Redemption and Mercy

Posted on by korgrocker

“Don’t let me suffer the fate of sinners. Don’t condemn me along with murderers. Their hands are dirty with evil schemes, and they constantly take bribes. But I am not like that; I live with integrity. So redeem me and show me mercy. Now I stand on solid ground, and I will publicly praise the Lord.”
Psalm 26:9-12 NLT

It is commonly said that we live today in a season of grace, where ” … God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins”(Romans 3:24). We deserve judgement and punishment, but through Jesus we have been freed from the penalty for our sin, and, instead, we have been granted His righteousness. But David wrote about God’s mercy, not His grace. Grace is God’s unmerited favour, giving us what we don’t deserve, while mercy is God’s withholding of what we do deserve – specifically, the punishment for our sins. Through His grace and mercy, David asked God to redeem him from his enemies, who were harassing him with their threats, lies and hypocrisy, and in the process show him mercy. David knew the Lord, and how good He was to him. We read another David Psalm, Psalm 145:8, “The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love“, a psalm he wrote calling everyone to praise God every day, but David didn’t know the risen Jesus personally. David knew about the coming Messiah, and he wrote prophetically about Him in Psalm 22, so in a sense he did know about God’s grace, personally experiencing many times the outworking of God’s unmerited favour.

In modern times we use the word “redeem” in ways such as redeeming a loan, meaning to pay up the outstanding balance. The word crops up in relation to other business transactions and someone making use of a pawnbroker may return later to redeem the article pawned. But there is a great example of redeeming in the Book of Hosea. God asked the prophet Hosea to “marry a promiscuous woman”, a prostitute, and for a while his new wife, Gomer, had Hosea’s children and the marriage existed as a sign to Israel and Judah that God loved them even in their prostitution to idols. But Gomer left Hosea and returned to her old profession. Hosea pursued her, found her, and bought her back from slavery to prostitution, redeeming her from the consequences of her old ways. Hosea’s life was symbolic of God’s intention towards wayward Israel, showing them a path towards redemption and their status as His people in the land promised to them. But in spite of Hosea’s warnings the people just mocked him and ignored his warnings. The Jewish exile followed soon after.

We pilgrims today are a people who have believed and obeyed the warnings given to the peoples of our age. In Acts 2 we read at the end of Peter’s sermon about Jesus and His crucifixion, “When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?’ Peter replied, ‘Repent and be baptised, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off – for all whom the Lord our God will call.’ With many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with them, ‘Save yourselves from this corrupt generation’” (Acts 2:37-40). That call to “repent and be baptised” still hangs in the air today, as God’s grace and mercy prevails in our wicked world. There are many in our society and generation today who need to heed Peter’s warnings and pleadings. 

It is so sad that so many lovely people today have rejected the King of glory, Jesus Himself. In this season of grace they have the opportunity to be redeemed from their sins but have turned their back on Him just as Israel turned its back on God in the 8th Century BC. Hosea warned them with his messages time and time again but the people ignored him. Peter warned the people in Jerusalem for the Feast of Pentecost to “Save [themselves] from this corrupt generation”. Many accepted the call but equally many turned away. But all is not lost, because we pilgrims carry the message of God’s grace and mercy wherever we go. People everywhere have access to the Gospel and have no excuse for turning their backs on God.

We pilgrims are a thankful people because we have, in our spirits, seen the Lord. His Spirit lives within us, leading us, guiding us, encouraging us, filling us, and empowering us. What a blessed people we are! We are free to go to church, joining in the fellowship meetings, engaging in the Communion services, listening to God’s Word expounded and living a life of God’s blessings. A life Utopian in its potential, but sin is always lurking at our doors, seeking to destroy us and drag us back into the evil world around us. But we have the opportunity for embracing God’s grace and mercy, because He has redeemed us from our sins and one day we will enjoy His perfect presence forever. A time for God’s grace and mercy is with us. The news headlines may preach their messages of transient doom and gloom, but it will not always be that way. Secular messages spawned in the devil’s newsrooms and in evil people’s hearts may be promoted in the media but there is a higher power and authority with His hand on this world, a hand full of grace, mercy, love and compassion. Shout it out, Folks! This world needs to hear Good News. It needs God’s grace more than at any time in our history. We pray for revival and a new awakening, and look to God to fulfil His will and purposes for this generation.

Thank You God for Your grace and mercy, unwarranted favour to sinners like us saved by Your grace. Thank You. Amen.

