We are embarking on a journey together.

In this journey we examine past interventions of God in the affairs of mine in the whole realm of Consolation. It is so powerful that I have walked this out in study and prayer since March 2018, when God began to speak to me, specifically, yet I preached on it in Dundee in 1994. I was not sure what I was touching on then. Consolation is a very powerful and it connects Noah with Nehemiah and John the Baptist and Jesus, the Messiah. These people, connects God’s acts of judgment with acts of God with covenant. This is the principle that undergirds this series, and all that we do on this site, knowing and getting to discover the Ways of God in His dealings with men.

When God’s judgments in the earth are manifest His Consolation comes to those who walk with Him in obedience.

God raises up people by which He demonstrates both judgment and consolation together.

We must refine our theology concerning God’s judgments. Today there is an idea that because Jesus bore our curse, our infirmities, that judgments were poured on Jesus and we no longer see God’s judgments in manifestation. This is heresy as God’s nature never changes. He is Holy as well as being Love itself. His covenants are where Love and Holiness can work together to bring His people into fellowship with Him. When people are outside of this, His holiness calls for justice. Even in Christ, and His Calvary work, those within it and identified with it, are partakers of His Holiness and His Love. Those outside are still under God’s wrath. And we must determine that God’s wrath is measured just so that people are presented with the Gospel and each rejection means that they enter into degrees of wrath meted out, and God’s judgments in this life are redemptive, which means that there is no destructive element whilst God’s grace is used toward the person, there is an aspect of how long grace remains extended, and the person moves to the next life where His judgments are destructive. They are permanent. We move into an area where the judgments are eternal, they never end. God’s justice demands that. And in various times in history where even God’s people started to stray from God’s covenant, the judgments came also, to teach and bring them back to Himself. I do not think this aspect has changed. I do not think it has changed because man’s heart has not changed. We are very much unfaithful at times, and we sometimes disobey Him.

Desolation leads us to seek God for His Consolation

The Minor Prophets show us into their crying out to God for Him to turn to His People to bring His Consolation.

Desolation can be collective, or individual. In these instances we must seek God to turn His Face toward us. Desolation brings to an end a cycle, and brings a new platform of covenant to deal with His People. One thing we know, God has never broken even one of His covenants. So we can be certain as according to Jeremiah 6 we can seek those “ancient paths”, those things God led us into, so we can return. Desolation comes because of sin, corruption and perverseness. When you consider what God decided to do in the days of Noah, because man and fallen angels were doing, He sent a flood. The whole earth was full of desolation. Yet God had to bring desolation to rid the earth of corruption.

The fact is both desolation and consolation must run together for the Character of God must be consistent and fair. When you consider how close God’s love is to His Holiness we then see that in all things God’s purpose are both discernible and can be understood.

When we consider Nehemiah the vision of Jerusalem in ruin, temple demolished, gates burned with fire, we see Nehemiah moved to pray, weep and fast. It is through Nehemiah that the practical out working of consolation comes. It is miraculous steps and teamwork that brings the consolation work to completion. Also shows us the part prayer plays in engaging God’s consolation in a context of desolation.

Habakkuk in prophesying in a era of great desolation prays the greatest prayer;” Lord revive your work in the midst of years, make it known.” The concept of God reviving His work is one of consolation. However the desolation must bring its work to a complete fullness. When we cry out for the reviving of His work, and not ours. And in this modern day of mega churches and ministries we would like to equate our work being His, however there comes a season when He reveals that our work sometimes is an extension of our own vanity . I just wonder if we are already in a season of desolation so that we may prepare our hearts for the great thing God is bringing to our generation. The key is to abandon our own theology and our own ideas and seek Him seriously.

We must understand the work of Desolation

When God sends it we must understand it’s purpose and it’s objective

The main reason God sends seasons of desolation is because God is replaced in our love and our pursuits with other things and other ideologies. I think we must not confuse divine processes with those outside of Christ with what God does in the Church. It seems for the last 50 years we have gone through fashions and trends, to get where we are today. Increasingly seeds of the Renaissance have filtered through , that is focussing more on the cult of the individual, preaching and appealing to individual destiny and reaching it . When Biblically God used individuals to constitute collectives , forming the backbone of the stream of the Biblical narrative . Abraham is called out of one collective; Babylon, to form another; Israel. God moves generationally and collectively.

Right now God is letting Church systems dry up. When you consider how many gifts were abroad in the 80’s, and now how much abuse, heresy and manipulation is abroad coupled with a distinct lack of Holy Spirit intervention. And since the pandemic how many have left Churches altogether.

In October 2020 as só called prophets prophesied that Donald J Trump was to win the Presidential elections yet Joe Biden was elected . If there was wholesale electoral fraud involved then surely they would have seen it . What God allowed to happen was the exposure of how far the American Church had got into politics. God did not send Jesus to bring change politically. All these things have brought about a dynamic of desolation in God’s people. This is to birth in us a heart cry to bring God’s consolation.

God desires to bring Consolation to His people, but they need to know why they need it. There are coming times where every pillar of society will be shaken, financially there will be a collapse in the world system, there will be a world famine. Many extremes are coming. Only those who know their God will tap into supernatural resources, for the purpose of teaching the Church to return to God. In those days no mega Church, no Church growth system, prosperity Gospel will function. In that place plain Bible will be the key to bring a Joel 2 prosperity that comes out of repentance . God sent various locusts to devour their society, only repentance as a nation, as a Church would turn God’s purpose toward them.

Let us recognise the times we live so that God can birth His Consolation in us and through us!

Maranatha!