Key Verse: Verse 13 – "Gird yourselves, and lament, ye priests: howl, ye ministers of the altar: come, lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God: for the meat offering and the drink offering is withholden from the house of your God."
Key Words: Gird yourselves, and lament
Like Zephaniah and Revelation, Joel prophesies about the coming judgment of God.
While some say, “If God is love, why all the wrath?” I call these prophetic books of God’s judgment “God’s Love Letter of Warning.” God is warning man to turn from his sin to God. This is what we call repentance.
Repentance is when you are going south on the highway and then recognize you need to be going north. Repentance isn’t just thinking about changing directions. It isn’t just watching other folk go by wondering if they’re going wrong too. Repentance is looking for the next exit, getting off, crossing over, and getting back on the other road on your way home. That’s repentance; it’s turning the other way.
If you are twenty miles out of the way and decide to change directions, you must take the exit ramp. This is the ramp of confession where you agree that you have been going the wrong way. Then you have to cross over the grace overpass where God gives you the opportunity and the privilege to turn around. Confession gets you to the place where you can make that U-turn. Grace crosses you over.
Now, there is another ramp that you have to take to get back on the highway headed in the right direction. This is the restoration on-ramp. The confession off-ramp leads to the grace overpass, which carries you over and puts you right in front of the restoration on-ramp, so that you can begin heading in the right direction.
Once the turn has been made and repentance has been accomplished, you may still be twenty miles out of the way. You might be discouraged because you’ve gone twenty miles wrong or maybe twenty years wrong. In fact, many folks get stuck here, thinking that since they are already twenty miles out of the way they, might as well keep on heading in that same wrong direction.
The thing to remember is that when taking a trip, the ride coming back home always seems shorter than the ride going. There’s something about coming home that shortens the feeling of distance even when the actual distance to cover is the same.
What to do:
✞ If your life is going in the wrong direction, turn around!!
