God's Desire!

For Sunday January 14, 2024:

2 Peter 3:9b NLT: “The Lord is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent.”

As a child, I attended my parent’s church, which displayed a painting that depicted a very tall God standing above a miserable sinner on his knees. God was pointing down toward the fires of hell, inasmuch as saying, “Get down there! That’s where you belong!” Nothing could be further from the truth!

Mankind has been trying to figure out God and religion for thousands of years. Many still get a lot of it wrong! In the back of our minds, we have the Hebrew/Jewish model, whereby we were given God’s laws, God’s commandments, and a pass/fail system for seeing heaven from the inside. That system ignored mankind’s propensity to fall off the straight and narrow path. It ignored repentance, our ability to come to the realization that sinning is wrong and our desire to set things right with the Lord. It ignored teshuvah, “repent and return.” In that old system, mankind was set up for failure, not success!

But let’s not forget God’s desire, that all would repent and return and that none would be lost. This principle is so important that I’m going to go out on a limb and call it the prime directive! It’s the foundation of the New Covenant, the New Deal. It’s about kindness, forgiveness and loving your neighbor. Our God is a God of do-overs, of keep trying until you get it right! He sent Jesus to teach us about this new plan for salvation.

Consequently, churches of the New Covenant will look different. Rather than containing only pious, holier-than-thou souls, a New Covenant church will be filled with reformed sinners, those with changed minds, changed hearts and changed lives – those who have repented and returned.

That’s what a church should look like nowadays! There’s plenty of room to accommodate even more penitent sinners!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus in the City Fellowship