As I said in a previous post, my team and I are working with a new church here in Rwanda. This means that every night we preach to the congregation plus two times on Sundays. It has made preachers out of all of us. Through the process of sermon writing and delivering, the Lord has been showing me so much and has even brought me to the realization that I love doing it (who would have thought?!) This last week he laid-what I consider to be-a particularly powerful message on my heart. I preached it yesterday in church but the Lord has me feeling convinced that the message isn’t done yet so I’m posting it here. If you’ve stumbled onto my blog and need some encouragement today, feel free to keep reading and if this message impacts you in some way feel free to share it with friends!
For those of us that know God… even just the smallest piece of God… we tend to know Him by many names and many more character traits. Powerful, mighty, just, good, merciful… the list goes on and on, but what I really want to talk about is the Lord’s sweet compassion and deep love for His people.
I will admit that it hasn’t always been easy for me to see or accept this part of God’s personality. Back in September I asked the Lord to tell me what book of the Bible he would like me to read and he directed me to Isaiah. Isaiah is one of the longest books of the Bible and it seems to showcase God’s wrath above most other character traits. As you probably remember from my blog post about it, it was hard for me to understand and I became angry with God. Don’t get me wrong here, the Israelites really did sin ALL THE TIME, but God’s reactions seemed so harsh to me. I mean, are they really any worse than I am? As I reached the end of Isaiah I had more questions than answers, but I felt the Lord asking me to continue on into Jeremiah. As I read the Holy Spirit revealed truth to me with fresh eyes. I saw the truth behind all of the wrath. Our God is jealous and compassionate. His motive is always love. I saw this best demonstrated in Jeremiah 3. It’s a somewhat lengthy chapter, but I encourage you to read the whole thing. There is so much goodness in there!
“If a man divorces a woman and she goes and marries someone else, he will not take her back again, for that would surely corrupt the land. But you have prostituted yourself with many lovers, so why are you trying to come back to me?” says the Lord. “Look at the shrines on every hilltop. Is there any place you have not been defiled by your adultery with other gods? You sit like a prostitute beside the road waiting for a customer. You sit alone like a nomad in the desert. You have polluted the land with your prostitution and your wickedness. That’s why even the spring rains have failed. For you are a brazen prostitute and completely shameless. Yet you say to me, ‘Father, you have been my guide since my youth. Surely you won’t be angry forever! Surely you can forget about it!’ So you talk, but you keep on doing all the evil you can.” During the reign of King Josiah, the Lord said to me, “Have you seen what fickle Israel has done? Like a wife who commits adultery, Israel has worshiped other gods on every hill and under every green tree. I thought, ‘After she has done all this, she will return to me.’ But she did not return, and her faithless sister Judah saw this. She saw that I divorced faithless Israel because of her adultery. But that treacherous sister Judah had no fear, and now she, too, has left me and given herself to prostitution. Israel treated it all so lightly—she thought nothing of committing adultery by worshiping idols made of wood and stone. So now the land has been polluted. But despite all this, her faithless sister Judah has never sincerely returned to me. She has only pretended to be sorry. I, the Lord, have spoken!” Then the Lord said to me, “Even faithless Israel is less guilty than treacherous Judah! Therefore, go and give this message to Israel. This is what the Lord says: “O Israel, my faithless people, come home to me again, for I am merciful. I will not be angry with you forever. Only acknowledge your guilt. Admit that you rebelled against the Lord your God and committed adultery against him by worshiping idols under every green tree. Confess that you refused to listen to my voice. I, the Lord, have spoken! “Return home, you wayward children,” says the Lord, “for I am your master. I will bring you back to the land of Israel — one from this town and two from that family— from wherever you are scattered. And I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will guide you with knowledge and understanding. “And when your land is once more filled with people,” says the Lord, “you will no longer wish for ‘the good old days’ when you possessed the Ark of the Lord’s Covenant. You will not miss those days or even remember them, and there will be no need to rebuild the Ark. In that day Jerusalem will be known as ‘The Throne of the Lord.’ All nations will come there to honor the Lord. They will no longer stubbornly follow their own evil desires. In those days the people of Judah and Israel will return together from exile in the north. They will return to the land I gave your ancestors as an inheritance forever. “I thought to myself, ‘I would love to treat you as my own children!’ I wanted nothing more than to give you this beautiful land— the finest possession in the world. I looked forward to your calling me ‘Father,’ and I wanted you never to turn from me. But you have been unfaithful to me, you people of Israel! You have been like a faithless wife who leaves her husband. I, the Lord, have spoken.” Voices are heard high on the windswept mountains, the weeping and pleading of Israel’s people. For they have chosen crooked paths and have forgotten the Lord their God. “My wayward children,” says the Lord, “come back to me, and I will heal your wayward hearts.” “Yes, we’re coming,” the people reply, “for you are the Lord our God. Our worship of idols on the hills and our religious orgies on the mountains are a delusion. Only in the Lord our God will Israel ever find salvation. From childhood we have watched as everything our ancestors worked for— their flocks and herds, their sons and daughters— was squandered on a delusion. Let us now lie down in shame and cover ourselves with dishonor, for we and our ancestors have sinned against the Lord our God. From our childhood to this day we have never obeyed him.”
