Who do we turn to in times of trouble?

Where do we run when all our options are depleted?

There is ONE that should not be our last port of call, and should definitely our FIRST.

It seems that only once we have worked through every single option and scraped every last drop of hope from the bottom of the barrel, that we finally turn to God with a desperate plea.

Last week I wrote about how John the Apostle was so deeply impacted by the simple message that John the Baptist preached.  His words were powerful and to to the point.

“Repent of your sins and turn to God for the Kingdom of God is near.”

This message turned Johns world upside down … and it needs to do the same for us now.

We need to Repent … of trying to live our lives without God.  Of allowing sin to separate us from God.

We need to Believe … that God is awesome and almighty, the creator of the entire universe.  He can do all things.

And we need to Pray for rain …. And trust that we will see pouring down!

James 5:16-20  

¹⁶ Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results. ¹⁷ Elijah was as human as we are, and yet when he prayed earnestly that no rain would fall, none fell for three and a half years! ¹⁸ Then, when he prayed again, the sky sent down rain and the earth began to yield its crops.

New Living Translation

The power of God is all around us.  He created the universe and everything in it … for His pleasure.  And he created us to rule over everything.  We are the very objects of his affection.

Yet we can so easily turn our eyes and ears away from God and become consumed by goings on around us – which are mostly keeping us too busy to remember God.

It utterly amazes me how God has remained so patient with man, when all throughout the ages, we can see over and over again how man has allowed sin to distract us and take our focus away from God.

Yet, from the beginning of time and still today, all it takes is a righteous man to turn his eyes to God, to call out to Him and we see His hand move – in compassion and forgiveness.

Now is the time for us to put aside all our frivolous comings and goings.  Now is the time for us to turn to God in prayer.

Patricia de Lille recently proclaimed on the air.  .”We as a nation need to stand as 1 and pray for rain!”

We need to set our differences apart.  We need to lay our pride down.  And we need to turn our eyes up to God and trust him to hear our prayers and heal our land.

It’s not about what happened in the past.  Its about what is going to happen in the future.

We need Gods rain to saturate our hard and barren souls.  And we need heavens rain to saturate and dry and desperate land.

In the bible, which should always be are reference for live, it didn’t take a big deal to make God’s hand move.  It didn’t take a massive church meeting or a whole lot of ra ra shouts and prayers.  It didn’t take a mass crowd.

We need to repent with our lips and believe in our hearts and pray for rain.

God honors a righteous person who prays a sincere prayer.

Let us all get on our knees and pray.  Let us all turn our eyes to God, the creator of this whole universe and THE ONLY ONE who can ‘make it rain’.

God is calling his people out and calling them to action.

Let us all in our own hearts call on God and see his hand move.

 

Psalm 8:4-9

⁴ 
What is man that You are mindful of him,
And the son of [earthborn] man that You care for him?
⁵ 
Yet You have made him a little lower than ^[a]God,
And You have crowned him with glory and honor.
⁶ 
You made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands;
You have put all things under his feet,
⁷ 
All sheep and oxen,
And also the beasts of the field,
⁸ 
The birds of the air, and the fish of the sea,
Whatever passes through the paths of the seas.