consecration week

(Browsing with Firefox? The text can be viewed clearly by changing the "Page Style." Go to View -> Page Style -> and select No Style)

Our pastor has challenged us to observe, in the coming week, a time of personal consecration. As he put it in his message this Sunday, Canada is in a time of moral crisis and it has happened on our watch. We need to prepare ourselves to meet with God. We need to spend time in intercession for family, community, our land, the world. But perhaps more than anything else, we need a time of personal revival. In the words of the prophet Joel (2:13-17).

13Rend your hearts and not your garments and return to the Lord, your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in loving-kindness; and He revokes His sentence of evil [when His conditions are met].
14Who knows but what He will turn, revoke your sentence [of evil], and leave a blessing behind Him [giving you the means with which to serve Him], even a cereal or meal offering and a drink offering for the Lord, your God?
15Blow the trumpet in Zion; set apart a fast [a day of restraint and humility]; call a solemn assembly.
16Gather the people, sanctify the congregation; assemble the elderly people, gather the children and the nursing infants; let the bridegroom [who is legally exempt from attending] go forth from his chamber and the bride out of her closet. [None is exempt from the humiliation.]
17Let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar; and let them say, Have pity and spare Your people, O Lord, and give not Your heritage to reproach, that the [heathen] nations should rule over them or use a byword against them. Why should they say among the peoples, Where is their God?

As part of my response to this challenge, I will be cutting back on my web activities this week, including making entries to this blog. I will be doing a personal study on consecration, which I will post here.