Sirach 16:11 “Even if there were only one stiff-necked person, it would be a wonder if he remained unpunished. For mercy and wrath are with the Lord; he is mighty to forgive—but he also pours out wrath.”This episode is about how God is calling us to repent, not just for ourselves but for those that cannot or will not repent for themselves. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Repent, Now Is The Time
Sirach 16:11 “Even if there were only one stiff-necked person, it would be a wonder if he remained unpunished. For mercy and wrath are with the Lord; he is mighty to forgive—but he also pours out wrath.”
I don’t think we like to think about things like this. I know I don’t. I like to think of God as just love. I struggle with reading the Old Testament at times because it is hard for me to reconcile the God I read about in the Old Testament with the God I have in my mind. I think of God as loving and forgiving. I picture a God that is just pouring down love, mercy and forgiveness on us like it is rain. I picture a God who would do anything to save us and to protect us. This is the God that I picture in my head. And then when I read about a god that killed all the first born children in Egypt, I struggle to reconcile the two. Hebrews 13:8 says, “ Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” Since we know that God is the same yesterday, today and forever, we know that the God of the Old Testament, is the same God in the New Testament. So, why the discrepancy? What is different?
I don’t know if anything is different. God is love. He loves us more than we could ever know. He has loved us from the beginning of time and that will never change. However, God is not only love. He is our Heavenly Father. Think about your father, or a father figure in your life. Did they just love you and never correct you? When you have children, you are responsible for forming them into the type of person they are to be. You are responsible for teaching them how to live and for enforcing consequences when they do things that go against your rules. When you enforce these consequences, does that mean that you do not love your children? No, quite the contrary, when you enforce these rules you are letting your children know that you love them too much to let them mess up their lives.
This is what the Lord is doing, only He is responsible for the entire human race. Can you imagine that type of responsibility? It is all I can handle to try to raise three responsible young men. I can’t imagine if I had billions of children that I was responsible for. God created Adam and Eve, and things were going pretty good. Then Eve ate the fruit and it all went downhill from there. Once sin entered the world, things kept getting worse. God has been very patient over the years. We, as humans, have been doing what we want to do for a very long time and many of us don’t pay much attention to what it is God would like us to be doing. It seems we have all gotten pretty comfortable living our lives outside of the faith, or perhaps living a watered down version of our faith. This is especially true during the pandemic. Some of us have actually grown in our faith more during this pandemic. I know my in laws started watching daily mass during the pandemic. Churches were closed and they discovered that mass was on the TV every day at 10 am. So they started watching daily. Before the pandemic, they did not do that. Some of us have gotten in the habit of not going to church and not watching it on TV and that is not good.
Our God is a just God. You will read that often in the Bible. The Bible clearly spells out how we are supposed to live. If that is not enough we have the 10 commandments. We also have Jesus’ life that clearly portrays how we should all be living. The bible not only tells us how to live, it also tells us what will happen if we don’t live the way God is telling us to live. Our God wouldn’t be a just God if he just watched us continue to head down the wrong path and didn’t say or do anything about it. What would you think of a father that had children that continually misbehaved, went against his wishes and did awful things and yet the father just sat by and did nothing? God loves us and He doesn’t love when he has to give us consequences for our actions. However, He tells us what we should do, He tells us what will happen if we do it, and then He lets us make the decisions of what we want to do. That is a loving and caring father.
The verse above says, “For mercy and wrath are with the Lord; he is mighty to forgive—but he also pours out wrath.” God gives us so much mercy and he is so forgiving. However, I don’t believe that we would ever learn any lessons, or turn away from our sinful ways if he was only merciful and if he never did anything when we acted out or went against his ways. I don’t think that God likes having to punish us. I think this is why Moses, and so many other people throughout the Bible were able to intercede on our behalf, or on the behalf of God’s people. It is a patter that occurred over and over again throughout the Bible. God’s people rebelled against God and went against all He taught them, and then someone interceded on their behalf and they were saved. God is happy when we intercede for those that can’t or won’t intercede for themselves. This was the topic of many of the words that were given at my prayer group this past Thursday. I think that they were important and I want to share them with you so you can see that God does not want to punish us, however, if He is to be just, He can’t just keep sitting by and watching as we destroy all that He has built.
