I grew up in New York, but when I was in high school my family moved to east Texas. During my first year there I wasn’t known as Gary but as “Yankee.” The longer I kept my New York accent, the more puzzled looks I got, along with a question: “What did you just say?”
I’ve written before about my reputation for always preaching on grace. I’ve actually toyed with publishing a book titled Confessions of an Extreme Gracist. Not an appropriate title, maybe, but it’s a tag I wear proudly anyway.
The church today lives in a time of great light. With so much teaching available to us, the Holy Ghost has revealed to us the incredible blessings of Jesus' work on the cross.
Yet there was a time when Christ's wonderful work was obscured from the world. That period was the Dark Ages, when the meaning of the cross was veiled from humanity's eyes.
Behold, now is the accepted time; behold now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2, my italics).
This message is meant for all who have backslidden from the Lord. Backsliding is a biblical term that means “falling away, turning away, apostasy.” According to the apostle Paul, who wrote the verse above, “Today is the day of mercy and grace.” In other words: If you ever plan to believe, that time is now.
“Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake, as in the ancient days, in the generations of old. Art thou not it that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon?… Awake, awake, stand up, O Jerusalem, which has drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of his fury; thou hast drunken the dregs of the cup of trembling, and wrung them out….
The Lord appeared to Abraham one day and gave him an incredible command: “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee” (Genesis 12:1).
What an amazing thing. Suddenly, God picked out a man and told him, “I want you to get up and go, leaving everything behind: your home, your relatives, even your country. I want to send you someplace, and I will direct you how to get there along the way.”
According to Jesus, a certain witness will appear on Judgment Day offering a damning testimony against this present generation. The Queen of Sheba is going to take the witness stand, and her words will be condemning: “The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here” (Matthew 12:42).
Of all the Old Testament prophets, Amos speaks most clearly to our times. The prophecy he delivers zeroes in on our generation, as if it were ripped from today's headlines. Indeed, Amos' message is a dual prophecy. It was meant not only for God's people in his day, but also for the church right now, in our time.
A dear Christian woman on our mailing list wrote us a heartrending letter:
"In 1972 we lost a Down syndrome son to pneumonia. He was just seventeen months old. Seven years later, in 1979, we lost our fifteen-year old son. He was electrocuted in our backyard while climbing a tree.
Now our twenty-four-year-old son has diabetes. And I have cancer and am undergoing chemotherapy. I ask you sincerely — is it a sin to ask God, 'Why?' Does he understand our humanness?
A troubled mind is one that suffers from continual discontentment. It is pressed down, disturbed, restless, with no calm or rest. It frets about the future and the past as well as present circumstances. And I'm convinced there are more troubled minds today than in any past generation!
