the prayer that is made in this place. So Solomon's prayer was really really simple if the people sin against you and because of it are delivered to their enemies and they're taken into captivity into a place that's far away from where they were intended to be and from the people that you had destined them to be but if they come to themselves if they if they start to realize we have become less than we were destined to be we're living in a place that we're not called to live we're saying things we weren't called to say we become a people that we've not been destined by you in the inception of this nation to be and we're carried captive by the forces that we've allowed to exist in the sense even within our own borders and even embraced thinking that these things could become friends when in reality they were sent to bring us into captivity but if we turn if we have a change of heart if we begin to appeal to you in this place of captivity if we say we've sinned we've done wrong if we've committed wickedness when we turn to you with all our heart and all our soul in this place of captivity this place where we've been carried away and we pray towards this place the land that you gave to our forefathers if we think about what we were destined to be what happened in the beginning if we start to take a look in honest assessment that's why when the Lord appeared to Solomon he said if my people will humble themselves and pray this prayer starts with the humility this prayer starts with an admission this prayer starts the very same way the prayer of Daniel did when Daniel said Lord we have sinned against you both I did and my forefathers have sinned against you to us belongs the shame of faith that we are experiencing this day but Daniel goes on to say but to you belongs truth and mercy thank God for that and he said but if we turn back to this place that you've chosen and towards this temple which I built for your name then hear from heaven and put their prayer and their supplications and forgive your people who have sinned against you now it's in that context that the Lord appears to Solomon that night the prayer meeting is now over everybody's gone home assumedly Solomon is probably at home in bed or preparing to go to bed or maybe it's the middle of the night I don't know but it says in the middle of the night at night God appears to Solomon and he says I've heard your prayer I've heard your prayer and if I have to shut up heaven that there be no rain or if I have to command the locusts to devour the land or send pestilence even disease among my people 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 I will hear I will forgive their sin and by inference I will heal their land now he said my eyes will be open and my ears are listening to the prayer that's made in this place I have chosen and sanctified this house that my name may be there forever and my eyes and my heart will be there perpetually in other words here's what God is saying if you find yourself in a place that's very far from what you were you were destined to be as my people then I will wait here for you to come back and I will be listening for your prayer you're listening to pastor Carter Conlon with his 2020 special Lord forgive us in 400 years what have we done with our freedom the spiritual side at least of America the spiritual side of this nation that God set apart for himself 400 years ago started in a little place called Plymouth Massachusetts with a little over a hundred people who sailed across the ocean believing in their hearts that they had been given of God a promise now that promise was that in this place that you are going to be given the freedom to worship according to conscience without dictates being given to you from up above you're going to be able to live as followers of Jesus Christ should live you will not be told from the top down how you can live what you can say what you can do I will give you a land I'll give you a place of freedom now over half of these people paid with their lives in the first year they landed on the shores of Plymouth Massachusetts at the end of one year they had very little in the way of resources they had very little strength every heart I'm sure was filled with sorrow because they had just lost half of their their company that means people lost spouses they lost children children lost parents but they gathered in a house on a lot that still exists in Plymouth Massachusetts and it's it's address really is lot number one America and in that house they prayed and all they had all they had in that house was a promise from God they were surrounded by enemies they were out of resources they had no strength but they had a promise that I'm bringing you to a land where you can worship me freely as believers in Jesus Christ according to conscience there would be a promise in that place that this would be a place of blessing a place of provision a place perhaps where God promised these people he would be glorified now this where the story becomes personal to me because it was in August of last year in twenty nineteen my wife and I were coming back from our vacation and she had asked me she said can we stop in Plymouth Massachusetts because I would like to see Plymouth Rock I would like to see the area that they say historically where these these first believers in Christ landed and prayed and believed that God was going to give them a nation where they could worship him freely and according to conscience so I said okay let's let's go there so we went to Plymouth Massachusetts and ironically ended up parking in a place that was very close to where Plymouth Rock was we found the location we went down we we sat down on a park bench where we were overlooking the water we were there for only a little while when I heard somebody call my name and I turned and I said to the young lady do I know you and she said no she said but my husband and I know you because we've been praying with you in your worldwide permitting in New York for almost two years now and she said my mother and father own the house that's just around the corner now you could see the house from where we were sitting so we talked for a little while and then she said would you like to come and see the house and initially I declined and said well no we're very busy and we've got to get going and but I could see that my wife wanted to see this particular house so we ended up going there and we walked in and I didn't know this was the house where the first pilgrim people who survived that first year prayed I didn't know it was the place where they petitioned God to to give them what only he could because they had no strength to make it happen and where they prayed for the future of a country that didn't exist yet apart from the native population that was there at the time and during the course of this discussion I found out that the man who now owns this house and his wife they were business people and about two or so years before the Lord had spoken to them to buy this house in Plymouth Massachusetts and the instruction was wait just buy it preserve it and wait so in obedience to God that's exactly what they did they bought the house that exists now on the lot where this first house used to stand and where there was a prayer meeting back in 1620 1621 that God answered and so when I walked into the house there was an undeniable presence of God that followed us into that house I mean I can't explain it any other way but just suddenly