Who is a God like you,
who pardons sin and forgives the transgression
of the remnant of his inheritance?
You do not stay angry forever
but delight to show mercy.
You will again have compassion on us;
you will tread our sins underfoot
and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.
Micah 7:18-19
Wow, is that not incredible?! God delights in showing mercy! It’s not just some requirement that He needs to check off the “How to be a God of Love List,” but He actually delights in it. This is just absolutely stunning to me. I like to imagine the scene around God’s throne: as He points out to the 24 elders, and four seraphim sitting around Him that He’s once again lavishing forgiveness, mercy and grace on a human, He has a big, beaming smile on His face!
There’s just one small glitch in this system. God has given the human race tremendous dignity in that we have a free will. He has given us the right to choose either mercy or judgement. He will not overstep our human free will, and He cannot show us mercy unless we ask for it.
And so, now we find ourselves face to face, again, with a God of justice…with the reality that, although God is aching to show mercy, many, many people will reject it. And there’s only one other option.
Judgement.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I accept the entire Bible as the divinely inspired and infallible Word of God. Not one word found in it’s pages is untrue. Isaiah 55:11 says that the Lord’s words will not return to Him empty, meaning that the words He has spoken will come to pass. Actually, many of His words have already come to pass; for instance every single prophecy concerning Jesus’ first coming was fulfilled. Amazing, isn’t it? (Which is why it’s so perplexing to me that many people are so apathetic towards the study of His second coming! …But that’s a subject for an entirely different post, one which I hope to write soon.)
So, that final book of the Bible, the book of Revelation, no matter how unpalatable it may be to us, will happen, along with many other end-time prophecies. A time is coming when God will judge the the nations of the earth. Many of us may be tempted to avoid it altogether, to take the “pan-millennial” position – meaning “It’ll all ‘pan out’ in the end anyway, what difference does it make to me?” But the question is not whether or not it will pan out – for it certainly will – the question is, “Will it pan out well for you?…For your neighbor?…For your children?”
The book of Joel is an amazing little book. Three chapters jam-packed with a ton of information for the end-time church. I love it. I’ve been hanging out there for a while. (Read it through some time soon, it only takes about 30 minutes.) Joel wonders whether it’ll all “pan out” in some different language: “The day of the LORD is great; it is dreadful. Who can endure it?” (2:11b) The peoples of the earth ask this question again in Rev. 6:17 – The great day of wrath has come, and who is able to stand? - as they realize that it is the Lord who is pouring out judgement on the earth.
This is a question that has been gnawing at me for quite some time. Will I be able to stand? Yes, by the grace of God I believe I will be. But what about my children? Or the multitude of unbelievers and nominal Christians who will be in utter confusion when the “great day of wrath” comes? These are sobering questions.
Part of being able to stand, I believe, will be in coming into alignment with God’s heart and His will. Rev. 19:2 is quite a remarkable verse. It tells of the great multitude in heaven (us) saying, “Salvation and glory and power to our God, for His judgements are true and just.“ Wow. In the presence of God, when all the information is disclosed, we will all say that God’s judgements were true and just. Again…wow. I don’t know about you, but I want to be able to say that now. Not in a “Ha! You-got-what-you-deserved” way, but in a way that mirrors God’s heart. In a way that mirrors His ache to show mercy, but His need to act justly. This is only possible, I believe, inasmuch as we draw near to His heart, feed ourselves on His word, and ask for wisdom and revelation into the time of history that we are entering.
Joel 2:12-14 reads,
“Even now,” declares the LORD,
“return to me with all your heart,
with fasting and weeping and mourning.”
Rend your heart
and not your garments.
Return to the LORD your God,
for he is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger and abounding in love,
and he relents from sending calamity.
Who knows? He may turn and have pity
and leave behind a blessing—
grain offerings and drink offerings
for the LORD your God.
Blow the trumpet in Zion,
declare a holy fast,
call a sacred assembly.
During a locust plague and a coming military invasion God leaves no mystery as to what he requires from His people. In the midst of crisis we are to gather in sacred assemblies and fast and pray with broken hearts. This is the Lord’s wisdom for this hour of history and this is what the church’s message needs to be in the hour of crisis: that the Righteous Judge is very kind, that He wants to relent…that He delights in mercy. But we need to ask for it. And don’t let the “Who knows?” trip you up. That’s just to ensure that we don’t reduce repentance to some sort of a formula. God wants a response from our hearts, not our intellectual minds.
This is what the prayer movement is all about. It’s not a fad. It’s not some gimmick-y way of making prayer cool. It’s about gathering together in sacred assemblies and rending our hearts before the Merciful, Righteous Judge so that He can, in a way that lines up with His justice, relent from sending judgement and leave a blessing in it’s place. The Lord is raising up houses of prayer all over the globe so that whole geographical regions will be covered by His mercy during the end-time judgements. The city of Goshen in the story of the Isrealites’ exodus from Egypt is an Old Testament picture of this biblical principle. It was a “pocket of mercy” or a “city of refuge” in the middle of Egypt that was spared some of the ten plagues that God sent as a judgement upon Phaoroh and his nation.
The prayer movement is also about declaring the Lord to be Right and True and Good even when our unrenewed minds may not be able to fully comprehend this. As I mentioned in part 1, it’s going to be essential for the Church to be clear, prophetic voices in the time of crisis. We will need to know and proclaim that it is our God, the Righteous Judge, who is “shaking everything that can be shaken,” but that He delights in showing mercy, and a repentant heart is what is needed to receive it. Wow. I’m game if you are. 
