A Voice of Sorrow

Flourishing:

If you put your ear to the Bible, you can often hear the sadness.  Psalm 81:13 is one example.  Can you hear the pleading, the sorrow in the Lord's voice as He declares, "Oh that My people would listen to Me."  Those are not the words of one who just wants to get his own way.  That lament comes from a heart that wants what is best for His wayward people. A couple of verses before we read these sad words, "My people did not listen to My voice. . . . So I gave them over to the stubbornness of their heart"  (Ps 81:11–12).  "Gave them over," you find those words three times in Romans 1:18-32.  We mistakenly think that Romans 1 is referring to some particularly evil group of people--a place where wickedness is so bad that property values plummet.  Or, we figure it is about some particularly wicked time, perhaps even a prediction of the final falling away before the Lord returns to bring things to a final conclusion.  I don't think so.  I think what Paul is describing is the condition of people, apart from God's grace ever since the first sin in the Garden of Eden.  Like our first ancestors we continue to believe the lie and grasp for that which we think will make us better, but which, instead, gives incalculable misery. You have to focus your listening.  Somehow you have to cut through the din of racket that fills our world wall-to-wall, but if you do, you'll hear a loving, sad voice, "Oh that My people would listen to Me."  It is the voice of a loving Father to his wayward children.  He wants them to flourish.  He knows they will wither and die if they persist in going their own way.  To force us would be contrary to the nature of love, so He pleads. LISTEN! It's STTA. Click here, to find out about has been done so that each of us can have eternal life--a life begins here in this messy world, where God desires that we make a flourish.