Wake-Up Call

There was great mourning among the Jewish people in every province where the king’s command and edict reached. —Esther 4:3

These Jews in Esther’s day were third and fourth generation expatriates living in Persia. Most had become secularized, assimilated into Persian culture.

But this wasn’t what God had in mind for them. So, He used persecution to revive and purify their hearts. He used a wicked king, a wicked decree, and a desperate situation to get their attention. He does the same with His people today.

In times of prosperity, our hearts tend to become complacent. God uses crises to wake us up to our love for the world and make us desperate for Him. He stirs up His people to seek Him in prayer and fasting, realizing He is the only hope.

As we incline our hearts toward God, responding with humility, we’ll begin to experience the fresh wind of His Spirit blowing through us. And He will make us what we were intended to be— “children of God who are faultless in a crooked and perverted generation, among whom [we] shine like stars in the world” (Phil. 2:15).

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The Quiet Place: Daily Devotional Readings

©2012 Nancy Leigh DeMoss

Scripture taken from The CSB