They Trusted in God

Posted on by korgrocker

“Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. Our ancestors trusted in you, and you rescued them. They cried out to you and were saved. They trusted in you and were never disgraced.”
Psalm 22:3-5 NLT

David wrote that his ancestors and the ancestors of those in his nation “trusted in [God]” and as a consequence were rescued. And because of that trust, they were saved and “were never disgraced”. The ancestry of the Jews was well recorded in the Bible, with frequent listings of the ancestry of a particular person. Women were only rarely mentioned, these lists being male dominated, but the most significant can be found in Matthew, with the “record of the ancestors of Jesus the Messiah, a descendant of David and of Abraham” (Matthew 1:1). There follows a list of Jesus’ ancestors starting with Abraham, and the list terminates with “All those listed above include fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the Babylonian exile, and fourteen from the Babylonian exile to the Messiah” (Matthew 1:17). Worthy of note were four remarkable women, Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba, but there were forty two generations listed in total. But if we select various men in the list we can indeed find many whose trust in God was recorded in the Old Testament. In Genesis 15:6 we find, “And Abram believed the Lord, and the Lord counted him as righteous because of his faith“. In Psalm 56:4, David wrote, “I praise God for what he has promised. I trust in God, so why should I be afraid? What can mere mortals do to me?” And then we have, “Hezekiah trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before or after his time” (2 Kings 18:5). It is remarkable that there is such a genealogy backed by occasional stories of Jesus’ ancestors trusting in God, but when the Angel Gabriel visited that young Jewish woman, little more than a girl herself, God knew what was behind her, and He was never disappointed, because Mary was a remarkable woman, ready and willing even at a young age, to take on the responsibility of raising God’s own Son, Jesus, and trust God in the process.

How much of our ancestry do we pilgrims know? I know very little beyond my grandparents, with just a few hints remaining in fading sepia prints of their parents, and even then I know nothing about their spirituality other than my mother’s parents went to a particular church and their remains are buried in the graveyard there. But I suppose the question remains about the legacy we are leaving for the generations that will follow us. Near where I live is a graveyard with grave stones recording the names, and sometimes families, or people who died in the 18th and 19th centuries, and in the church, the Dunfermline Abbey, there are other plaques that go right back to the 11th Century I believe. King Robert the Bruce was supposed to be buried there in 1329, but the Abbey is an old building, solid and reassuring, but sadly now little more than a mausoleum, standing there as a reminder of a move of God’s Spirit in a previous generation long ago. 

But the important fact about our ancestry is that, although records of people and their names are long lost, their impacts live on in the generations that followed them. By that I mean that they laid a Christian foundation that has stood the test of time. We may have ageing congregations in some churches, with dwindling numbers, but God is once again on the move. I was greatly encouraged to receive an email from Gavin Calver, CEO of the Evangelical Alliance, yesterday, and the first paragraph reads, “It was hugely encouraging to see new research ‘The Quiet Revival’ released by the Bible Society this week. The research says that Gen Z is leading a massive rise in church attendance, with 16% of 18–24-year-olds attending church and more men going to church than women. Overall church attendance has risen by 50% over the last six years, resulting in over two million more people going to church”. Jesus is in control of His church and He made a promise to His disciple Peter one day, “Now I say to you that you are Peter (which means ‘rock’), and upon this rock I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it” (Matthew 16:18). And the fact that we pilgrims are here today, proclaiming the Lordship of Christ, is an indication that Jesus’ promise still stands, with not even all the powers at the disposal of the devil able to destroy it.

What legacy are we pilgrims leaving our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and beyond? For myself, I pray that it will be more than an epitaph on a tombstone somewhere. But if we don’t have a legacy plan in place it will be a lost opportunity. As David said in the verses from Psalm 22 we are considering today, we trust in God to rescue us, to save us, and to keep us from disgrace. That’s what happened to his ancestors and because of that he knew that the Lord was holy and there was nothing more he enjoyed more than seeing God “enthroned on the praises of Israel”. We pilgrims look forward to the future generations in our family lines and we pray that they too will look back at us, assured that their ancestors did something special in God, trusting in Him with their lives.

Dear Father God. We declare our trust in You, the only One worthy of all the praise and all the glory. Amen.

“What Shall We Do?”

