FDD34 Because God Saw

Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, faced down the people of Israel who were obstinate in their disobedience. Or rather, they came to face him down.  He had been preaching for years that they must turn to God, but they never listened. Jerusalem would fall to Babylon in chapter 52, but even in chapter 44 trouble had come.  So the people confronted Jeremiah explaining that back when they used to commit a specific form of idol worship things were pretty good, but when they stopped everything went down hill. (Jeremiah 44:18) There’s a saying in the statistics world: Correlation does not imply causation.  Just because two things happen at the same time, they are not necessarily related as cause and effect.  That was the case here.  The real cause was not that they stopped for a season but that God saw them sinning. Jeremiah’s response forces them back to a divine perspective: It was because God saw you worshiping false Gods that all of this has come (Jeremiah 44:20-23). ““Because you have burned sacrifices and have sinned against the Lord and not obeyed the voice of the Lord or walked in His law, His statutes or His testimonies, therefore this calamity has befallen you, as it has this day.”” (Jeremiah 44:23, NASB95) […]

FDD33 Pursue a Clear Head

This entry is part of 27 in the series Fifty Days of Desperation

“The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers.” (1 Peter 4:7, ESV) Prayer is hard.  That writes and reads like the understatement of the century for many Christians.  Sometimes it is because we have prayer all wrong.  We treat it like a duty on par with taking out the garbage (take all your junk to God and you’ll feel better).  But prayer is much more about living and breathing in a real relationship with God.  But it remains hard because it is “Other” than our flesh.  We are used to living by sight and responding to feelings; but prayer pushes beyond the seen to the unseen, forces us to trust in God who we cannot see and not in our flesh, and like most relationships it is the conversation and time spent together that builds the relationship. Loving anyone is a byproduct of spending time with them.  Husbands and wives: invest time in one another and your love will grow.  We love and cherish those we spend time with.  Time with God in prayer (both listening and speaking) is no different.  Our affection for the Father grows as we spend time with Him. Peter reminds us then what is […]