Father, we thank you for yet another day to praise you, to worship your holy and righteous name.
Thank you Lord for in all my circumstance you are faithful and mighty. I am grateful for your mighty hands…for it is in your hand that I find all that I need.
Know that in his care and love for us, the Lord, has a plan for those who love him as well as for those who forget about him; those who live in obedience to him as well as for those who live in disobedience to him. He promises in his word that he will, he shall, deal with each of us in such a way that we “will” know that he is God. Jeremiah 17: 5 & 6 “This is what the Lord says; “Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from mere flesh and whose heart turns away from the Lord. That person will be like a bush in the wastelands; they will not see prosperity when it comes. They will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives.” Likewise, he has a word to the faithful, those who live to please him; who live in obedience to his word. Jeremiah 17: 7 &8 “But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”
The Lord speaks to our faith and hope in him. He’s a jealous God and he desires that we worship him as our God, that we would worship him only. He’s looking down on his people for they have forgotten him, they are practicing idol worship. They live as though they have forgotten his promises, his will and his way. They live as their forefathers in complete disobedience. God speaks here to their hardened hearts; their lust for images made by hand and their mistreatment of each other. He speaks to their following the ways of the world. He speaks of pending disaster that will befall his people due to their blatant disregard for truth. He declares to them that they are even worse that any generation before them. Here he promises a day of “woe” and “reckoning” for their disobedience; for they do not hear his call to come back to him, back to his care and love. God desires that we turn to him and away from those things that hinder our seeing him, loving him, obeying him and being faithful to him. He promises to set things in order one day.
The question that lies before us is...How will he find us…in love or in hard heartedness…being faithful or unfaithful…in worship and praise to him or to the things of this world…living in waste or in abundance…by the flesh or by the spirit?
It’s a matter of the heart….
