(Anne Graham Lotz) As I look ahead into 2016, I believe our national and global situation will get worse. A good friend has focused my attention on Isaiah 60:1-2 as a word from the Lord for the New Year: “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For the darkness shall cover the earth and deep darkness the peoples; but the Lord shall rise upon you, and His glory shall be seen upon you.”
I can feel the encroaching darkness of evil that is like a heavy moral and spiritual fog. It’s permeating our nation at every level. At the very same time that our nation is enveloped in thick darkness, God commands us to arise, let our Light shine, and the distinctive glory of our Lord will be obvious to all.
These conflicting thoughts of thick darkness and light, of encroaching evil and glory, were on my mind during these days before Christmas. I have been meditating on 2 Chronicles 20 in which Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, was warned that a vast army was coming against him. As I put myself in his place, I asked myself, what do we do when we are warned of the enemy’s advance? The answer was given in the next verse: “Then Jehoshaphat was fearful and set himself to seek the Lord, and he called for a fast throughout all Judah. And Judah was assembled to seek the Lord; even from all the cities of Judah, they came to obtain aid from the Lord” (2 Chr. 20:3-4). Jehoshaphat led God’s people in a prayer that was a desperate heart’s cry for help. FULL REPORT