you're aware there's a weight in the air the presence of God is in the room I've lived long enough as a as a Christian man and as a follower of Christ to know when his presence is somewhere and the presence of God was so strong in that room that I said let's pray and so we gathered and we joined hands and we began to pray and it was such a profound sense that here we are back where the nation actually began we're standing on the very half acre of this first pilgrim prayer meeting we're standing on the lot where the first thanksgiving in America actually happened there are drawings artists conception from the time of of that particular moment and we're also the treaty was signed with the native peoples of that time a treaty which stayed in force for almost 60 years and there was an amiable relationship between the native population and the pilgrims who landed in 1620 that's the truth that's documented that's the reality of the situation that night I went back home to our hotel and I was I couldn't sleep I was just so stirred in my spirit and what we had just experienced and I began to pray and I and here was my prayer I said God why did you take us to that place why did you bring me into that house and this particular man and his wife had been praying with us in New York City for two years and he had prayed a specific prayer he said God could you arrange it so I can meet that man Pastor Carter and after he prayed that prayer was only a short time later I'm sitting on a bench within a stone's throw of his house I mean only God could set up this particular meeting that we had that day but here's what I felt the Lord speak to my heart as I laid in bed that night back in our hotel room and I began to pray why did you take me to that house the Lord led me to the passages I shared with you from second chronicles about the dedication of Solomon's temple and the promises that were made there the prayers that were were prayed there and here's what the Lord spoke to my heart he said Carter they prayed when they had lost strength they prayed when their hearts were filled with sorrow they prayed when they had no hope of going forward they prayed when they were surrounded by potential enemies and had no power to stand against it and all they had was me and a promise that I made and here's what the Lord spoke to my heart he said I made a covenant with those people I made a promise that I was going to do for them what they could not do for themselves and I started to think about the moment in second chronicles this the Lord led me into this passage of scripture where the Lord appears to Solomon by night and said I've heard your prayer and I've chosen this place for myself if I have to shut up heaven that there is no rain if I have to command the locust to devour the land who can deny that we're living in a moment like that in America today or send pestilence among my people if my people 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 forgive their sin and heal their land he said now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer that is made in this place now I know that you feel probably the way I do today that we're going back to where America began 400 years after the founding in a sense of this nation 400 years after God made a covenant with those people and promised to do for them what they could not do for themselves and we're going to go back to that place and we're going to pray a simple prayer this is where it's going to begin and this is what God has commissioned me to do Lord forgive us for what we did with our freedom forgive us Lord you brought us to a land and you prospered us and you made us more than we could ever hope to be and you did beyond in 400 years our wildest expectation but what did we do with our freedom how did we treat the God of heaven and here we are captivated in a sense in a place that's foreign to what we were supposed to be as God's people in America and so we're going to begin in that place by saying Lord forgive us forgive us for what we did with our freedom I'm going to be specific I'm going to name the sins of America this is what the Lord has asked me to do and talk about the things that we have done that have offended a holy God and ask for forgiveness then following this there are going to be people from every aspect of life from government in Washington right through to single moms in their home in the inner city we're going to be praying and asking God's mercy for our schools for our children for law for the rule and the regard for law in the nation for race relations in America we're just going to be praying for a healing that only God can do in a sense we're coming back to where it all began here we are 400 years later and it seems that as God's people we are in great measure without strength we're surrounded by enemies the loss in a sense of what the nation could have been is immeasurable it seems to be beyond repair there's violence in our cities there's violence in our streets our economies in trouble the nation is far short of what God intended it to be but yet he's bringing us back to the beginning to simply say God remember your promise that you made to these these 50 or so survivors after the first year who stood before you with nothing but you and a promise you see Solomon prayed this if we are taken cap of God here and forgive and the Lord appeared to Solomon by night and said I've heard your prayer I've heard your prayer my eyes will be open there and my heart will be forever there waiting for you to come back and pray again and so here we are in America in 2020 400 years later coming back to where it all began to pray and to believe God I personally believe the Plymouth prayer meeting might be one of the most pivotal prayer meetings in the history at least of my generation I pray with all my heart that you'll be there with us that you'll join us online at tsc.nyc October the 6th from 7 to 9 p.m. we're simply going to gather as a grassroots movement across America from home to home family to family perhaps small gathering to small gathering and we're just simply going to pray the way they prayed 400 years ago so father thank you God for all that you have promised to this nation you made a covenant to these people 400 years ago and we're coming back to the very half acre where America began and we're saying God have mercy on us forgive us our sin forgive us for what we did with our freedom and lead us into a moment of spiritual awakening that can only come from your hand we recognize we don't deserve it to us belong shame of face but to you belongs truth and mercy oh God we appeal to you we appeal to the promise that you made to those who you sent to found this nation God have mercy one more time one more season one more spiritual awakening before you come and we ask it in Jesus name amen thank you for joining me today and please join me on October the 6th from Plymouth Massachusetts well as Carter Conlon explained in today's message we're living in a very pivotal time in history we must pray for our nation would you join us in prayer for America pray for the healing of our land pray for God's great blessings to be shed on this country once again thanks for listening today to Carter Conlon of Times Square Church in New York City with his special message titled Lord forgive us in 400 years what have we done with our freedom for more information log on to tsc.nyc that's tsc.nyc
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