Last year our verse for the year was Jeremiah 29 v11, a verse that speaks of the blessing God wants to pour out on our lives. That blessing comes from the mercy and compassion of God’s heart, but is it in anyway conditional upon us and how we live? Our verse for the year for 2009 suggests that to a significant degree it does. There is both a blessing, not least of salvation, that we all receive, but there are rich blessings God then calls us to pursue.
God’s mercy guarantees that, if we receive the sacrifice He made on the cross for our sin and accept Jesus as our Saviour and Lord, He will love and welcome us as His children. However, the Christian life, although it begins with a decision, moves us immediately into being a disciple. The call of discipleship is the words of CS Lewis in “The Last Battle”.
It is that call to come further up and further in that is essentially the call of Christian discipleship and it is a call to embrace and maybe even wrestle with prayer. As with blessing, prayer is multi layered. Why is it that some of our prayers are not immediately answered? Perhaps it is both because God wants to see how much we really want what we ask, and also because many answers to prayer are indeed conditional. In simple terms, don’t complain about getting wet if you refuse to walk under the umbrella that is offered.
2 Chronicles 7 v14 is packed full of rich meaning and challenge. If we who are disciples of Jesus will respond to the challenges in this verse then we will not only be blessed ourselves but we will see God’s blessing coming to our family, our work and the land in which we live.
Heaven knows it needs it, but are we up to doing our part? It’s pretty clear what it is!
David
