In Jeremiah 5, God pleaded, “Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem; see now and know; and seek in her open places if you can find a man, if there is anyone who executes judgment, who seeks the truth, and I will pardon her” (Jeremiah 5:1, NKJV). The Lord was saying, in essence, “I’ll be merciful, if I can find just one person who’ll seek me.”

During the Babylonian captivity, God found such a man in Daniel. When the Holy Ghost came to Daniel, the prophet was reading the book of Jeremiah and asking why God was not delivering Israel after the promised 70 years. When the revelation came that Israel had not repented, Daniel was provoked to pray, “I set my face toward the Lord God to make request by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes. And I prayed to the Lord my God, and made confession” (Daniel 9:3-4).

Daniel knew God’s people had failed, yet did the prophet lambaste his peers for their sins? No. Daniel identified himself with the moral decay all around him. He declared, “We have sinned and committed iniquity, we have done wickedly and rebelled, even by departing from your precepts and your judgments… O Lord, to us belongs shame of face, to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, because we have sinned against you” (Daniel 9:5, 8).

God strongly desires to bless his people today, but if our minds are polluted with the spirit of this world, we are in no position to receive his blessings. Daniel made this powerful statement: “All this disaster has come upon us; yet we have not made our prayer before the Lord our God, that we might turn from our iniquities and understand Your truth. Therefore the Lord has kept the disaster in mind, and brought it upon us; for the Lord our God is righteous in all the works which he does, though we have not obeyed his voice” (Daniel 9:13–14).

We must examine our own walk with the Lord and let the Holy Spirit show us areas of compromise. We should do more than pray for a backsliding nation. We should be crying out, “Oh, Lord, search my heart. Expose in me all of the spirit of the world that has crept into my soul.” Like Daniel, we could then set our faces to pray for the deliverance of our families and our nation.

In Genesis chapter 34, we’re following the events in the family of Jacob and his 12 sons who eventually became known as the 12 tribes of Israel. Levi was one of the 12 children of Jacob, and he had a sister named Dinah.

Now, Dinah was mistreated to the point of actually being raped by some men in a village near where they were living, so Levi and Simeon went into this village and enacted murderous revenge. When they came back, Jacob was so frustrated with them. A few chapters later, Jacob was dying. The tradition in those days was that you would gather your children and speak a blessing over them at the end of your life.

Here were his 12 sons, and he spoke 10 blessings. Instead of a blessing Levi and Simeon, he said, “Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce, and their wrath, for it is cruel! I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel” (Genesis 49:7). I can’t help but imagine that their father really affected them, and it would seem so in scripture. The Bible doesn’t mention the tribe of Levi or Simeon very often in the next couple hundred years.

Finally, we find the tribe of Levi mentioned again. Moses went up on top of the mountain, God carved out the Ten Commandments, then Moses came back down off that mountain only to find Israel had put together this idol of a golden calf. They were dancing and partying and worshiping it. Moses was struck to the heart by this and how lightly they took the things of God. “Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp and said, ‘Who is on the Lord’s side? Come to me.’ And all the sons of Levi gathered around him”(Exodus 32:26).

People in the tribe of Levi were the first ones to step out of worldliness and stand with God’s chosen leader and the law.

Do you know what Moses said to them through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit? “Today you have been ordained for the service of the Lord, each one at the cost of his son and of his brother, so that he might bestow a blessing upon you this day” (Exodus 32:29).

God made the Levites into a dedicated tribe of priests to serve him in his temple. God can break generational curses and pain. Step into a relationship with him and bow to his truth, and he can transform anything.

“For you have been my hope, Sovereign Lord, my confidence since my youth. From birth I have relied on you; you brought me forth from my mother’s womb. I will ever praise you. I have become a sign to many; you are my strong refuge. My mouth is filled with your praise, declaring your splendor all day long. Do not cast me away when I am old; do not forsake me when my strength is gone” (Psalm 71:5-9, NIV).

I have always found Psalm 71 extremely poignant. It is a cry from the heart of a man who was close to God all the way from his youth into his later years. He had accomplished great deeds and was even, in his day, considered a hero and role model by his peers. It is also the portrait of a man who, in the autumn of his life, now fears being forgotten.

This heart-deep cry is all the more overwhelming because it is the echo of a silent epidemic today, that millions of men and women of a good age feel like they have been put aside by a performance-based society that is disproportionately and cruelly focused on youth.

In modern parlance, the Psalmist would be concerned about the fact that his son only calls him once a year at Christmas, that his grandchildren are always too busy to come and visit him. He would fear losing his intellectual faculties, his memory or his autonomy.

Of course, government advertising campaigns make us aware of the afflictions of loneliness, neglect and sometimes even abuse that many seniors experience. Nevertheless, I believe that, as children of God, raising awareness is the least we can do. We are called to protect our seniors and to be a refuge for them. They are the ones who built the society in which we live as well as the churches in which we come together to live out our faith.