Posted on by korgrocker

“Then the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered a council and said, “What shall we do? For this Man works many signs. If we let Him alone like this, everyone will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and nation.””
John 11:47-48 NKJV

Rightly or wrongly, the Pharisees brought stability to the Jewish nation of Israel and they were genuinely concerned that if they lost their authority to do that, then the Romans would once again come in to suppress what the occupying forces perceived as an uprising or rebellion. But there was also a personal fear amongst them if they lost their religious place in their society because they were a proud and arrogant bunch. What would happen to them if the people shifted their allegiance to Jesus way from them? Not all Pharisees were bad of course (remember Nicodemus?) but the majority seemed to be locked into rigid religious behaviour, riddled with pride and arrogance. Jesus had little good to say about the Pharisees. He said, “What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs—beautiful on the outside but filled on the inside with dead people’s bones and all sorts of impurity. Outwardly you look like righteous people, but inwardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness” (Matthew 23:27-28). 

We worship a God who desires the best for His creation and for us human beings. He loves us all, regardless of how we see or relate to Him. A person who denies the existence of God is loved just as much as one who embraces Him wholeheartedly. In fact, “ … God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). But God also created mankind with free will, enabling people to make choices. So how people respond to God is up to them. Jesus demonstrated the love of God every moment that He was here on Planet Earth. He healed the sick and fed large numbers of people. As we have seen He even raised a dead man from the grave. But the main thrust of Jesus’ ministry was to bring joy and glory to God by granting eternal life to all those who chose to believe in Him.

But even today, God takes a personal interest in His children. The invitation to believe in Jesus is still there, waiting for people to respond. In Jesus’ day, the Pharisees were locked into a religious system based on their interpretation of the Law of Moses, a belief system that had no room for change. They thought that Jesus’ offer of eternal life was irrelevant for them because they were convinced that they would inherit eternal life anyway through their obedience to the Law. So they could not see any solution to their dilemma over Jesus. The Jewish people were abandoning them in droves and following Jesus, who they therefore considered to be in danger of being seen as a revolutionary by the Romans, particularly if that was how they presented Him, with devastating consequences. But they lacked understanding about Jesus’ mission because they refused to accept that He was the Son of God, their long-awaited Messiah. Jesus said, “ … for I have come to save the world and not to judge it” (John 12:47b). Luke 19:10, “For the Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost”. Jesus was no revolutionary seeking to overthrow the Roman occupation. That was to come soon enough through a zealot-driven Jewish rebellion in AD70, just a few years later. 

What do we pilgrims do today, when God brings a revival, a new move of God, to our spiritual shores? I was fortunate enough to be in a church that experienced the move of the Holy Spirit that started in Toronto in the 1990’s. But it wasn’t welcomed by every church fellowship, and many looked on from the outside, despising the excesses and in the process missing out on a tremendous blessing of God. God is always willing to bless His people, as we can see from many revivals that have taken place over the years. We must always seek God for His will and purposes for us. We must always ask Him what He wants to do through us every day. He delights in answering that question. 

The Psalmist who wrote Psalm 85 said, “Won’t you revive us again, so your people can rejoice in you?” (Psalm 85:6). We pilgrims have the opportunity of being revived every day, as we read in John 7:37b-38, “ … Anyone who is thirsty may come to me! Anyone who believes in me may come and drink! For the Scriptures declare, ‘Rivers of living water will flow from his heart’”. 

The answer to the Pharisees’ dilemma was staring them right in their faces, but they chose to reject, rather than accept, Jesus. They could not accept a new move of God. But we must always be on the look out for what God is doing in our day, in case He is doing something new. God said to the Jewish people, “For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland” (Isaiah 43:19). So we pilgrims must look up, always attentive to our Heavenly Father’s next move.

Dear Father God. We don’t want to miss what You are doing in our time here on Planet Earth. Please give us ears to hear and eyes to see Your wonderful ways. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

People Kept Coming

Posted on by korgrocker

“Then Jesus and his disciples left Jerusalem and went into the Judean countryside. Jesus spent some time with them there, baptizing people. At this time John the Baptist was baptizing at Aenon, near Salim, because there was plenty of water there; and people kept coming to him for baptism.”
John 3:22-23 NLT

Jesus was baptising. John the Baptist was baptising, and the people kept coming for baptism. If that was happening today, then we would draw the conclusion that revival had broken out. The people of that day were perhaps conscious that the constant rituals of animal sacrifices for sins did not ease their guilty consciences. They still felt the weight of their sins and felt they had to do something about it. To them the public act of baptism was a declaration that they had repented of their sins and the guilt was washed away into the waters of the Jordan river. 

