We desire change, change in relationships, finances, politics, with our Church or our own walk with God. The Captivity is a 70 year process that extended 2 generations. I would like to challenge you to study out the occasions to which God uses His processes of change across 2 generations. He never does it just with one.
Above this image shows Pentecost when Jesus sent His Holy Spirit to His Church, this is a fulfilment of a prophetic word from Joel 2:28-31, which explicitly says that this outpouring is generational, 2 generations are mentioned. It means that what we in the modern mindset focus on the individual, God majors on the collective, where our mindset says change comes quickly, in God’s ways it comes across in many years.
Change can mean upheavals
The change that came with the Captivity, meant the invasion of enemy forces. The people were carried off to Babylon. Temple destroyed, city burned with fire. Priests without a sanctuary. King carried off without a crown. Change breaks up the norm, dislocates our comfort zones. And then not to mention the type of nation was Babylon, was not God fearing at all, full of deities. They depended on the favour of God.
11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end
The Holy Bible: King James Version, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), Je 29:11.
This Scripture has been so quoted and yet so ignorantly in that the implications of this verse is not taken into account to get to this reality. The thoughts of God meant that they were to be carried away from Judah, to a foreign land. Their faith had to adjust to have no priests or temple, and to make God their Sanctuary.
When we pray change are we conscious?
Change happens over time
Jeremiah 29 is explicit. 70 years. Its a lifetime. Its for some a ending of life in captivity, because those who went into Captivity did not come out. Those who came out of the Captivity, did not go in. They are a different generation. In Ezekiel 36 spells out the reason why the Captivity happened: to change the human heart. We can sometimes ask for the changes in terms of circumstances. However, God’s priorities are not our circumstances but our heart. Once our heart changes then our circumstances will reflect that. God compares the hearts of the Captives to be that of stone. Hard and cold. So time is the Holy Spirit school of the heart, where we are transitioned from believing that a change in circumstances will bring a change of heart. That is false, in the way I see God throughout the Bible treat with His people. The way this happens is the way that God uses time to be the anvil which our heart is beaten into submission.
When I personally look back on my years in Portugal, 15 of them, it was not ministry only, it was God’s hammer beating on the heart, so that where I am now, I can draw on those experiences. Portugal holds for me, great memories and great Churches that I was part of. I experienced bad experiences there too, in which I today see them as periods of learning to discern God’s purposes there. And grace teaches us to be grateful for those processes, and some aspects of life there I miss. In this walk of over 40 years I have seen changes, but they are never as great as the change of heart.
Changes happen when God can write on our hearts
The words we read in the Bible must become the Hand of God that writes on the heart of our being. Unless this process happens then our Bible becomes mere knowledge not impacting revelation. It is a struggle for which none of us have arrived at, and am sure this perfection can only come when we fully depend on His Grace, and also expecting His Return to do the rest.
In my time in Brixham, Devon, going down Fore Street I would sometimes get the impression to go into a cafe because I sensed God wanted to show me something in His Word, these times of intimacy are the best. Not the ambitious image we have in our minds to be preaching to thousands. The simplicity and expectancy that each day God can stop us in our routines and speak to us specifically from the Bible. Those times “mark us” because it is God’s pen writing on our hearts.
I write these examples not to focus on me, to the contrary, it is to share what is precious about God when He comes to us in His Word into our daily life.
Change means we come back to the ruins of our covenant breaking and be given the ability to rebuild and restore
Imagine when these captives returned to Jerusalem. Nehemiah describes in chapter 1 how the city of Jerusalem had been demolished and the city burned with fire. The spirit of the people there was in deep affliction. This is the unseen and unspoken reality of change, we are made to revisit the places ruined by the consequences of our covenant breaking and disobedience to God. We can see our stones of our “temple” and the doors broken of our “house” and take ownership that this was the consequence of straying away from God.
The good news is that God gives favour to us before all, giving resources to rebuild. The King who Nehemiah served gave him the necessary resources to rebuild. Ezra tells us the wonderful Passover festival held on the foundation of the new Temple. God will give us new foundations if we are patient and see through the long process of change. It is not easy, its not short time, its devastating, but the end result is rebuilding and restoration. Endure the pain so enjoy the gain.
I hope this message to you today is a blessing and puts in perspective many things we all face. The Captivity is a 70 year school we all need to study and examine if the same patterns are at work with us, and so that if we recognise them we can embrace them and enjoy the fruit of them.
Maranatha!
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