Hear me, you heavens! Listen, earth! For the Lord has spoken:
“I reared children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me.
The ox knows its master, the donkey its owner’s manger,
but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.” (Isaiah 1:2-3)
The children who, although enjoying countless blessings allowed by God, are leaving God, the source of all blessings. . .The children who, indulged in the pleasure and fortune of life, are losing God . . . The children who, like a person with a full stomach and no appetite, have lost their desperation for God . . . The children who, having lost their honor as a child of God, are losing their self-esteem even in this world. . .
The pain the ‘past generation’ feels from watching the ‘next generation’ leaving God is similar to ‘the pain God feels.’ God is calling those who know His pain to become mediators. Someone who knows God’s pain . . . someone who can cry with God . . . The most fundamental act that can lead the ‘next generation’ back to God is prayer. The ministry that dispels the darkness covering the ‘next generation’ and shines the light, that ministry is prayer. We are not praying for the outward or material success of the next generation. We will pray that they will be able to bow down to God with tears in their eyes . We will pray that their false idols will collapse, that they will be able to look towards God.
“And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and he will pursue them.
But I will gain glory for myself through Pharaoh and all his army, and
the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord.” (Exodus 14:4)
The ‘next generation’ has many excuses for being who they are now, the central excuse being that ‘the past generation was not able to reveal God to them’. The ‘past generation’ that lost their gratitude was not able to teach the ‘next generation’ that all the daily blessings that we are delighted in come from God. It is the ‘past generation’ that wastefully buried the spiritual inheritance that should have been given to the ‘next generation’. It was the ‘past generation’ that first lost their desperateness for God. Making the ‘next generation’ feel complacent about their faith and guiding them to take priority on the worldly things is the fault of the ‘past generation’. The ‘past generation’ must first come to repentance.
However, God also says to the ‘next generation’ that ‘you cannot make excuses as well’.’ What we see now is as much the ‘next generation’s’ fault as it is the past generation’s’.
Since what may be known about God is plain to them,
because God has made it plain to them.
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities
—his eternal power and divine nature—
have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made,
so that people are without excuse. (Romans 1:19-20)
Turning their eyes away from what was so openly revealed and ignoring the creator God. . . loving pleasure more than God. . . ignoring the spiritual inheritance the ‘past generation’ tried to pass on. . . losing their gratitude and losing the daily grace He is pouring down. . . closing their hearts and ears to the countless Words of God. . . ‘Next generation’ cannot make excuses for all this.
The God of grace and love is still calling us. It is time for us once again to head to that place of grace and love. To all the ‘past generations’ and ‘next generations’’ going to such a place, God will again pour down true joy, abundant life, overflowing love, amazing freedom, and the hope of Heaven.
Following the shepherd…
Pastor Jiwon Choi