If there is anything needed today it is a new wave of the Holy Spirit, bringing a new awakening and revival in our churches. I had the privilege of being in a church in the 1990’s at the same time as the revival in Toronto, and the impact of that visitation of God spilled over into my church. Those were exciting times. The congregation swelled from two hundred or so to close on a thousand. There were as many chairs put out as possible within the space available, and still people kept coming. Standing around the walls, sitting on the floor. The fire doors were opened and groups gathered around outside. The 6pm service kept going until 1 or 2am the next morning, but the passage of time didn’t seem to matter. But most importantly, God visited His people. The Holy Spirit did some amazing things with miracles of healing and transformed lives. But as I look around our world today, conditions are ripe for another move of God. We keep praying.

We pilgrims are central to God’s purposes here on earth. We are the salt and light that allows God to touch the lives of the otherwise untouchable. We pray and do practical things for our friends, families and neighbours. We pray for them and perhaps even dare to see a revival again. 

O Lord. We pray, “may Your Kingdom come, may Your will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven”. Make it happen, Lord, we pray. Amen. 

Blowing in the Wind

Posted on by korgrocker

“Jesus replied, “I assure you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life. So don’t be surprised when I say, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it wants. Just as you can hear the wind but can’t tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can’t explain how people are born of the Spirit.””
John 3:5-8 NLT

Jesus was a Master at using everyday objects and events to explain spiritual truths. His explanation of new birth to Nicodemus starts off all very logical. He said, “Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life”. A natural life, and a spiritual life. Both within each person who has been created in God’s image. But then Jesus uses the analogy of the wind to explain that there is a mystery about being born of the Spirit. 

In the last week or so there has been a lot of wind in Scotland. Several storms have crossed the country, wreaking havoc in their path. Trees downed, slates and tiles blown off roofs. Travel arrangements disrupted. And everyone has been aware of the noise generated by the flow of air around buildings and trees. In fact any solid object above ground has felt the effects of the wind. Jesus explained to Nicodemus that the wind can be heard but not seen. The wind is a continuous entity with no beginning and end. No-one knows where it starts or finishes. Of course we can see or feel the impact of the wind. A piece of paper blows down the road. A tree sways backwards and forwards, perhaps creaking or rubbing against its fellows. When driving over an exposed section of road we can feel the gusts tugging at the steering wheel. Trying to walk or cycle against the wind is well nigh impossible sometimes. 

When applied to the Holy Spirit and His work, the analogy of wind fits very well. We cannot see the Holy Spirit but we can see the impact He makes on the people in whom He is working. Lives changed. Prophecies forthcoming. Even miracles and God-induced events. And our spiritual birth comes about by the Holy Spirit working in our lives. In John 16:8 we read, “And when he comes, he will convict the world of its sin, and of God’s righteousness, and of the coming judgment“. That’s the wind of the Spirit blowing through the world. Sometimes He brings a storm and revival breaks out. At other times He gently blows through receptive hearts bringing change and a touch from God. But like the wind, we can’t see it directly. But we see the effects. So do we pilgrims look a bit wind-blown today? If not, then we only have to ask the Holy Spirit to come.

Father God. We pray for the wind of Your Spirit to blow away every cobweb in our hearts and lives, leaving us pure and presentable to You. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Holy Spirit Power

Posted on by korgrocker

“Yet I dare not boast about anything except what Christ has done through me, bringing the Gentiles to God by my message and by the way I worked among them. They were convinced by the power of miraculous signs and wonders and by the power of God’s Spirit. In this way, I have fully presented the Good News of Christ from Jerusalem all the way to Illyricum.”
Romans 15:18-19 NLT

Paul must have been an amazing man. He preached the Gospel throughout what we know as the Middle East, and in between times he wrote a large chunk of the New Testament and spent time in prison. He was often physically abused for his labours and was shipwrecked three times. And historical records seem to indicate that he finally died a violent death in Rome. But the one thing that stood out in his ministry was the “power of God’s Spirit”. His message to the Gentiles was supported and confirmed by “miraculous signs and wonders”. But we shouldn’t be surprised by this. We read in Mark 16:20, “And the disciples went everywhere and preached, and the Lord worked through them, confirming what they said by many miraculous signs”. 

The early church was no stranger to the miraculous. As just one example, we read of the contact between Peter and a beggar in Acts 3:6-8, “But Peter said, “I don’t have any silver or gold for you. But I’ll give you what I have. In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, get up and walk!” Then Peter took the lame man by the right hand and helped him up. And as he did, the man’s feet and ankles were instantly healed and strengthened. He jumped up, stood on his feet, and began to walk! Then, walking, leaping, and praising God, he went into the Temple with them”. As we read through the Book of Acts we see other times where the message of the Good News about Jesus was accompanied by miraculous events. 

