DEVOTION
Read Jeremiah 7: 1-5
This is the word that came to Jeremiah
from the Lord: “Stand at the gate of
the Lord’s house and there proclaim this message: ‘Hear the
word of the Lord, all you people of Judah who come through these
gates to worship the Lord. This is what
the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Reform your
ways and your actions, and I will let you live in this
place. Do not trust in deceptive words and say,
“This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord,
the temple of the Lord!”
As I was reading Jeremiah 7 today, my
heart was breaking because while this story is the Israelites story,
specifically, in these verses Judah was targeted by God and it
happened thousands of years ago, it is still us today. Things have
not changed that much. We still go on with a vain confidence in
mainstream Christianity. We find pride in our buildings, our
achievements, the eloquence of our pastors, in our head knowledge,
our plans, our standards, our denominations etc. We have compartmentalized Christianity, to us Salvation has become what we feel it should be.
We bring God down so low, that His standards do not matter to us
anymore. Our hearts are so callous, so much arrogance and pride in
the Church and among Christians. Most of us in the pews along with
our pastors have no idea what it means to be broken by God and the
list goes on. Yet, we come and stand in His presence with no fear
whatsoever. The Israelites felt they found protection too when they
came into the temple. They too had compartmentalized their lives and
expected God to honor His Word as if He could not see their hearts
were not in it. We do not pay enough attention to the fact that God
wants us to do things according to His Way and His standards.
We go through the Bible like lawyers
going through documents to find loopholes. In the meantime we forget
this is OUR GOD, the God of our Salvation. We offer Him
sentimentality and we get caught up in our own hypes, our own
deception and low standards of Christianity. But, true Christianity
according to His standards demands that we live purposely for Him.
Not according to what that means to us but according to His views,
His Word., His standards and His plan for Salvation. When this is done according to His standards and by His grace, we are transformed on the inside. It is sad to see
how we misunderstand Christianity because we do not know what it
means to live under His grace and worst we have never learned to know
ourselves because we have not been humbled by Him. So somehow, in the
depth of our souls, we still think there is something good in us.
PRAY: Oh Lord, I pray we learn to embrace
full Salvation according to your plan. I pray the eyes of our hearts
would be open and we would get rid of Spiritual blindness. Take away
the darkness that surrounds us Savior even though we do not deserve
you, I pray that you would be glorified in all our lives.
In His Love & Service
In my book Apprehended &
Apprehending I have gone more in-depth on this issue. I am running a
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