How long will it still take, before we honestly dare to admit that little can be seen of the glory of the church of Jesus Christ? When will we stop hiding our spiritual poverty behind sweet talk and quotes from the Bible? By the launching of ever more new activities, we replace the lost spiritual harmony by social group bonding.
As long as we gloss over this poverty and hail the counterfeit as real, so long there will be more and more disappointment and the spiritual poverty will increase, until we confess that we all have sinned, personally, and especially as church as a whole. As soon as we confess before God that it is justly deserved that He abandoned us - because we did not obey Him, but declared our own view of Him to be God – He will have mercy on us and through us on the whole world.
O, let us acknowledge that we are the ‘afflicted, lashed by storms and not comforted’! Then God will have mercy on us, and our children will be taught by the Lord. Let us, please, bow down before our God and confess our sins, so that our young people will not be alienated even more from God. For no new liturgies and no new activities will be able to bring back our young people to God. No, only a genuine repenting by the older generation will make it possible that God no longer will hide His face from us, but will have mercy on our young people.
The devil prowls around like a roaring lion and devours what he finds on his way (1 Peter 5:8). But when we truly want to be servants of the Lord again, no weapon forged against us will prevail, and the peace of our children will be great again.