Tag: Giving our Consent for Hope

Whether We Believe It or Not, God Does Have Incredible Plans for Us! Jeremiah 29:10-14

Jeremiah 29:10-14 Amplified Bible

10 “For thus says the Lord, ‘When seventy years [of exile] have been completed for Babylon, I will visit (inspect) you and keep My good promise to you, to bring you back to this place. 11 For I know the plans and thoughts that I have for you,’ says the Lord, ‘plans for peace and well-being and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. 12 Then you will call on Me and you will come and pray to Me, and I will hear [your voice] and I will listen to you. 13 Then [with a deep longing] you will seek Me and require Me [as a vital necessity] and [you will] find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you,’ says the Lord, ‘and I will restore your fortunes and I will [free you and] gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you,’ says the Lord, ‘and I will bring you back to the place from where I sent you into exile.’

The Word of God for the Children of God.

Adeste Fidelis! Venite Adoremus! Dominum.

Gloria! In Excelsis Deo! Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Amen.

Some years ago the well-known author James Michener wrote a book called The Drifters.

It’s a story about young students traveling aimlessly through Asia and Europe, drifting from one day into the next, without either a plan or even any purpose.

Lots of people today are drifters too.

Even if you have everything life has to offer, you can feel unfulfilled and without purpose, drifting from one day to the next.

Or maybe you feel as if you’ve been cut adrift.

For example, maybe you’ve lost your job and you don’t see much of a future.

Or maybe you’ve lost your spouse through death, separation or divorce, and you feel as if you’ve reached the end of the road.

Perhaps you are in that place in life where you are feeling unfulfilled, at an age where perhaps you are considering a career change but you are unsure what the next career might be or you are struggling with how you are going to finance it.

Or maybe you just retired and you feel as if you’ve been put on a shelf.

Or perhaps you’re permanently disabled and you’re not sure how you can go on.

If you’re feeling adrift for one reason or another, take heart from God’s words to us through His Prophet Jeremiah: “I know the plans I have for you … plans to prosper you and … to give you hope and a future.”

God does not want us to drift through life.

He assuredly, definitely has a purpose and plan for each one of us.

Whoever you are reading this, ask yourself, “What does God have in mind for me? And how does God want to use me today so I can have hope and a future?”

God’s Presence in Our Plans

Jeremiah 29:10-11 The Message

10-11 This is God’s Word on the subject: “As soon as Babylon’s seventy years are up and not a day before, I’ll show up and take care of you as I promised and bring you back home. I know what I’m doing. I have it all planned out—plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for.

This quote was part of a letter God had Jeremiah write to the Jews whom King Nebuchadnezzar had been forcibly taken captive to Babylon from Jerusalem.

They had been ripped from their homeland, marched, walked, taken to a land where they were aliens and strangers.

I cannot imagine how hopeless they felt. (Psalm 137)

But God had already told them what to do when they arrived there.

What we do not know is how receptive this first generation of exiles were to the message of God, through Jeremiah, of a hope not manifesting itself for 70 years.

Jeremiah 29:4-8 Amplified Bible

4 “So says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the captives whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon, 5 ‘Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their fruit. 6 Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there and do not decrease [in number]. 7 Seek peace and well-being for the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf; for in its peace (well-being) you will have peace.’ 8 For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, ‘Do not let your [false] prophets who are among you and your diviners deceive you; pay no attention and attach no significance to the dreams which they dream or to yours,

He told them to build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat their produce.

To get married and have children, then give their children in marriage to have more children, to multiply there, to not decrease in their population numbers.

And incredibly, God told them to seek the peace and well-being of Babylon where ultimately he had sent them into exile.

God even told them to pray for Babylon’s welfare.

For in Babylon’s peace and well-being, the Israelite’s would have their peace.

Then God promised that after 70 years he would bring them back to Jerusalem.

He essentially told them to take heart, a measure of solace, He had plans for them, plans for their good, plans for their future, plans to give them hope.

This is a good reminder for us.

We need to regularly remember that this world is not our home.

