Dear Friends and praying saints,

Jeremiah has been among my readings for most of this month, and it is pretty intense. God commands him to expose and confront the stubborn sinfulness of human nature almost all the way through the entire book. Thankfully, however, it highlights God’s mercy in a few key places along the way.

Here’s an example from Jeremiah 11:4-5. “…I said, ‘Obey me and do everything I command you, and you will be my people, and I will be your God. Then I will fulfill the oath I swore to your ancestors, to give them a land flowing with milk and honey’—the land you possess today.” And in chapter 12:15 we read, “But after I uproot them, I will again have compassion and will bring each of them back to their own inheritance and their own country.”

In the New Testament we see God’s promises take on a much broader application. The resultant fruit of his sinless life, sacrificial death, and triumphant resurrection, Jesus makes this amazing declaration in Revelation 21:6. “He said to me: 'It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life.'“

I began to reflect on the significance of this in terms of our modern world. Just taking in the greatness and the breadth of God's love and his dealings with individuals takes on a new scale of meaning when we look at this amazing information about the human race from a massive global database. This graphic is taken from a website called worldometers.info, and it provides some pretty eye-opening statistics.

But of much more transcendent importance is the magnitude of the power of the Gospel to bring people into God’s eternal kingdom. And here again we can see the Lord’s invitation in the words of Jeremiah 29:11, “ 'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the LORD, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.' “

This glorious hope and future has personally taken on greater significance as we have “lost” several friends to heaven in recent days. And this helps us to keep the proper focus on what matters the most. What would be loss is gain; what really dies is pain. In Christ we live and move and have our being. The rest is all just passing fancy. (Acts 17:28)

Some good fuel for revival prayer is found in 2 Peter 3:9, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”

Thank you for praying with us for our needy world,

Dick and Gladys