The Lord has challenged me to wait on Him to reveal a verse, meditate on it, and write publicly about it.
So here goes Day 1!
"For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all of your heart. I will be found by you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back from your captivity; I will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you , says the Lord, and I will bring you to the place from which I cause you be be carried away captive." Jeremiah 29: 11-14
This verse is in Jeremiah's letter to the captives, I think about the captives in bondage now, including myself. Being captive can mean so many things, it can mean anything from being a slave to sex trafficking, to being a slave of television. It is so easy to be taken captive by the things of this world, media, relationships, pornography, food, etc. You name it. I would say most, if not all, the time we never intend to become captive. It is a slow process that the enemy sticks his nasty little hands in. He lures us with the enticement of the object our flesh is desiring. Then we stick our toe in just to see how it feels, next time a foot, a leg, until eventually we are drowning in the nasty sin. We become slaves, we become captive. Then once we are in, we began to believe all the lies the enemy tells us, "God hates you, you wouldn't be in this situation if he didn't", "Where is your God now? Why isn't he saving you?" "You are a disappointment to God!" "He is disgusted by you!" And we just began this path of self-destruction.
But there is GOOD NEWS! The Enemy has already lost! The Lord has already won! The Lord loves you and thinks nothing but thoughts of peace about you! He wants to give you a future and a hope! Don't let the enemy tell you what God thinks about you! He will NEVER tell you the truth. A good rule to follow is if the enemy is telling you one thing, believe the exact opposite! The Lord has not forgotten about you no matter how far away He may seem, no matter how silent his voice sounds to you. He is relentless when it comes to pursuing you. See Jeremiah 29 states that "when you search for Him with ALL of your heart, you will find Him" that is a delightful promise! An even more delightful promise is that he will "bring you back from your captivity!" He will not let you drown in it. You simply have to seek Him, see sometimes we tend to think the Lord is just going to come down and save us without us doing anything. Because He wants us to choose to love him, we have a choice to ask Him for our help. So we must call for him and pray to Him and he promises He will listen and bring you out of the darkness.
Never believe you are too far in the deep end to be rescued by your beloved. He loves you more then we will ever know until we are united with Him in heaven!
A question I have for readers! Why do you think He says He will bring us back to the place from which He rescued us out of our captivity?