As the Apostle Peter would later remind his congregations of readers;

1 Peter 2:9-12 Amplified Bible

9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a consecrated nation, a [special] people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies [the wonderful deeds and virtues and perfections] of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. 10 Once you were not a people [at all], but now you are  God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

11 Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers [in this world] to abstain from the sensual urges [those dishonorable desires] that wage war against the soul.  12  Keep your behavior excellent among the [unsaved] Gentiles [conduct yourself honorably, with graciousness and integrity], so that [a]for whatever reason they may slander you as evildoers, yet by observing your good deeds they may [instead come to] glorify God [b]in the day of visitation [when He looks upon them with mercy].

Just as Babylon was not the Jews’ final home, neither is this our final home.

Our home is heaven.

But like the ancient Israelite’s, we are to build our lives here for now.

We’re to seek the good of our nation, our churches, our friends and neighbors.

John 14:1-6 Amplified Bible

Jesus Comforts His Disciples

14 “Do not let your heart be troubled (afraid, cowardly). Believe [confidently] in God and trust in Him, [have faith, hold on to it, rely on it, keep going and] believe also in Me. 2 In My Father’s house are many dwelling places. If it were not so, I would have told you, because I am going there to prepare a place for you. 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and I will take you to Myself, so that where I am you may be also. 4 And [to the place]  where I am going, you know the way.” 5 Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going; so how can we know the way?” 6 Jesus said to him,  “[a]I am the [only] Way [to God] and the [real] Truth and the [real] Life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.

We are to settle in, have generations of family, and build homes – temporarily.

We are to pray for the welfare, the well-being of where God will settle us down.

But we mustn’t forget that after “70 years” – sooner or later – God will come back, His Son, our Savior Jesus will take us unto our ultimate home – heaven.

Those are God’s plans for us.

But he has plans for us now too.

More on this tomorrow ….

In the name of God, the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit,

Let us Pray,

Psalm 8 The Message

8 God, brilliant Lord,
    yours is a household name.

2 Nursing infants gurgle choruses about you;
    toddlers shout the songs
That drown out enemy talk,
    and silence atheist babble.

3-4 I look up at your macro-skies, dark and enormous,
    your handmade sky-jewelry,
Moon and stars mounted in their settings.
    Then I look at my micro-self and wonder,
Why do you bother with us?
    Why take a second look our way?

5-8 Yet we’ve so narrowly missed being gods,
    bright with Eden’s dawn light.
You put us in charge of your handcrafted world,
    repeated to us your Genesis-charge,
Made us stewards of sheep and cattle,
    even animals out in the wild,
Birds flying and fish swimming,
    whales singing in the ocean deeps.

9 God, brilliant Lord,
    your name echoes around the world.

Adeste Fidelis! Venite Adoremus! Dominum.

Gloria! In Excelsis Deo! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Amen.

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Ash Wednesday: Deciding, Will We Ever Consent to Give Any Living Hope to Our Ailing and Hurting Hearts? Joel 2:12-14

Joel 2:12-14Amplified Bible

12 
“Even now,” says the Lord,
“Turn and come to Me with all your heart [in genuine repentance],
With fasting and weeping and mourning [until every barrier is removed and the broken fellowship is restored];
13 
Rip your heart to pieces [in sorrow and contrition] and not your garments.”
Now return [in repentance] to the Lord your God,
For He is gracious and compassionate,
Slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness [faithful to His covenant with His people];
And He relents [His sentence of] evil [when His people genuinely repent].
14 
Who knows whether He will relent [and revoke your sentence],
And leave a blessing behind Him,
Even a grain offering and a drink offering [from the bounty He provides you]
For the Lord your God?

The Word of God for the Children of God.

Adeste Fidelis. Venite Adoremus. Dominum.

Gloria. In Excelsis Deo. Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Amen.

Lent Begins … Does Hope Also Begin For Hurting Hearts?

In a large number of churches today, the ancient words of today’s Scripture reading will be read every year in the traditional Ash Wednesday liturgy.

