“For, behold, in those days, and in that time, when I shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem” (Joel 3:1).
TEXT — Joel 3:1-8
Message
In Christianity, God is both a God of love and of justice. Many people struggle with this reality. They believe that a loving God can’t be a judging God. Christians and ministers alike, have asked this question literally thousands of times, “How can a God of love be also a God filled with wrath and anger? If he is loving and perfect. He should forgive and accept everyone. He shouldn’t get angry.”
God’s wrath is far from a cranky explosion. It is a settled opposition to the destructive cancer, which eats out the insides of the human race He loves with His whole being. The Bible says that God’s wrath flows from His love and delights in His creation. He is angry at evil and injustice because it is destroying its peace and integrity. Our devotional Scripture underscores God’s deserved judgment on recalcitrant Tyre and rebellious Zidon because of their debauchery, human trafficking and the spoilage of His temple. On the other hand, He gave God’s beleaguered people something to cheer about – restoration to their land although things looked bleak and hopeless.
This speaks about the mind of God towards all sinners and backsliders today. Regardless the depth of spiritual destitution, the shame of retrogression and the bleakness of the future, the backslider still has the assurance from God that “He restoreth my soul”. God is the restorer of strayed souls and the lifter up of the heads of the downcast. He is the Saviour of the sinner and the Possessor of the “power to become sons of God”.
A resort to God in repentance, brokenness and heart-contrition offers backsliders and sinners a refuge in Christ, who has already faced the wrath of God on the penitent’s behalf when He was crucified at Calvary. This is the only way to salvation and restoration for the contrite and those ordained for life eternal, by their deliberate act of the will to fully surrender to the Lord.
Thought for the day
There is retribution for the recalcitrant and redemption for the repentant.
Listed among “500 most powerful people on the planet” by the Foreign Policy magazine in 2013, Pastor (Dr.) William F. Kumuyi is the founder and General Superintendent of the Deeper Christian Life Ministry (DCLM) headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria. DCLM started in 1973 as a 15-member Bible study group right in Kumuyi’s apartment at University of Lagos where he was a lecturer. His revolutionary Bible teaching on personal holiness and commitment to evangelism soon gained so much traction and resulted in a widespread revival.
