Maranatha Grace Church

Brothers and Sisters,

Do you see God's heart in the following verses?

 When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, “It would be better for me to die than to live.”

⁹ But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?”

“It is,” he said. “And I’m so angry I wish I were dead.”

¹⁰ But the Lord said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. ¹¹ And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?” (Jonah 3)

Please read all three chapters Jonah 3 - Micha 1.

May the Lord richly bless you!

Brothers and Sisters,

Because you have been reading the Bible regularly, your heart is merging into the heart of God, your thoughts are merging into God's thoughts. The story of Jonah reveals to us God's heart to a larger dimension. God loves people. No nations or people are outside of God's grace when they repent. God really cares about people. We should remind ourselves and the people around us of this truth often, God cares.

Please read all three chapters Obadiah 1 - Jonah 2.

May the Lord richly bless you!

Brothers and Sisters,

¹¹ “The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign Lord,
    “when I will send a famine through the land—
not a famine of food or a thirst for water,
    but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.
¹² People will stagger from sea to sea
    and wander from north to east,
searching for the word of the Lord,
    but they will not find it.  ( Amos 8:11-12)

When preachers are afraid to preach the word of God, when Christians are not interested in reading and hearing the word of God in its entirety, then the people suffer  from spiritual malnutrition. 

Please read Amos 5 - 9.

May the Lord richly bless you!

Brothers and Sisters,

Do two walk together
    unless they have agreed to do so? (Amos 3:3)

Surely the Sovereign Lord does nothing
    without revealing his plan
    to his servants the prophets. ( Amos 3:7)

Please read all three chapters Amos 2 - 4.

May the Lord richly bless you!

Brothers and Sisters,

Are you grateful for the Baptism of the Holy Spirit? In Joel 2 we find the promise that was fulfilled at Pentecost. God is faithful, he always keeps his promises. 

Please read all three chapters Joel 2 - Amos 1.

May the Lord richly bless you!

Brothers and Sisters,

Most natural disasters are the result of the fact that we are living on an unstable planet, but some natural disasters are the result of  God punishing sins in the life of an individual or of a nation. We ask God the gift of discernment to understand what God is telling us in every circumstances of our lives.

Please read Hosea 13 - Joel 1.

May the Lord richly bless you!

Brothers and Sisters,

But you must return to your God;
    maintain love and justice,
    and wait for your God always. (Hosea 12:6)

We honor God when we wait for him. Our human tendency is to take the lead, to be in control of our lives. God's word tells us to slow down, to wait for God always. 

Please read Hosea 10 - 12.

May the Lord richly bless you!

Brothers and Sisters,

We have to pray for God's mercy to rest on our country.

They practice deceit,
    thieves break into houses,
    bandits rob in the streets;
² but they do not realize
    that I remember all their evil deeds.
Their sins engulf them;
    they are always before me. (Hosea 7)

Please read all three chapters Hosea 7 - 9.

May the Lord richly bless you!

Brothers and Sisters,

Please read a couple of times the three chapters Hosea 4 - 6.

May the Lord richly bless you!

Brothers and Sisters,

Even in the Old Testament there was a tension between the rigid application of the Law and showing love and mercy. The Bible tells us that God is love. God will go to the extreme to show us how much he loves us, how much he cares about us. 

The Lord said to me, “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.” (Hosea 3)

Reconciliation at the individual level can lead to a collective reconciliation. 

Please read all the chapters of Daniel 11 - Hosea 3.

May the Lord richly bless you!

Brothers and Sisters,

Daniel was a righteous man, still he prayed and identified himself with his people, with their present sins, and even with the past sins of his ancestors. (See Daniel 9). God heard Daniel's prayer and answered him right away, however the manifestation of the answer to Daniel was delayed (Daniel 10). We can never give up on God, for God will never give up on us. Keep on praying; prayer can heal the past, the present, and even the future. 

Please read Daniel 8 - 10.

May the Lord richly bless you!

Brothers and Sisters,

We can never despair of the difficult situation that our country is going through when we know that one person can make a difference, One person, Daniel who risks his  life because of his integrity and his faith in God had a tremendous positive impact not only on a nation but on a whole kingdom. Can we risk it all on God to change our country?

The last time I went to Haiti, I wanted to go the bank, the line was very long, but the customers stayed on the hot sun to get inside the bank, but my friend managed to get me ahead of the line. May the Lord helps me next time to suffer with the people, and perhaps make a little difference. All it takes is just little simple righteous acts, one good action at a time. 

Please read all three chapters Daniel 5 -7.

May the Lord richly bless you!

Brothers and Sisters,

Please read the three chapters Daniel 2 - 4.

May the Lord richly bless you!

Brothers and Sisters, 

In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. ² And the Lord delivered Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, along with some of the articles from the temple of God. These he carried off to the temple of his god in Babylonia and put in the treasure house of his god. (Daniel 1:2)

And the Lord delivered Jehoiakim king of Judah. It was not Nebuchadnezzar who vanquished Jehoiakim, but the Lord delivered him into the hand of Nebushadnezzar. We must be very careful in our service to the Lord.

 Please continue  to read Ezekiel 44 - Daniel 1.

May the Lord richly bless you.

Brothers and Sisters,

Are the leaders a reflection of the people, or the other way around, are the people a reflection of the leaders?Reading the prophecies of Ezekiel about all the judgment of God on a lot of countries because of the attitude of their leadership was disturbing to me. Can a just God destroy a nation because of the wrongs of its leaders? Superficially it seems that Ezekiel implies it, until we realize that the leaders can be a reflection of the people. The leaders are rotten because the people are rotten? This is a very difficult idea to accept but it  worths considering and exploring.

Haitians complain all the time about their leaders without realizing maybe they all contribute in a certain way about what is going on in their country, consciously or not. We could look at ourselves, mostly the Christians to start making minor changes in the way that we treat people in order to change the fabric of the country. I am always appalled by the fact that even Haitian Christians think that it is alright to lie about the time of an event. They put the time to be at such time knowing really well that the event will start two hours later. It is not okay, it shows our character as a nation. It is difficult for God to bless something that starts with disrespect of the human person. 

The changes don't have to be drastic in the beginning, but surely little by little we will change and change our leaders.

Please read Ezekiel 41 - 43.

May the Lord richly bless you!