Ash Wednesday, which falls this year on February 22, is the first day of Lent, a season in the church calendar that invites believers in God and non-believers as well, to maybe start paying special attention to the suffering and death of Jesus.

Why are these instructions about rending hearts and not garments significant?

In the Bible the rending and tearing of clothes is a sign of mourning and is often accompanied by the placing of ashes on one’s head.

Biblically, Jacob tore his clothes when he heard a report that his son, Joseph, had been killed (Genesis 37:34).

And when young King Josiah heard the words of the Book of the Law after it was rediscovered in the temple, he tore his robes as a sign of grief over the nation’s sin (2 Kings 22:11).

The Patriarch Job, when he had suddenly lost everything – including his health, he sat down on the ground and covered himself from head to toe with ashes.

Sometimes, the harsh and harshest realities of life will cause us to sit ourselves own on the ground and desire to “cover ourselves from head to toe with ashes.

Sometimes the reality of sin is enough to break our hearts.

The season of Lent reminds us that no one felt the pain of sin more than Jesus.

Jesus had already given up everything he was at home with His Heavenly Father to come to us and to offer up to His maxed out example of genuine Godly living. [John 3:16-18, Philippians 2:1-11]

John 3:16-18 The Message

16-18 “This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.

Philippians 2:5-11 The Message

5-8 Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion.

9-11 Because of that obedience, God lifted him high and honored him far beyond anyone or anything, ever, so that all created beings in heaven and on earth—even those long ago dead and buried—will bow in worship before this Jesus Christ, and call out in praise that he is the Master of all, to the glorious honor of God the Father.

When he was arrested, beaten, humiliated, crowned then crucified, Jesus was fully and completely, utterly, publicly stripped of his dignity and his garments.

More than that, his heart broke under the weight of our sin.

Joel’s reading for today is God’s invitation to return to him is answered by our looking to the cross of Christ, asking forgiveness through his sacrifice for us.

God promises to come unto us, wash away our sin and give us new life through the One whose torn garments, broken heart bring 100% healing for the world.

We Must Answer the Question: Will I Give My Heart Any Hope?

Joel 2:12-14 The Message

Change Your Life

12 But there’s also this, it’s not too late—
    God’s personal Message!—
“Come back to me and really mean it!
    Come fasting and weeping, sorry for your sins!”

13-14 Change your life, not just your clothes.
    Come back to God, your God.
And here’s why: God is kind and merciful.
    He takes a deep breath, puts up with a lot,
This most patient God, extravagant in love,
    always ready to cancel catastrophe.
Who knows? Maybe he’ll do it now,
    maybe he’ll turn around and show pity.
Maybe, when all’s said and done,
    there’ll be blessings full and robust for your God!

Joel is the prophet who compares the coming Day of the Lord with a succession of locust invasions, which sequentially devour every crop and all vegetation in an unrelenting, visibly shocking, path of progressive destruction.

Both grain and fruit harvests fail due to the devastating onslaught of this four-pronged locust infestation.

The total destruction of Israel’s wheat and barley crops, along with the failure of the entire fruit harvest, causes all the people and priests alike to mourn and lament bitterly at how hopeless everything had become before their very eyes.

Not only were the priests instructed to mourn and call for a sacred assembly, but the entire nation was commanded to fast and to cry out to the Lord their God, in sincere repentance of heart.

Israel failed to heed the past prophetic warnings of earlier prophets.

Joel’s heartfelt appeal for repentance, his warning of coming destruction, is one more demonstration of the nation’s continued rebellion against the God of their forefathers, their refusal to heed His Word and obey the covenant promises they made at Mount Sinai.

What the chewing locusts left was eaten by the swarming locusts.

And what they did not devour, was taken by the crawling locusts and then the consuming ones.

In like manner, the prophesied day of the Lord will be one of the greatest destructions to befall the rebellious nation of Israel.

It will be a time such as the world has never seen, nor would ever see again.

However, it will be a time when Israel calls out to the Lord and He will hear and rescue His people.

The entire passage compares the advance and destruction of this terrible locust invasion with speedy horses.