Some church groups and denominations today have no expectation for the work of the Holy Spirit being manifested through the miraculous. They think that these Holy Spirit works died away with the early Apostles, but in fact church history records miracles taking place throughout the first few centuries and at sporadic points ever since. In my lifetime I have observed at first hand some miraculous healings, including that of my own daughter, so nothing will convince me that the Holy Spirit is not alive and well in these times, and doing “miraculous signs and wonders”. The early disciples expected that when they preached there would be a confirmation by the Holy Spirit, giving their message authority. We read about Jesus’ preaching and teaching, and the miracles that accompanied Him, and see again how powerful the Holy Spirit can be. For example, in Matthew 9 we find the story of a paralysed man brought to Jesus on a stretcher by his friends. Jesus started by saying to the man that his sins were forgiven. This considerably upset the Jewish leaders who were there to keep an eye on this upstart itinerant preacher, and their theology stated that only God could forgive sins. Of course, they failed to accept that Jesus was the Messiah and had the authority to forgive sins. But then we read what Jesus said, “So I will prove to you that the Son of Man has the authority on earth to forgive sins.” Then Jesus turned to the paralysed man and said, “Stand up, pick up your mat, and go home!” And the man jumped up and went home” (Matthew 9:6-7). 

Jesus Himself said that His disciples (including us) would have the power through the Holy Spirit to do greater works than even He did. We read what Jesus said in John 14:12, “I tell you the truth, anyone who believes in me will do the same works I have done, and even greater works, because I am going to be with the Father“. How did Jesus perform such wonderful “works”? Through the power of the Holy Spirit, and He lives within us too. Paul wrote in Ephesians 3:20, “Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think“. We are only limited by our lack of faith.

What are we going to do today in the power of the Holy Spirit? A sobering thought, because we are uncomfortable when it comes to sticking our heads above the parapets of the societies in which we live. Societies where we can face much abuse and rejection just for daring to be counter-culturally different for God. But those around us need the power of God to make a difference in their lives. The lonely. The rejected. The sick. The poor and needy. In our societies today it is all about the survival of the fittest, the law of the jungle applies. In the synagogue in Nazareth, Jesus repeated the prophecy of Isaiah about His mission. We read in Luke 4:18-19, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free, and that the time of the Lord’s favour has come“. We too are anointed to continue that mission, proclaiming the Good News with the “Spirit of the Lord” upon us as well. Pew warming is not an option in the Kingdom of God.

Dear Father God. Please visit us again, bringing a Holy Spirit revival to Your people. We need more of Your power and presence in our lives. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.


It Is Time

Posted on by korgrocker

“The twenty-four elders sitting on their thrones before God fell with their faces to the ground and worshipped him. And they said, “We give thanks to you, Lord God, the Almighty, the one who is and who always was, for now you have assumed your great power and have begun to reign. The nations were filled with wrath, but now the time of your wrath has come. It is time to judge the dead and reward your servants the prophets, as well as your holy people, and all who fear your name, from the least to the greatest. It is time to destroy all who have caused destruction on the earth.””
Revelation‬ ‭11:16-18‬ NLT

The last trumpet has sounded. Loud voices are heard shouting in Heaven. At last, the Messiah’s rule and reign over His Kingdom will be established for ever. No more sinful world under the devil’s jurisdiction. No more curses striking mankind. No wonder that the twenty-four elders fall on their faces before God. And they offer Him a prayer of thankfulness. Their prayer is full of relief, full of “at-last” sentiments, as though all mankind’s pent up frustrations are finally going to be dealt with.

The elders’ prayer is in five parts. The first acknowledges who God is and always has been. There is a fashionable phrase that goes something like “live for the moment”. But such a sentiment has no roots. It floats in a hedonistic haze, soon to return to reality with a bump. We pilgrims always keep in mind that our loving Heavenly Father has always been around. We live in His design, in a world full of His created wonders. A moment in God’s presence extends on and on and …

The second part expresses the elders’ gratitude that, after a lifetime of grieving over a fallen, devil-controlled, world, God is finally calling time and is about to adopt His rightful place as Ruler over all He has made. The elders refer to God finally being about to use His “great power”, all that is needed to reign over His Kingdom.

