Faith For This Moment Devotional By Rick McKinleySample

Day Seven

Remembering Our Story

Scripture: Jeremiah 29:11

How we respond in this moment will shape what our faith will look like in this new world. Denial may be how many of us will respond. Dismissing the facts and denying the realities, we can just keep going on the way we are. But if we do, we will find that we have lost a lot more than religious liberty. Our very souls are at stake. If we hide from the world, we are removing ourselves from the people Jesus has called us to love in His name. 

Another way to respond is to despair. We can close the curtains and bury our noses in the book of Revelation and wait for the rapture to come and take us home. But Jesus never gives us the option of hiding from the world. If we choose despair, we will miss the beauty and redemption that He is bringing into the world—even this world and even in the shape that it is in. 

A final option is that we can see the possibilities God has for us. When we remember our story, we recognize that the people of God have been here before, and they found their God faithful. We are not alone in our marginal moment. In seeing these possibilities, we can grab hold of the hope that Jesus is still King over all things.

This hope is not without cost. It will require that we rediscover ancient practices that sustained God’s people in conditions like our own. It will demand that we turn from the small gods we have come to depend on for our comfort, security, and identity and turn back to the living God who has bought us with the blood of His beloved Son. Along the way, we will need to imagine new and fresh ways of expressing faithfulness to Jesus, love to our neighbors, and allegiance to the King of heaven and earth who is present in sustaining ways through his Spirit. 

This is not the time to be in denial or to give in to despair. This is the time to hope in new possibilities. The God of the past is the God of the present, and He invites us to discover in new ways what it means to be the people of God today. 

What is one choice you could make today to choose hope over despair or denial?