Messengers of hope!
God sees each and every struggle or trial that goes on in my life.
December 26
Come back to the place of safety, all you prisoners, for there is yet hope! I promise this very day that I will repay you two mercies for each of your woes!
Zechariah 9:12
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Messengers of hope!
Today’s reading is an incredible section of scripture. It is rich in prophecy about the first and second coming of Christ. In the midst of today’s reading is this promise that we find in the verse that we are looking at today. We should all make a habit of looking for and noting the promises that God makes in scripture. Some of those promises were made specifically for the nation of Israel and they don’t apply beyond them but a great many of them apply to anyone who will believe in and trust God.
Our verse for today is one such promise. It is intended for everyone and is intended to be believed and lived by anyone who desires it. The promise is a precious gift that we need to treasure but it also needs to be shared. Just like almost every other gift that God gives us, He wants us to share it with others.
Zechariah is speaking to people who understand what it means to be in captivity. Many of the people who would have heard this message first hand had experienced captivity in Babylon. And while they were not physically in prison they knew that they were not free. They had been exiled to Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar.
This is a promise of hope! God has promised to the prisoners that every woe that they have experienced will be repaid with two mercies. What a beautiful thing that is! That means that God sees each and every struggle or trial that goes on in my life. Not only does He see them but He also keeps a record of them. And that record is kept so that God can counter them with twice as many mercies. That means that for each of these tough times that God has allowed into our lives He is going to bless us twice as much in areas we don’t deserve.
We live in a world that has very creative ways of taking people into captivity. There are people all around us who are prisoners of something. They are prisoners to some kind of sin or idolatry. Many of these are sins of the flesh but more people are prisoners of sins of the mind than of the flesh. Many of them do not even know that they are prisoners. What they do know is that their lives are not what they are supposed to be. They need a place of safety and hope.
That is where we come in. We may have already experienced the truth of this promise and now God wants us to share it with others. As leaders of families, ministries, or churches it is our responsibility to get this truth out to those who need it so desperately. They need to know there is hope and they need someone to tell them how to get it. Jesus, help us to be the ones who share this promise of safety and hope with others.