“Forgive me for asking.“ (7:2) We ask forgiveness for many things, but how often do we ask forgiveness for the questions we pose God? Does it sound stilted, rather formal; how you might speak to the Queen? What does it say about Amos? He is like Abraham with his plea for Sodom & Gomorrah: “May the Lord not be angry” even though “I am but dust and ashes” may I ask: “If there are just fifty… forty, thirty, twenty, ten” righteous people will you relent?
Read More all-powerful, intimacy with God, kindness, repentance
The response to Peter’s message about the death and resurrection of Jesus was dramatic. “What shall we do?” asked his hearers. “Turn back to God,” Peter replied. “Your sins will be forgiven.”
With this story, Luke tells his audience that the long-awaited day has arrived.
Read More momentum, mission, resurrection, behaviour, love, repentanceHome, it’s been said, is the place where they have to take you back no matter what you’ve done. Not all homes are like that, of course, yet the sentiment works as a metaphor of God’s unending desire to restore his wandering children to their proper estate.
“Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity” (v 1).
Read More repentance, welcome, return
Read Reflect (Editor’s comment: astute readers will notice that verses 13ff. are nearly identical with Isaiah 36-39, which theStory covered last month. We have included them here with a different person’s comments as a reminder of what happened in the story.) Usually, when everything around us is going crazy, our first thought isn’t “What did […]
Read More humility, consequences, rébellion, repentanceRead Reflect Answered prayers, healing, health, wealth and fame. God made Hezekiah extremely rich (v 29a) and a resounding success – “In fact, everything he did was successful!” (v 30b) Hezekiah ‘had it all,’ it seems. So everyone thought; but God doesn’t stop there. For God, ‘the matter of the heart is the heart of […]
Read More success, repentance, prideRead Reflect Hailing from a subregion of the world that has had its share of horrible political upheavals and atrocious civil wars, I recall my shock when one local missionary I was traveling with, upon hearing me cursorily mentioning the name of a particular military dictator, actually say something to this effect: “I hope he […]
Read More grace, sin, repentance, forgiveness, restorationRead Reflect How do we do what’s right and good when tolerance, complacency, permissiveness, selfishness, moral decline, and pleasure seeking abound? How do we “discover the right route for our souls” (v 16, Msg) when even believers are lazy and content, congregate around preachers who tell them what they want to hear (2 Timothy 4:3), […]
Read More listening, repentance, peace, right road, good choice
Warning: Trouble WILL come when we commit to serving Christ. And we WILL make mistakes.
No one likes to make mistakes. But the reality is that we will need to be corrected from time to time. It’s how we respond that builds our character and faith.
Read More correction, repentance, restoration, accountability, encouragementLife is filled with warnings, isn’t it? Car owners see a myriad of coloured symbols on their dashboards and dig out the owner’s manual to learn more. Our technological gadgets give us warnings about viruses, software updates and drive us to the “help” menu many times.
Read More judgment, repentance, warningsGod is very patient in putting up with our sins. Often he does not allow the consequences of our sins to come upon us immediately after we have done something wrong (2 Peter 3:9-10). Yet that delay does not mean that a reckoning will not come. Even though the Lord is patient, there comes a point when God has had enough of the wrongdoings of his people.
Read More sin, consequences, repentance, punishment