God does rebuke the wrong doer, yet He does not stop loving us when we do wrong, and He promises His forgiveness and deliverance, through the sufferings and intercession, of His Son, Jesus Christ. Isaiah 59: 1, 2 “Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; nor His ear heavy, that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear.” Often when people say there is no God, because when they have prayed no answer came. God says it is because they continue in their sinful activity or other sin, not really wanting to change. Verse 3 “For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies; your tongue has muttered perversity.” However until the end of time, such a state is not final and they will be prompted by God again. For those that heed the promptings of the Holy Spirit, and turn from wrong doing and come to God again, Psalm 99: 8 “You answered them, O Lord our God; You were to them God-Who-Forgives, though You took vengeance on their deeds.”
God will change our hearts if we just let Him. When we pray each day and ask Him, He will keep us more and more true to Him, by divine intervention against the temptations within every day. How do I know this because I read the promises of scripture and many of us have experienced His answers? Isaiah 59: 21 “As for Me,” says the Lord, “this is My covenant with them: My Spirit who is upon you, and My words which I have put in your mouth, shall not depart from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your descendants’ descendants,” says the Lord, “from this time and forevermore.”
It is often not easy to follow the directions of the Lord, for they can go against what we want to do, and bring us into difficulty and tribulation. This was so for the people who followed Moses away from all they had known, to trek through the unknown and into the sea, with a wall of water on each side, and the enemy in hot pursuit behind. But after a number of unimaginable miracles and divine interventions, they said and sang different words, Exodus 15: 11-13 “Who is like You, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like You, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders: You stretched out You right hand; the earth swallowed them. You in Your mercy have led forth the people whom You have redeemed; You have guided them in Your strength to Your holy habitation.”
‘Seeing is believing’ so the saying goes, and has often been so for those who have seen the miracles and interventions of the Lord: when there could be no other answer or way the event could have happened. John 2: 11 “This beginning of signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory; and His disciples believed in Him.” John 11: 45 “Then many of the Jews who had come to Mary (sister of Lazarus), and had seen the things Jesus did, believed in Him.”
The Christians that formed after Jesus went back to heaven certainly went through hard times and persecution; as many do for their faith these days. Grounded in the word of God, and remembering the sufferings of Christ, they did not give up their belief and faith in their Saviour, counting it a privilege to suffer as He did. 2 Corinthians 1: 3, 4 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”
To experience the support and comforts of God is individually real, and enables us to share and give all praise to God, and I wish to do so again, and with the Psalmist say, Psalm 94: 19 “In the multitude of my anxieties within me, Your comforts delight my soul.”