Therefore tell the people: This is what the Lord Almighty says: Return to Me, declares the Lord

Almighty, and I will return to you, says the Lord Almighty. Zechariah 1:3 It never ceases to amaze me how the Lord always leads us in His triumphal procession. He works out the details of our lives to cause us to grow in the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is vital for us to focus upon as we face the various trials and struggles which are part of our lives. It is especially vital as we find ourselves living in times which remind us of just how uncertain life is in this world. What Gods word tells us is that He is sovereignly in control of every detail. He is in control, not us. Nowhere is this stated more clearly than in the Old Testament book of Zechariah which details in wonderful clarity Gods promise of a Messiah who will come to set us free from the hold that sin has over us. God, in His Word, tells us in advance what He is about to do, then He works out the plan just as He has told us He will do. In telling us about this God calls us to a real faith in Him. In Isaiah 7:9b King Ahaz is called to real faith as the Prophet Isaiah seeks to encourage him during a time of national crisis in the Kingdom of Judah. Isaiah says to the King, If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all. Like all of us Ahazs first inclination was to put his faith in all of the things which he could do. He was looking at fortifications, the armed forces, alliances, and his own scheming. It did not occur to him that his first trust must be in the God who had called the people of Israel together. How like Ahaz are we. We constantly look to our own schemes to solve the trials of our lives rather than seeing that the very trials we are facing are a test whose purpose is to refine us so that we will walk more closely with the Lord in holiness. I am firmly convinced that the our present trials are given to us in the will of God for the purpose of producing in us a people who will display the righteousness of Christ to this sin sick world. This is what Zachariah tells the people of his day who have returned from exile and who are finding that there is still a tremendous amount of difficulty in their lives. God is allowing it, Zechariah states, in order to call His people to repentance. God is about to do tremendous things among them. They must prepare themselves for it through repentance. They must turn back to Him seeking Him with all of their hearts. All that they have experienced was on account of their drift away from Him. Now they hear His call to turn back to Him. J. Michael Ramsey, in his essay, Going to Heaven with Jesus; 1 Peter, (In Patterns of Discipleship in the New Testament, Richard N. Longenecker editor, Eerdmans, page 251-252), outlines the use that John Bunyan makes of 1 Peter in his description of Christian discipleship in Pilgrims Progress in the following way. Christians are also a people called out of darkness to Gods marvellous light (v. 9b). The marvellous light in 1 Peter is probably future rather than present, just as the eternal glory of 5:10 to which believers are similarly called is future (cf. 1 Clement 36:2, written from Rome a few decades later: through Him our darkened and foolish understanding blossoms toward the light). In 1 Peter, marvellous light and eternal glory are alternate expressions for the vindication or salvation to which believers will come at the last day (the yonder shining light in Pilgrims Progress 53 is different: Bunyans marginal note interprets it rather as the Word) What I understand Bunyan saying here is that the faith that we are called to is a trusting in Gods voice as He speaks to us through the Prophets in the Old Testament, and to quote

Hebrews 1:1, in His Son in the New Testament. It is significant that the Son of God is designated as the Word in the Gospel of John. His teaching was communicated through the Apostles as they were moved by the Holy Spirit to remember and write down that which Jesus had said to them. God is doing something wonderful in our time. He is also at work powerfully in our lives to conform us to the image of the Son of God. What He requires of us is a faith that turns back to Him in trust, seeking to obediently hear His word. For this we must praise God in these difficult times.