I encourage and challenge you to show respect, care and love for the elderly around you. I urge you to protect them from the loneliness and isolation and to honor them as God calls us to do.

God is about to do something new and glorious. This new thing is beyond revival, beyond an awakening. It is a work of God that he alone initiates when he can no longer endure the polluting of his holy name. He says, “I acted for my name’s sake, that it should not be profaned before the Gentiles, in whose sight I had brought them out” (Ezekiel 20:14, NKJV).

There comes a time when God determines that his Word has been so trampled into the mire and abominations have so defiled what is called “the church” that he must rise up and defend his name before a lost world.

You can read it all in Ezekiel 36:21–38. God makes awe-inspiring statements about what he will do, most importantly to bring back the honor to his name. “’I will sanctify My great name, which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst; and the nations shall know that I am the Lord,’ says the Lord God, ‘when I am hallowed in you before their eyes. For I will take you from among the nations, gather you out of all countries, and bring you into your own land. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols’” (Ezekiel 36:23-25).

For his own name’s sake, God is going to do two mighty works. First, he is going to purge the nations and his church with awesome redemptive judgments. He is going to stop the invasion of his house by homosexuals and charlatans, and he is going to purify and cleanse the ministry and raise up shepherds after his own heart.

Second, God is going to glorify his holy name with a great intervention of mercy. In the throes of judgments being fulfilled, God is going to save the day by a supernatural “turning” of a remnant back to himself. What he did for Israel when they were being judged, he will do again in the days ahead.

Let us seek our Lord fervently in the prayer closet and look forward to the great and glorious redemptive work he is going to do for his name’s sake.

When you hurt the worst, go to your secret closet and weep out all your despair! Jesus wept. Peter wept bitterly; he carried with him the hurt of denying the very Son of God. Those bitter tears worked in him a sweet miracle, and he came back to shake the kingdom of Satan.

Jesus never looks away from a crying heart. He said, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart—These, O God, you will not despise” (Psalm 51:17, NKJV). Not once will the Lord say, “Get hold of yourself! Stand up and take your medicine. Grit your teeth.” No, Jesus stores every tear in his eternal container.

Do you hurt? Badly? Go ahead and cry! Keep on crying until the tears stop flowing, but let those tears originate only from hurt and not from unbelief or self-pity.

Life goes on. You would be surprised how much you can bear with God helping you. Tears and emptiness may swallow you up at times, but God is still on his throne. You can’t help yourself. You can’t stop the pain and hurt. Our blessed Lord will come to you, and he will place his loving hand under you and lift you up to sit again in heavenly places. He will reveal his endless love for you.

Encourage yourself in the Lord. When the fog surrounds you and you can’t see any way out of your dilemma, lie back in the arms of Jesus and simply trust him. He wants your faith and confidence. He wants you to cry aloud, “Jesus loves me! He is with me. He will not fail me. He is working it all out right now. I will not be cast down. I will not be defeated. I will not be a victim of Satan. I love God, and he loves me!”

As Paul told the church in his letters. “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” (Romans 8:31-32).

Happiness is not living without pain or hurt. True happiness is learning how to live one day at a time, despite all the sorrow and pain.

Christ warned his disciples, “He said to them, ‘Take heed what you hear. With the same measure you use, it will be measured to you; and to you who hear, more will be given. For whoever has, to him more will be given; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him’” (Mark 4:24–25, NKJV).

Jesus knew these words might sound strange to non-spiritual ears, so he preceded his message by saying, “If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear”(Mark 4:23). Jesus was telling us, “If your heart is open to God’s Spirit, you’ll understand.”

What exactly is Jesus saying in this passage? He’s speaking of how the Lord measures out his glorious presence in various amounts, whether to churches or to individuals. Some don’t receive any of his glory. Others receive an ever-increasing measure, emanating from their lives and churches.

God has promised to pour out his Spirit on his people in these last days. Indeed, all of scripture points to a triumphant, glory-filled church at the close of time. Jesus himself said the gates of hell will not prevail against his church. We won’t be limping into heaven. No. Our Lord is going to bring greater power to his church. This power won’t be manifested merely in signs and wonders. It will be revealed in his people and in the glorious transformation of hearts touched by God’s Spirit.

How can we obtain an ever-increasing measure of Christ’s glory? The Lord told us very clearly in Mark 4:24. Jesus was saying, “According to the portion of yourself you allot to me, I’ll give back to you in like portion. I’ll deal with you in the manner you deal with me.”

If you measure out to God sloth and laziness, taking for granted his great work, you’ll be dealt a spirit of slumber. “Laziness casts one into a deep sleep, and an idle person will suffer hunger” (Proverbs 19:15). As a result, your soul will go hungry.

God’s love, mercy and grace toward us are boundless. The issue here isn’t obtaining his love, mercy or grace; but having the blessing of his glory in our lives.

Jesus states plainly that he measures out different amounts of his glory to us, according to how we measure out our hearts to him. Our part is simply to move ever closer to him in our worship, obedience and diligence.