God Wants to Show Mercy
The devotionals this week are taken from the book A Call to America by Nancy Jesudass.
“Once again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord . . . Again the Israelites cried out to the Lord, and He gave them a deliverer” (Judges 3:12, 15).
God is ready to deliver us if we cry out to Him in brokenness and repentance.
One night in a dream I saw a long line of teenagers, and suddenly I became fully awake. I wondered what this meant.
The words came to me, “These young ones are going into exile.”
“Exile?” I questioned.
And the voice repeated, “Yes, they are sent into exile every day.” I thought about the word “exile.” This is like God’s people in the Old Testament when they continued in their sins and no longer cried out to God. They chose to trust in their own wisdom and knowledge and so were sent to Babylon to live in exile as captives under the rule of the ungodly.
I could not sleep any longer. I began to cry out to God for His mercy, His intervention, and His forgiveness. We have consciously or unconsciously allowed these young ones to suffer and to go astray. “My children have no future because the enemy has conquered us” (Lamentations 1:16 NLT).
The glory of God is no longer upon us. The nations around us seem to ask, “Where is your God?”
Within my spirit I can hear the lost around me crying out to us, the church, like the people of Nineveh cried out to Jonah: “How can you sleep? Get up and call on your God. Maybe He will take notice of us, and we will not perish” (Jonah 1:6). The Bible says that when the people in Nineveh cried to the Lord, the Lord saved that wicked nation because of their humility and repentant hearts.
I urge you to begin a prayer group or join an existing group in your church. Mobilize corporate prayer where you work or in your neighborhood. God is calling us to fast and pray, not just pray. Let us cry out for the future of the nation to our Father, who is the “forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love” (Nehemiah 9:17). Oh, how the next generation of this nation so desperately needs to be rescued from the hand of the enemies!
