Chuck Foreman – Teaching Pastor

On Sunday of Passover Week, 33 AD, Jesus rode into Jerusalem, as King David had done before him, to the joyful shouts and praises of the people who proclaimed him “the King who comes in the name of the Lord.”   By Friday they had handed him over to the Romans to be crucified. Just as Jesus had said about them as he approached Jerusalem only five days earlier, “they did not recognize the time of God’s coming to them.”   Their Messiah had finally come. God had returned to his temple, but they missed him. Their leaders would rather maintain the status quo as puppet rulers under the Romans than submit to the new Kingdom Jesus came to inaugurate—a kingdom of love, justice, sacrifice and service—Romans or no Romans.  

How often do we miss God when he shows up simply because he has an agenda different from our own? How often are we guilty of abandoning the ways of God in order to go our own way? And yet he still calls us to return to him. “Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord Almighty. (Malachi 3:7)

That’s quite a promise. Perhaps we should consider taking him up on it. Returning to God can be awkward though. It can be painful and humiliating. But what price tag can we put on God actually returning to us? What would you be willing to do to know that God had heard your prayers, that he had forgiven your sin and healed your nation?  Here’s another promise from him:

If my people, who are called by my name,
will humble themselves and pray and seek my face
and turn from their wicked ways,
then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

(2 Chronicles 7:14)

Apparently, it’s up to us as God’s People to get this thing going. The healing of our nation is up to us—it must begin with us.