WEDNESDAY August 28th
2 Chronicles 7:13–14
‘When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.’
I prepared this devotion, at the beginning of August, during the week when the awful attack took place in Southport which led to three innocent children being murdered. I readily admit that I feel a lot of anger at this moment, with the things that are taking place in our country. Now, you will have to have been hiding over the last year or two if you haven’t noticed the rise of lawlessness, disorder, crime etc in our nation, and I am going to be a little political, have you noticed how so much of it has been blamed upon those who are considered ‘right wing’ in their political beliefs, as if those who are left wing or centrists do not need to take any responsibility.
Well, I think that we all need to take some responsibility, for as a nation we have rejected God, we have rejected the moral standards that are found in his inspired written word and we have decided that we can live how we want, promote whatever we want, regardless of how depraved and wicked it might be (take for example the scenes at the opening of the Olympics in Paris) and we expect to get away with it and we have to accept that truth is a matter of personal opinion, therefore we are supposed to embrace all and let live.
What is the answer? The politicians will tell us that it is all about diversity and tolerance, but I (we) as those who follow the Lord Jesus Christ cannot blindly accept all and sundry, for we know that it is essential that we seek out that which is truth, we seek to live according to that which is truth, and we are to shun that which is opposed to truth.
But what is truth? What is the truth? Well, I answer that truth is that which springs from the heart of the true and the living God, for he is the God of truth, in fact he is the only God, all else are but gods, conjured up by man’s imagination or crafted through the workmanship of those who carve them out of wood and stone. Truth is also that which has been revealed through the word of God and been made manifest in this world through the Son of God, who himself declared that he is the way, the truth and the life. Therefore, who I am and what I am willing to accept is based upon my biblical understanding of truth. That is my standard, not what any politician or statesman or ideology would seek to inform me.
Therefore, as we see the downward spiral of our nation, in fact, of the western world, the text that I have started with today came readily to mind. As we who trust in God, who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, who love the truth, who love to seek after righteousness we must seek the face of God and humbly ask that he will have mercy upon our nation yet again.