It likens them to a vast army of marching men of war who steadily advance with unrelenting menace, in a strict formation – but who plunder everything in their path like a well organized band of marauders and thieves.

Israel’s rebellion against the Lord, which included sloth and drunkenness, resulted in the barrage of these devouring locusts.

And the consequences of their continued rebellion, apostasy, and disobedience, would result in judgement – the coming ‘Day of the Lord’.

Joel’s entire prophecy was given to the nation of Israel.

Although it was partially fulfilled on the day of Pentecost when many men of Israel repented of their sins and believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, the full and final fulfilment of Joel’s prophecy, which begins with a day of thick darkness and progresses into the glories of the Millennial Kingdom of Christ,

will take place at the end of Daniel’s 70th week i.e. the Great Tribulation, which is sometimes called the Time of Jacobs Trouble.

The continued grace and mercy of God can be seen in His divine appeal to the people of Judah to repent of their sins and return to the Lord – for we read:

“Even now,” declares the LORD, “return to Me with all your heart, and with fasting, weeping and mourning.” [verse 12]

Both for the nation of Israel and for unsaved Gentiles alike, the precious truth of this passage is that it is never too late for sinners or backsliders to turn away from their sins, to return to the Lord with all their heart, and to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ for forgiveness and salvation.

It is a beautiful demonstration the goodness, grace, and mercy of our long-suffering God, remains fully open to ALL who will simply trust in His Word,

remember His goodness, genuinely return to Him with heart and soul – and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins and life everlasting.

It shows that fasting, with weeping and morning, is often associated with true repentance of heart.

And although, there is no written covenant, set rules, or legalistic regulations which are required of Church-age believers, it is very important and wise to take note of things that outwardly demonstrate an inward change of heart.

That is why the LORD says,
     “Turn to me now, while there is time.
Give me your hearts.
     Come with fasting, weeping, and mourning.
Don’t tear your clothing in your grief,
     but tear your hearts instead.”
Return to the LORD your God,
     for he is merciful and compassionate,
slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love.
     He is eager to relent and not punish.— Joel 2:13 NLT

God is far more concerned about hearts genuinely loving Him and longing to be in a relationship with Him than He is about a lot of external religious trappings.

The Hebrew Testament prophets emphasized that God’s people often lost their hearts to what was false and only gave lip service to God in their rituals. 

Jesus also emphasized that God wanted us to love Him and serve Him from our hearts and not just by going through religious motions.

For us to make the max best decision possible “hope for our hearts,” We must hear several of Joel’s key phrases passionately speaking God’s invitation to us:

  • “Give me your hearts…”
  • “Don’t tear your clothing… tear your hearts instead.”

God pleads for us to return to Him, wholeheartedly: 

“Turn to me now, while there is time.” 

Why would the Almighty God plead with His lowly creations?

Because YHWH loves us and longs for us to come home to Him, and love Him — heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Our “Abba” Father is full and maxed out of unfailing love [John 3:16-18]

even now yearns to be utterly received, “merciful and compassionate” to us!

The amazing, awe-inspiring truth is as simple and straightforward as it is glorious: The Creator of the universe, with all of its vastness, mystery, and beauty, 100% knows us and longs for us to draw near to Him and know Him.

Let’s come to this God seeking to hug Him, and embrace Him and love Him and know Him and experience Him exactly as we are now loved and known by Him!

In the name of God, the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit,  

Let us Pray,

Merciful God, you called us forth from the dust of the earth; you claimed us for Christ in the waters of baptism. Look upon us as with mercy and forgiveness as we enter these next Forty Days bearing the mark of ashes, and torn and rendered hearts and please bless the journey through the desert of Lent to the blessed font of rebirth. As we remember our mortality and seek penitence today, we know you to be a God who is rich in forgiveness and abounding in steadfast love, love that culminates in eternal life with you. Guide our steps this Lent, so that we might find greater fulfillment in your promises and better serve others with a heart that’s reflective of you. Amen.

Adeste Fidelis. Venite Adoremus. Dominum.

Gloria. In Excelsis Deo. Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Amen.

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