You call us, Lord, to be changed by You ...

You call us, Lord, to be changed by You – changed by Your love, changed by Your power. Being changed by You is very different from being changed by the world. How are we being changed? Are we being “conformed to the world” or “transformed by the Lord”? Help us, Lord, to be wary of change that comes to us from a worldly way of thinking and living. Help us to welcome the Godly, Christlike, Spirit-filled change which comes to us when we pray, “Change my heart, O God … ” (Songs of Fellowship, 58).

We Have Forgotten God. He Never Forgets Us.

Hosea 5:15-7:16
We are to leave the old way of sinful disobedience and follow the new way of faith and obedience: ‘Come, let us return to the Lord... Let us press on to know the Lord’. As we return to the Lord, pressing on to know Him, His blessing returns to us. He leads us in the way of fruitfulness: ‘He will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth’(6:1,3). We must not be like those who react to God’s Word with ‘pride’: ‘They do not return to the Lord their God’. God longs to ‘redeem’ them, yet they ‘rebel against’ Him: ‘They do not turn to the Most High God’(7:10,13,16). Our ‘love’ for God is not to be ‘like the early dew that disappears’. Let us ‘acknowledge our guilt and seek His face’. Let us love Him with a ‘steadfast love’(5:15; 6:4,6).

Hosea 8:1-9:17
‘Israel’ had ‘forgotten’ and ‘forsaken’ the Lord (8:14). We have not remembered the Lord. We have turned away from Him. We have forgotten Him. We have been ‘unfaithful’ to Him. This is the sad story of our life - a story of forgetting and forsaking the Lord. God is very different from us. He has not forgotten us. He has not forsaken us. He has ‘remembered’ us. He has been ‘faithful’ to us. He has shown us His ‘salvation’(Psalm 98:3). How do we know that God remembers us? How do we know that God is faithful to us? - ‘Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners’; ‘While we were still sinners, Christ died for us’(1 Timothy 1:15; Romans 5:8). ‘If we are faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot be false to Himself’(2 Timothy 2:13).

Waiting Patiently For God's Answer

Habakkuk 1:1-2:14
‘How long, O Lord, must I call for help, but You do not listen?’(1:2). There are times when it seems that God is not listening to us. What are we to do when we feel like this? Are we to give up on God? Are we to stop praying? No! We must wait patiently for the Lord’s answer - ‘I will look to see what He will say to me’. We must not forget His promise: ‘The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul that seeks Him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord’(2:1; Lamentations 3:25-26). ‘The vision awaits its time... If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay’. Let us ‘live by faith’, awaiting the Day when ‘the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea’(2:3-4,14).

Lifted From The Guttermost, Saved To The Uttermost

"He pulled me out of a horrible pit" (Psalm 40:2).

There are two things that we need to hear about - our own situation and God's salvation..

* Our own situation is hopeless. We need to be saved by the Lord.

* The Lord is able to lift us up. He is able to lift from the guttermost - and save to the uttermost" (Hebrews 7:25).

We cannot change ourselves. We must be changed by the Lord.

The great miracle of the new birth is described in Ezekiel 36:26 - "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you." We cannot change ourselves. We must be changed by the Lord. He forgives our sin. He gives us His Holy Spirit. He enables us to put the past behind us and live the new life in the Spirit.

The river of God's blessing

In Ezekiel 47:1-11, we have a wonderful picture and an encouraging message - the river of God's blessing. In Ezekiel 48:35, we have a wonderful presence and an inspiring message - "The Lord is there."

God sees us in our sin. He sees us in our Saviour.

God sees us in our sin. He says, “You are not My people.” He sees us in our Saviour. He says, “You are the children of the living God” (Hosea 1:10). This is grace. This is salvation. This is the love of God. When this great truth reaches us, we are changed. What “a great day” it is when the Lord’s people, gathered together in the Name of the Lord, are led forward with God and by God into true and lasting spiritual growth and blessing.