As this Coronavirus pandemic continues to sweep over the land, disrupting the normal flow of our lives and routines, the people of God continue to look only heavenward from whence come our hope and our help. I feel constrained to say like the sweet psalmist of Israel –“My help comes from the Lord which made heaven and earth” Psalm 121:2.

What a way our world has changed in the last six weeks! We who were so busy, so active, so frenetic, so encumbered, have all been compelled to shelter in place, to slow down, to calm down, to pause awhile and to reorder our lives for our own good and the safety of others. We cannot help but think that God the Almighty Creator is still trying to speak to us through all this and attempting even to use this crisis to bring us to a new place and a new normal, to a place where our priorities are shifted, and we become a more spiritual, God-focused, Christ-like community, crucified to the world but truly alive to God.

So many of us are quickly learning that what we thought were necessities are more than dispensable and mere trivialities. We have found, there are so many items that clutter our lives that we can so easily live without, but we absolutely cannot live without the Lord!

We are solemnly reminded today, on this another Lord’s day, that “In Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). May this church never forget this salient message preached to us even from this woeful pandemic. May the good Lord ever help us to continue looking intently heavenward for redemption and grace to help others in these most apocalyptic and cataclysmic times.
Let us continue praying and seeking the face of the Almighty God like we have been driven to do, in the last few weeks. We still believe that the effectual, fervent prayers of the righteous avail much (James 5:16) and that the promise of 2 Chronicles 7:14 still holds true today for the people of faith. We strongly believe that the force and intensity of this cruel virus shall be broken in Jesus’ Name. The sick shall be healed and recovered in Jesus’ name, the broken-in-heart shall be consoled and restored in Jesus’ name. The captives shall be set free and the prison doors shall fly open in Jesus’ name. Those who mourn with a grief that seems inconsolable all around the church and in our communities shall be comforted even today and right now in Jesus’ name.
The prophetic word declares that they that mourn in Zion shall be given beauty for the ugliness of their ashes and as his church we pray and believe that all across the corridors of this land in Jesus’ name there shall be change and revival. We receive the oil of joy for mourning, and we adorn ourselves with the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness in Jesus’ name (Isaiah 61:3). In spite of all that the devil tries to do, we the church still believe that God the Almighty is still planting and raising up trees of righteousness all over this land and irrevocably changing the complete landscape for His glory.

For all that God continues to do in spite of this seemingly insatiable virus — we His church in return and look only to Him, knowing that this storm shall soon pass over in His name and for His glory. We receive this next revival in Jesus’ Name!

Leroy V. Greenaway
Regional Bishop