Colossians 3:16 (English Standard Version)

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

There is a lot of pain and suffering in the world but if that is all we can see it becomes harder to attend to the issues of the Word that abides richly in our hearts.

In our household we have chosen to turn off the bad news because it holds too much sway over how we feel in our hearts. Grace and mercy are stifled in an atmosphere of bitterness and resentment.

We are not blind to world events. We are powerless to make changes from the cheap seats of our living room. It reminds me of the biblical verses about the roaring lion knowing that he is toothless and his only hope of devouring a meal is to make his prey cower in fear. That is not for us.

So we change prey to pray and acknowledge that only God has the power to make changes.

It is hard for us to come before Him with thankfulness if our minds are focused on the pain and suffering in the world. So we take a media fasting and focus on what is right and true.

I admit it isn’t easy. I would be foolish to tell you it is just that simple. What choice do we have?

We have been talking about obeying our Lord’s commands but how can we hear those commands if all we do is shout out from a position of suffering? We have to deal with quieting the negative voices in our heads before we can hear Him.

If we are to do anything then we must remember where our strength comes from.

Isaiah 63:1

The Lord’s Day of Vengeance

Who is this who comes from Edom, in crimsoned garments from Bozrah, he who is splendid in his apparel, marching in the greatness of his strength? “It is I, speaking in righteousness, mighty to save.”

What are we to do Lord until that day?

Isaiah 40:3 English Standard Version

3 A voice cries:
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”

Malachi 3:1 English Standard Version

3 “Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.

Matthew 3:1-3 English Standard Version

John the Baptist Prepares the Way

1 In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, 2 “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” 3 For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight.’”

Isaiah and Malachi did not deliver John the Baptist’s message of repentance. It was John’s mission to deliver the message of repentance that would lead us straight to the promised Messiah.

Jesus was not to come until the message of repentance was delivered.

Jesus will not knock on the door to your heart until the message of repentance is delivered, believed and acted upon.

If we look back at my testimony of condition, note that my first prayer of not wanting to be angry all the time resulted in God revealing Himself to me. I did not repent of any act, I did not see myself as being wrong, I only saw myself as being out of control.

Some twenty years later I found myself in a position to repent of all that I had done and it was then and  only then that God, in His loving and wise way let it be known to me that His opinion of me at that moment was something akin to “OK, let’s get started.”

Please believe me when I say to you God did not speak to me with an auditable voice. There was something in me that knew what God wanted me to do.

So I went home that night and opened up a bible for the first time since I was that lost and lonely teenager.

I got started.