Sometimes we stray away from the LORD. Yet from my ordinances and have not kept them. "Return to Me, and I will return to you, "says the LORD of host "But you sald, "I what way shall we return?"
The words of Malachi to the children of Israel are repeated under different circumstances in Zechariah 1:3.The LORD asks his people to return to Him so that He can also return to them.
For the LORD to tell them that, it means that they had strayed away from Him. Malachi records that they had forsaken the LORD'S ordinances or laws and they were no longer keeping them. When you continue to read chapter ten of Malachi, you discover that one of the ordinances they had forsaken was the paying of tithes. God reminded them that if they brought all the tithes into his storehouse he would open the windows of heaven and pour his blessings upon them such that they would not have enough room to store them. He would rebuke the devourer so that he would not destroy their crops before they were ripe.
That message spoken by Malachi and Zechariah thousands of years ago applies to us today. The LORD is telling us to return to Him from where we have strayed away from Him. The fact that we have strayed means that there was a time we knew the right way of the LORD and we were walking on it and with Him. There things we used to do when we were seriously following the LORD but now we have forgotten or forsaken them. Some of us were committed to prayer; but we no longer find time to pray. We could not spend a day without reading at least a page of the Bible. Now we can go for days or even weeks without reading the scriptures. We could not miss a week-day meeting in church; we loved fellowshipping with brethren; we used to be early in church. All that is now in the back burner of our lives.
There now more important things which have replaced them in our lives. We used to give generously for God's work believing God would in turn meet all our needs. Now we have to be persuaded hard even to pay our tithes. What has happened to you over time? Like the Ephesian brethren, there is a place you have fallen from and God is telling to you to return there. Let us return to the LORD and He will return to us.