Episode 169: January 28, 2024 - Prepare The Way

Eternity Church PodCast

A Sunday morning sermon by Dorothy Hood. There is something so beautiful about reading Scripture together with others, to hear the words of God spoken through prophets and people, priests and kings. Before Elise and I started our family, I decided the first words I wanted our newborns to hear were our loving prayers over them and the words of the Scripture. For each one, we sensed a particular life-verse and a psalm that helped us receive each unique child. It was a way for the Lord to prepare us for how we should parent each little life toward maturity. Along with a special verse and a psalm to sing over them, I read one of the John the Baptist passages (thankfully, all four gospels share about the wilderness waymaker and we had four children). Over each one of our children, I foresaw God’s invitation for all of us to repentance and to make the way for others. Truly, if we are made in the image of God with the capacity to know Him and the capability to represent Him to others, then the words of John the Baptist should be an anthem cry for all people! John cried out to the people of God in Matthew 3.1-12, as the prophets of old before Him, to repentance. The gift of repentance is the U-turn we desperately need on the highway that seems never-ending! How many of us have realized, while we were already running late, we are going the wrong way? We anxiously start to look for a way to turn around! John the Baptist is like the road sign we’ve been searching for! Up ahead in less than a mile is a place for us to get off the road, turn around and start heading in the right direction. The gift of repentance shows us that we don’t have to keep going the wrong way. We aren’t doomed to an unchangeable fate. We aren’t condemned to hopelessness. We hear a voice telling us where to turn and why. And once we’ve turned around, once we are able to start heading in the right direction, we can now start flashing our lights to those follow behind us. Before they get past the last turning point, they can see places to much earlier along the road to turnaround sooner. Beloved, as we received the prophetic words of the kingdom of God is at hand, may we joyfully give that gift to others as we create spaces for them to turnaround, places and opportunities for repentance.