The need for national repentance

The story is told of a woman who had a most peculiar dream.  In her dream she was wandering around some shops in a large shopping centre.  All of a sudden she noticed a particular shop which took her fancy.  She wandered in and found Jesus behind the counter! Jesus then said, “You can have anything your heart desires.”  Astounded but pleased she then asked for “peace, joy, happiness, wisdom and freedom from fear”.  Then she added, “and not just for me, but for the whole earth.” Jesus smiled and then said, “I think you misunderstand  Me, we don’t sell the finished product, we only sell seeds.”

This of course is exactly what the Bible teaches!  We are told in Galatians Ch 6v7 “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows that he will reap.”  It could just as easily read, “For whatever a nation sows, that it will reap.” 

God wants to bless our nation and our individual lives. He wants us to enjoy good things. He wants to deliver us from misery.  The problem is that consistently over many decades individuals have refused to plant, tend and nurture the seeds which would have grown into these blessings.  Instead we have sown the wrong seeds. We have gone our own selfish ways, let ourselves become consumed by greed and materialism and ignored God’s will for our personal  lives. Now what signal does that give the God who so loved the world, He did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up to suffer the agony of the Cross?  Was the Cross some trivial thing?  Was the sending of His Son some minor act of no great consequence?  The Bible describes God’s Gift of His Son as being so stupendous it is “indescribable”.  In spite of this, since the end of the Second World War, our nation as a whole has rejected God’s Gift and while God would love to be able to deliver us from trouble, He cannot.  We have sown now we reap; it is a law of the universe.

Many politicians and economic experts have come up with all sorts of packages and ideas on how to sort out the problems confronting our nation– but this is really just tinkering with the symptoms, not dealing with the cause.  The root cause of all the problems we have is a spiritual problem – and if it is a spiritual problem, then only a spiritual solution will solve it.

This morning I read from an ancient source of wisdom which gives the answer to all our problems.  This ancient source goes back many millennia and has been passed down from generation to generation since the dawn of civilisation.  Those who practice its teachings are few, but there are  still some left of “the old ways” who know the answer to our problems.  The ancient book is of course the Bible, and those who practice its teachings are all those who genuinely and sincerely take God and His Commandments seriously. 

The answer to our problems is the old fashioned concept of “national repentance”, a concept adopted repeatedly by the nation of Israel in the Old Testament.  The only solution to the problems now facing our society is for a genuine and widespread change of heart, where people repent of their disobedience, selfishness and greed, and turn to obeying the laws of God, both in their hearts and in their daily lives.  This would in turn allow God to bless and prosper us as He wants to, but the choice is ours.  We must choose if we want to do things God’s way.  Until that change of heart comes, no economic package or social engineering will deliver us from the problems that lie ahead for the UK

National repentance is the real solution to our problems, but it is a remedy very few are willing to consider.