Keep Looking
Today’s Reading – Jeremiah 26 – 29
And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart. (Jeremiah 29:13)
Jeremiah 29 is written to the captives that had been taken away from Jerusalem in the first wave to Babylon. Jeremiah is writing to them from Jerusalem, and is encouraging them to not lose heart; and to not quit following the Lord. No doubt, they were a discouraged people: they had been uprooted from the place that God had given their fathers; and they had been carried away into a strange land with strange gods and peculiar customs. They probably thought that God was finished with them; and that it was all over for them. Jeremiah reminds them that God is not done with them, and that their time spent in Babylon is only for a season. He exhorts them to make the best of it in the land of captivity: to marry, build houses, and plant orchards and vineyards so that they would not decrease during their stay there.
I have gone through seasons where it seems that God has abandoned me: times when it feels like I am miles away from God. I am encouraged by passages like this that remind me that God will never leave me nor forsake me; and even though it seems like He doesn’t care at times, I know He does. I will try to follow the exhortation of God through Jeremiah: keep searching for me with your whole heart, and eventually, I will find Him. I know that God hasn’t moved away. It is my heart that has positioned itself elsewhere; but when I search for God with all my heart, bringing my heart back to Him, He will once again reveal Himself to me and place me in that spiritual land of Canaan known as the will of God.
Posted in Devotions by Phil Erickson with 2 comments.
There are also times in my life that God seems far away, and He is. Not because He moved but because I moved. As a young Christian I was always taught when I was far from God, I could always find Him back at the cross. That’s were I first met Him and He has never left (not still hanging there – just there). Let’s all gather around the foot of the cross and kneel around Daddy (Abba)!
Well said, Pastor. We sometimes forget that when we don’t ‘feel’ close to God, it is because we moved. HE is still there.
Bro. Dave Serfass