There were three powerful words of prophesy given. I think we all need to hear them. The first one started with a vision. This vision was of a huge crevice, with a gate on one side. We are not standing around it, we are kneeling and we are pleading. I ask the Lord what this vision meant and he said:
“Repent, repent, repent” and you say, “I have and I am tired of repenting." And I say, "do not become weary of repenting morning, noon, and night. For you are not repenting just for yourself, you are pleading to the father for your brothers and sisters who cannot repent or won’t repent. Will you become the bridge for them before the gate is closed? Love the falling, intercede for the falling, repent for the falling, my heart bleeds for the falling. Your prayers of repentance relieves my pain. I love them all, I died for them all. Repentance is a form of forgiveness. Ask forgiveness for the fallen and the broken. Who will, if my people will not.
As you can see by this word, God wants us to repent for those that either can’t or won’t repent. There were several saints that dedicated their lives to praying for the souls of sinners. God doesn’t want to see any of His children end up anywhere but in Heaven. The world is a crazy place right now and God is asking for our help to save His children.
The second word or prophecy that was given said, “Now is the time my children, now is the time. Wait no longer, repent. Get on your knees, get on the knees of your heart. Come to me in the depth of your heart in great humility and I your Lord will hear and answer your prayers for your brothers and sisters. I will forgive and have forgiven the world and I will continue to pour out my mercy on all of you and each of you. But I ask you to come now, do not wait. Do not wait for time is growing very short. You do not know the hour only my father in heaven knows the hour. Time is short. Heed my word. Heed my call to you. Come, come into the depths of your hearts, come on your bended knee. Come and repent and believe the good news that I am your risen Lord, and you are mine. This was the second time within in 15 minute period that God mentioned us repenting not only for ourselves, but for others as well. I get the feeling this is something He really wants us to hear.
The third word of prophecy said, “Kneel down before me in supplication. Call out to me for the needs of mankind. Now is my time of mercy. Now is my time of mercy. It is the time to ask, the time to pray, the time to sacrifice. Call out for my mercy for you and all mankind. I am a merciful God. Repent of all that is wrong. Call out for my mercy, for my justice is before me. It is only my mercy that can stop it. So again I tell you kneel down before me and supplication.” The person who received this word has had the impression that it was so bad that His justice also had to be satisfied so that's why he's asking for sacrifice so that he would not be almost forced to do what is just if we do not change. This was the third time in that same 15 minutes. I do not know what exactly God is talking about. I do know that when he says only HIs father know the hour, that is the truth.
The apostles expected the second coming of the Lord to be within their lifetime and we are now 2,000 or so years after that. We do not know how much time we each have in this world. What I do know is that God is telling us that it is important that we repent right now for ourselves and for others. He is telling us that He wants to pour out His mercy on us but that He needs us to ask for it. He is also calling us to sacrifice. That can look different for everyone, and we should pause to see what that looks like for each one of us. Repenting for ourselves and others doesn’t have to be long prayer. It could be as simple as telling the Lord we repent for ourselves and others several times a day. One of the ladies in my prayer group said, “It doesn’t have to be a long prayer, God listens to your heart, not your words.” So, even if you aren’t praying a specific prayer, but you are thinking about your sins and those of the sinners frequently, God will know. If your heart desires to save the sinners and for God to have mercy on the sinners, then even if you say nothing, God will know. God is asking us for our help, will you help Him?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we repent for ourselves and we repent for those that either can not or will not repent for themselves. Lord show us how you would like us to repent and how you would like us to sacrifice. Lord, we are all in and we want what you want. Show us what it is that you want. Shine a light on the places in our lives where we need to repent and then give us the strength to do that. We love you Lord, you are so amazing. We thank you for coming to us and asking us for our help. You are so mighty and so powerful and we are lucky we have you. Thank you for all that you do for us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. We have just started a new week, which means a new character trait. I find it funny that this week’s trait is self-control and as I am writing this it is Halloween Night and I just had a lack of self control when it came to handing out candy. I have been really good about not eating candy for awhile now. However, I ate probably 4 mini butterfingers, 2 mini milky ways, and a few baby ruth. However, I will send out the email tonight for self control and then I will figure out how to increase my self control so that I don’t eat all the left over candy we have. I hope you will all join me this week. If you would still like to sign up for the “10 Weeks To Be More Like Jesus” challenge you can email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or you can click here. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day.