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This update is from a recent meeting of ASK Daegu. Each member contributed something to the message that follows. We pray that our group encourages you in the same way that it encouraged all of us.

READ JEREMIAH 33

God pleads with us to call on Him. But do we? God promises to provide us with answers to our deepest questions and concerns, but do we listen? Our understanding of God is revealed in how we call on Him and how we listen. Why do we call on Him? If we call on Him with an expectation that he will remove the most present obstacle in our life, then we have reduced His promises to be as temporal as the world we live in. If we measure His power in how effectively He removes the particular trouble in our lives, then we fail to grasp the depth of His promise and are left abandoned by a rescue He never actually vowed to make.

Emptiness does not necessarily mean godlessness. Emptiness in this world is a result of the fallen nature of this world. However, God’s promises are real and they are ever-present. They are now. They are working. The wickedness and destruction of this world should not cause us to need God less. On the contrary, it should reveal in us a greater need for Him. The suffering in this world does not prove the absence of God. Suffering reveals our need for a savior to rescue us from the suffering in and to which we all actively participate and contribute. We need His heart and we need His words.

In the end, the answer to our call does not manifest itself in rescue now. Rather, it rescues us spiritually in the present in the promise of Jesus Christ to rescue us completely in the future. Jesus Christ is God’s answer to our plea for help. Jesus Christ IS hope. He provides us the hope that all is not lost and what we have lost is not the end. Jesus does not help us get to the end. Jesus IS the end. To find Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord is to find the answer we sought from the beginning. We are lost in this world in one way or another; Jesus Christ comes to find us. We have been hurt or are presently hurting; Jesus Christ comes to heal us. We are afraid of the finality of this world; Jesus Christ tells us to find peace in Him as the beginning and end that encompasses all that we have been, are and will ever be. He is life, and God’s answer to all of our questions is Jesus Christ.