It has been a whole month of recollecting what it means to belong to a Cell group either in a home or office or whichever place you have chosen to fellowship. It is now a time of new beginnings for those that have never belonged to a group but also revival for those in Cells to begin doing things different with vigour and love. We have been challenged to remember our first love when we looked for fellowships to hear the word of God. Yet today we have become too busy for God that even reading His word has become a burden to us. We need to move forward growing together, eating together in fellowship but most important being rooted, established and walking together
as beloved in the Lord.
Today we want to rejoice together and celebrate what the Lord has done.
In Isaiah 51:1-3, the Prophet commends the people for their righteousness.
The Jews had for long lived in unrighteousness but now repentance and brokenness has empowered them to be holy and drawn them closer to God.
Repentance keeps the heart humble and the conscience awake and tender.
Christ becomes more precious to the soul because it is clean and clear for him to dwell. Righteousness means that Christ is deeply seated in our hearts that rejoicing becomes evident.
Following after righteousness means earnestly desiring and diligently pursuing the justification in our inner being. For the Jews sanctification resulted into practical obedience to God’s law. The Jews sought God for His blessings, reconciliation and favour. The Prophet reminds them to remember the rock from which they were hewn and the quarry from which they were dug.
They had to look back at what God has done to the ancestors and believe Him for what He can do in the present. He compares the bodies of Abraham and Sarah unto a rock, or pit, or quarry, out of which stones are hewn or dug; implying that which John the Baptist said he was able to do, (Matthew 3:9,) even of stones to raise up children unto Abraham. This seems impossible, by the course of nature, for Abraham and Sarah, in such an advanced age to
have a child, as it is to hew one out of a rock, or dig one out of a pit. But God called him as a single man and out of him he became a great nation. God can deliver and raise His Church when they seem to be consumed, dead, and
buried, so that nothing but dry bones remain of them, as is declared in Ezekiel chapter 37.
Are you eaten up in discouragement and unbelief? Do you feel deserted in the wastelands? Have you prayed for too long and you want to give up?
Today God wants to restore you and give you joy, gladness, thanksgiving and a new voice that can praise Him again. When circumstances attack us, God confronts the situation with love and forgiveness. Allow God to confront your
situation so we can rejoice together.
The Very Rev. Canon Dr. Rebecca Nyegenye
PROVOST