The third part of the elders’ prayer thanks God for exchanging the world’s wrath for His wrath. No longer will mankind’s anger, stoked up by the devil, have any place. Instead God’s wrath will prevail. Sometimes I wonder, when speaking to people, about their propensity to angrily wave their fists in God’s face. As though their puny efforts will matter. I’m reminded of Psalm 2, where we read, “Why are the nations so angry? Why do they waste their time with futile plans? But the one who rules in heaven laughs. The Lord scoffs at them.” (‭‭Psalms‬ ‭2:1, 4). And it is not as though mankind has had no warning about what is to come – Psalm 2:5-6 continues, “Then in anger he rebukes them, terrifying them with his fierce fury. For the Lord declares, “I have placed my chosen king on the throne in Jerusalem, on my holy mountain.””

The fourth part of the prayer contains the ominous phrase “it is time to judge the dead”. One day everyone who has ever lived will have to face into the reality that mankind will face a time of judgement. The grave will in no way be a place where God’s wrath can be avoided. All those who have declined God’s invitation to join His family will soon realise what that means. If they don’t want to live in Heaven, there is only one other place where eternity can be spent. And the elders’ prayer ends with the ominous statement that “It is time to destroy all who have caused destruction on the earth”. 

Thankfully there is a fifth part to the elder’s prayer. A time of reward is coming for God’s prophets, holy people and those who fear His name. The elders must have been ecstatic. No wonder they were on their faces before God.

Where do we pilgrims find ourselves this morning? On our faces before God or biting our nails in fearful anticipation of what is to come? While there is still time we must embrace God’s Son, Jesus. He warned His generation and, because of God’s grace, the warning still stands today. We read His words in John 12:35-36, “Jesus replied, “My light will shine for you just a little longer. Walk in the light while you can, so the darkness will not overtake you. Those who walk in the darkness cannot see where they are going. Put your trust in the light while there is still time; then you will become children of the light.” After saying these things, Jesus went away and was hidden from them.”

While there is time, while we can, we pilgrims must extend Jesus’ invitation, to trust in His light, to the generation in which we live. A brief examination of the news on the media soon exposes the fact that that there is an awful lot going on that has no eternal consequence at all. The psalmist was certainly right in Psalm 2 when he said, “Why do they waste their time with futile plans?” I summed it up recently, when discussing the pros and cons of Scottish independence, by saying that Scotland needs revival not independence. The adherents to worldly plans will find that they have no value at all, compared with a life to be spent in eternity. So we pilgrims have an opportunity, during this season of God’s grace, to reset the agenda, to remind those around us, while we still can, that “now the time of [God’s] wrath has come“.

Father God. With the elders we fall on our faces before You, giving thanks for who You are, and for the coming period of Your rule and reign on earth. Please help us to get ready. Amen.

Revival

Posted on by korgrocker

“Won’t You revive us again, 
     so Your people can rejoice in You? 
Show us Your unfailing love, O Lord, 
     and grant us Your salvation.”
Psalms‬ ‭85:6-7‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Why was the Psalmist asking God for a revival? Society’s relationships with God have waxed and waned over the centuries since Jesus walked this earth. A time of dryness is followed by a period of spiritual blessings before it dies back into a lethargic and Godless state again. It was obviously the same in the history of Israel, as we can tell from the Biblical writings in the Old Testament. What is there about human beings that they move away from the very One who can provide the life they need, only returning to Him when they hit an insurmountable problem? We have seen it particularly since the start of the Covid pandemic; churches that used to be well attended are now struggling to get going again because people have not returned to the pews. But so many people, secure in their comfortable lives, think to themselves, “Why should we connect with God again. What’s in it for me?” But Asaph, the writer of Psalm 85, boldly asks God the question – “Won’t You revive us again”? Why should God do that? After all, He created man with the option of free choice. Mankind can choose to accept or reject their Creator, should they so wish. And in the same way God has a choice, Asaph points out. If God revives us, he suggests, then His people will rejoice in Him once again. It’s almost a “chicken and egg” situation. But we know that if we reach out to God then we will find that He is there. Jeremiah 29:13 reads, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” I have a picture in my mind this morning of a man living in a room quite happily. There’s a door on the far side, but he doesn’t bother about it. Not even curiosity will drive him to open it. But until he does, he won’t find the wonderful world, God’s world, that exists on the other side. No more walls defining his limits. Just a limitless world filled with our limitless God. And the door isn’t even locked.

Asaph asks God to take the initiative. He asks God to revive us so that His people, us, you and me, can experience once again a wonderful relationship with our wonderful Heavenly Father. Asaph gives God the excuse for revival – “so Your people can rejoice in You”. I pray that prayer as well this morning. If there is ever a time when our world needs to rejoice in God it is today.