“Then Hezekiah and all the people rejoiced over how God had prepared the people, for it had come about suddenly.” – 2 Chronicles 29:36

It’s easy to become discouraged by our culture’s movement away from God. We read the articles, hear the statistics, and personally witness the decline of faith in the West. It’s easy to move from these observations to a mistaken belief that it’s all inevitable and inexorable. It is not!!!

In His timing, God can bring about dramatic awakening and revival. Moreover, He can do so unexpectedly and extraordinarily quickly! It’s happened before in the Western world and also throughout biblical history.

After a long generation of unfaithfulness, King Hezekiah was God’s chosen instrument to bring Judah back to faithfulness. He motivated the priests and Levites to faithfulness and called upon the people of Judah and Israel and they responded. They responded with joy and delight, with a profound, God-given hunger for fellowship and the worship of the Lord. Hezekiah’s revival saw a movement of faith that hadn’t been seen in centuries.

All that took place immediately after one of the most faithless times in Judah’s history. So never give up hope! Trust in the Lord. Pray without ceasing for a new awakening. Be faithful and serve well in the place and time God has appointed for you.

“As far as the east is from the west,
so far does he remove our transgressions from us.”
– Psalm 103:12

Please, please, please understand that this is true!!! When God forgives your sins and mistakes, they are completely forgiven and completely gone forever! God doesn’t hold your failures over you, nor will He throw them in your face. Once forgiven, He will never think or speak of your failures again. If it feels otherwise, please understand that that isn’t God doing that to you, it’s the devil!

God’s glorious forgiveness isn’t some difficult or unobtainable reward. It is the result of Christ’s work on the cross. Through His sacrificial death and physical resurrection, Jesus Christ dealt with your sins forever. There is nothing you can or should try to add to His work on the cross. All you must do is believe in Him.

Scripture is clear, that if Christ-followers confess our sins to God, He will always, always, always forgive us, cleanse us, and love us. If you’ve asked God’s forgiveness, then your sins are gone forever in His eyes. Unfortunately, forgiving yourself can be the hardest part sometimes. Please believe that Christ’s blood has washed you clean from that sin. Forgive yourself. God has forgiven you. Forgive yourself. Walk into this day hand-in-hand with your Father in Heaven, forgiven and free.

“Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love.” – 1 Corinthians 16:13-14

What incredible final advice as Paul concludes his letter to the troubled, yet promising churches of Corinth! Yes, they had serious problems caused by bringing the culture of the day into their churches rather than maturing believers to live like Jesus. Yes, they had struggles, squabbles, and injustices based on social divisions and spiritual gifts that demonstrated they still hadn’t fully realized all the wondrous aspects of the Gospel. Nonetheless, they still had the Gospel and the Holy Spirit living within them, so they had everything they needed to reform their churches – and so do we!

There was no problem in the church then (or today) that couldn’t be handled by this advice:

– Be watchful. Be alert to the error of bringing the assumptions and values of the prevailing non-Christian culture into Christ’s bride. Don’t let it happen! Be on guard against compromising the Word of God to suit the social mores.

– Stand firm in the faith. Following Jesus is hard and unpopular. It was then, it is today. Don’t bend the faith to minimize opposition. Stand firm in the faith. Proclaim Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and the only way to be reconciled with God in Heaven!

– Act like men. Grow up! Grow to Christ-like maturity. Don’t whine, complain, or fuss like a bunch of babies. Don’t act like children comparing whose spiritual gifts or talents are better. Don’t choose teams within the faith based on Christian celebrities. Act like Jesus!

– Be strong. Taking up your cross daily, denying yourself, and following Jesus requires strength that only Christ can provide. So nurture your spiritual life to tap into the strength God has given you in Him. Then take up your cross daily, deny yourself, and follow Jesus!

– Do everything in love. Seriously. Do everything in love. If you’re doing all the other stuff but it isn’t done in love, you aren’t actually following Jesus. In fact, you’re almost certainly undermining the Kingdom of God. Love!

“Every way of a man is right in his own eyes,
but the Lord weighs the heart.”
– Proverbs 21:2

We have an extraordinary ability to convince ourselves that whatever we’re doing or want to do is right. We can rationalize just about anything and we need to recognize that terrifying ability lest we be captured by it. As Christians, we even pick and choose Bible verses or popular teachers to twist Scripture and reassure ourselves that we’re in the right, that up is down, and that wrong is right (or that right is wrong if we’re trying to avoid doing something God wants).

God isn’t convinced by any of it! He isn’t convinced by sophistry, semantics, or sleight-of-hand. He isn’t distracted, persuaded, or worn down. God knows why we want to do what we want to do. And if what we want to do is sin, He knows that we want to do it because we are sinful. God knows your heart. He knows your mind. And He isn’t swayed by artful and false reasoning to justify any sin under the sun.

To live a life that truly follows Jesus, stop listening to your own persuasive reasons justifying sinful action or inaction. Get on God’s page instead! The best way to do that is to be a regular reader of the Bible. Don’t be content to let others read for you. Read God’s Word yourself every day, day after day, year after year. Each day, hold God’s Word up to yourself as a mirror. Are you doing what God plainly teaches and values or are you avoiding, evading, and ignoring God’s will and word?

Ask for God to speak to you through His word. Ask God to reveal to you how He sees your heart. Stop listening to yourself and stop listening to the culture as you and they argue for things clearly against God’s will. Listen to the Lord!

“So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.” – 1 Corinthians 15:42-44

This is what we look forward to in Christ! As followers of Jesus, we too will rise from the dead as He has. Our resurrection won’t merely be a raising of our spirit (though our spirit goes to be with the Lord immediately when we die). Rather, our ultimate and eternal future is to be raised as a spirit in a resurrected, perfected, glorious body!

When our bodies are raised, they won’t ache, creak, or groan. They will not grow weak, break down, or betray us. They will be glorious. They will be eternal. They will be powerful. We don’t know exactly what all that means or looks like, but we’ve been promised that we will be like Jesus on that day (1 John 3:2).

So take heart, during long seasons of aching and groaning, of weakness and frustration with your perishable body. Don’t despair. Don’t lose hope. This time will pass. What lies ahead for followers of Jesus is unimaginably wonderful! In that moment, the darkness of life in a fallen world will fade away amidst the brilliant beauty and wonder of resurrection, renewal, and God’s eternal presence.