??Jeremiah? ?3:1-25? ?NLT??
We can see in the first parts of the chapter that the people of Judah are deeply sinful. They have built shrines to other gods all over the land. The Lord compares them to a prostitute because they have committed idolatry over and over again. Even after they’ve turned to many other gods, they come back the the Lord and ask him not to be angry with them and to forget what they’ve done, but they STILL continue their sinning. The Lord continues on to reveal a broken heart as he describes the people of Judah divorcing him. Divorce is a painful and messy thing under any circumstance, but imagine how God feels as he says that? God does not desire divorce for his people, and he certainly does not desire divorce FROM his people.
However, in the midst of his grief he shows us his unfailing love. In verses 12-15 he pleads with Judah to come back to Him. He tells them that he will not be angry with them forever. He refers to them lovingly as his wayward children. He promises to give them shepherds who love Him wholeheartedly. The Lord even continues on in verse 17 to say that the people themselves will be the Throne of the Lord and that they will no longer need the Ark of the Covenant. God gives you these promises too. God is pleading for your heart too. If these verses don’t convince you of how much the Lord LOVES his people, then perhaps verses 19 and 22 will.
“I thought to myself, ‘I would love to treat you as my own children!’ I wanted nothing more than to give you this beautiful land— the finest possession in the world. I looked forward to your calling me ‘Father,’ and I wanted you never to turn from me.”
“My wayward children,” says the Lord, “come back to me, and I will heal your wayward hearts.”
God, the ALMIGHTY, looks forward to YOU calling Him FATHER! He desires to give you beautiful things! He wants to heal your wayward hearts, but he can only do this if you surrender to Him. He can only do this if you let him shine light on the darkest parts of your life. Allowing him into these places isn’t easy (I can tell you that from first hand experience). It requires us to truly humble ourselves, but as God reveals, it can all begin with a simple, “Yes, I am coming.”
The very best part is that once we surrender and repent of our sins, the Lord is prepared to use us to bring other people back into His love just as he has done for us! He makes this point clear in Jeremiah 4:2 when he says, “Then when you swear by my name, saying, ‘As surely as the Lord lives,’ you could do so with truth, justice, and righteousness. Then you would be a blessing to the nations of the world, and all people would come and praise my name.” So, for any of you who feel that you have wandered too far from the Lord, or for those of you who haven’t known his love yet, I want to give you the good news that the Creator of the Universe, the Author of Life, the very God who knows every hair on your head LOVES you and longs for you to call him Father. No matter what you have done, or where you have been, His arms are open wide to you. So I would just like to invite you to repent and accept the love being offered to you right here, right now.
If you’re ready to surrender and know the God who draws you with an everlasting kindness, then just feel free to say this simple prayer: Dear Lord Jesus, I know that I am a sinner and I ask for your forgiveness. I believe that you died for my sins and rose from the dead. I believe that you love me. I believe that you are longing for me to call you Father. I turn from my sins and want to trust and follow you as my Lord, my savior, and most importantly, my Father. Amen.
If you just found yourself praying that prayer, then I also want to encourage you to get connected with a church or fellow Christians who can support you in this exciting decision. If you’re not sure who to reach out to, please feel free to reach out to me.
Much love and many blessings,
Kristen
