Feeling The Message

Ezekiel 4:1-5:17

I am sitting here this morning during my devotional time having a keen sense of God’s presence after reading His word. My devotional reading is in Ezekiel and this morning I read the fourth and fifth chapters and got an overwhelming sense of the fear of God. In these chapters Ezekiel is prophesying about the coming siege and final fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians. They were to suffer the sword, famine, beast, and pestilence, a fourfold judgement of God for their sins. Ezekiel told them that they were going to be mixing together whatever they could find to make a meal and eventually the famine would be so bad that men would eat their children and children would eat their fathers. I tried to imagine what living in that time would be like and I had a sense of dread or fear to overcome me. Much like Ezekiel had to feel the message by laying on one side for 390 days and then on the other for 40 days along with eating a mixture of grains cooked on cow dung and cutting his hair, I too felt the weight of this coming judgement of God, and the burden is heavy.

God has blessed our country with plenty and a commerce system that is so coordinated and precise. But over the last four years we have seen a scarcity in certain foods, empty shelves, and inflation that rivals that of the 1970s. Crime is rampant not only in our urban areas but now has become a regularity even in our rural areas due to poverty and drug use. The sanctity of life has been devalued to the level that a man will take another’s person life to satisfy a daily drug habit or abort a child at the altar of a career or sexual freedom. The world is on the brink of war and all that our politicians care for is their personal agendas, platforms, and power.

So where does that leave us as the church? I believe that the only way we can be effective is by feeling the pain or burden just like Ezekiel felt. He, the prophet, had to live in it and live with it. We have to be able to feel the message before we can proclaim the message. We know that our hope doesn’t rest in political or philosophical ideologues. Our hope is in the Lord Jesus Christ and people today need to hear and see that hope we have in them. We don’t not necessarily need to bring awareness to the problem because that is pretty evident. We need to bring awareness to the solution. WE NEED REVIVAL!!!  WE NEED TO RETURN TO GOD!!!  We either need to turn to God or Jesus return to earth. This should be the foundation of all of our praying in days to come.

We live in evil days and need to be delivered from evil. Just as Jesus said, some demonic influences are only overcome with fasting and prayer. Think about this today.

Pastor Robby