The people in Jerusalem had been taken captives by the Babylonians and this was according to the words of prophet Jeremiah. Also according to the words of Jeremiah, the people of God returned back to Jerusalem. At this period of returning to Jerusalem, God raised 3 prophets. First was prophet Haggai, then Zachariah and Malachi. These were the 3 prophets in the period of Israelites’ history. Today the speaker will make use of the book of Haggai for mutual encouragement.

We often hear this saying: absence makes the heart grow fonder. It is used to describe a couple who have been together for a long time. When they were dating, there were sparks. After many years, holding hands felt like the left hand holding the right hand. But if there arises a circumstance that causes them to be separated for a period of time, their relationship grows. They will try to find pockets of time to give each other a call, to build a relationship and talk to each other. Although they have to be separated temporarily, it causes their relationship to be better than when they were first married. A few years ago, some European researchers looked into phone call data from a certain country. They hypothesised that there was a correlation between how good the callers’ relationship were and the length of their phone calls. They were trying to find the following out: when two parties face a crisis, will they spend more time to grow their relationship? They found out that it was indeed true when two were separated, they would spend more time to make phone calls to invest in their relationship. This is likely the experience for many of us. When we find our relationship is in a crisis/trouble, we would spend more time to work on it. It was also found that when two people are separated for a long period and time is not spent to keep it growing, the relationship will slowly fade away.

The book of Joshua is written from the perspective of a prophet. From the perspective of a judge, history explains the words of God to us. We should look at the book of Joshua from the eyes of a judge to understand what kind of God we worship.

1. The Worldly Outlook

In this situation of the pandemic today, the likelihood of one falling into despair is higher than ever before. To the people of the world, their hope is placed in the government to keep order in the country and to keep the economy from crumbling. Their hope is placed in the healthcare workers to help save as many lives as possible. Their hope is placed in the scientists to come up with a cure or a vaccine for the virus as soon as possible. The problem with placing hope in these people however, is that there is no 100% guarantee of them succeeding. In some countries, their government may not always be placing the welfare of its citizens as its top priority. Even with the best medical care, not everyone will be able to survive the virus. Even if a cure is found, there is no guarantee that the virus will not mutate and come back stronger in the future. The greater the hope placed in such, the greater will be the despair when we see all these fail.

The topic for mutual encouragement today is taken from Colossians. We first turn to Colossians 1:13-14;