Today’s Reading:
Jeremiah 17:7-13 (1Jn. 3:20)
"Even if we feel guilty, God is greater than our feelings, and He knows everything.”
(1Jn. 3:20 NLT)
Before 1John 23:20 the writer was talking about love for one another. We should not just mention that we love, the truth must be evident in our actions. And it is this truth that will give us confidence in the presence of God. Even when we feel guilty, God sees and knows everything in our hearts because he is greater than our feelings (1Jn 3:20).
Sometimes in life we feel trapped by problems, we tried all possible efforts and we still cannot free ourselves. At times like this, we need help from outside and not inside of us. To get this outside help we have to admit that we cannot help ourselves and seek help from God - the Help of the hopeless and helpless. The Lord, the patient endurance of Israel.
Jeremiah affirms that he had learned to trust in God as his helper and make the Lord his confidence (vv. 11-18).
Now the human heart is referred to as the mind, the source of thinking, feeling and action. The Hebrews regard the heart as the center of life. And the heart by nature is desperately deceitful, wicked, and incurably sick. It is only God who can know its secret intentions and fully understand it, he also searches it. The heart and the mind encompass our emotions and together they cover every hidden elements in our character and personality (vv. 9-10).
Self-deception is one of the easiest trap the enemy uses against us. The self always help itself to get what it desire. When we have a strong desire for something, we deceive ourselves by echoing to ourselves what we want to hear about the thing. For example, when we desire something, our minds will offer variety of reasons why we should have that thing. And our emotions will give the feelings that agree with that want.
We must ask God to empower us to live deeper than the shallowness of our minds, our wills, and our feelings. When we live deeper, we are able to go further than our want, our thought, our feelings and are able to live by the Word of God. It is only in the Word of God and his will that we can humbly find true blessings.
Olufunmilayo Titilola Adekusibe
Prayer:
Father, I humbly accept that I cannot on my own solve my problems. Empower me to always seek your help and perceptive, in Jesus name.
Father pull down the stronghold of deception from my spirit, in Jesus name.
Father, it is not everything I want that is good for me. And so, when you show me what is not good for me, help me to be flexible to your reality, in Jesus name.
Father, help me to hold my peace, be at rest in you and grant me your wisdom in all things, in Jesus name.
Father, purge whatever is tearing your church apart and unite us in your love that your purpose for the church may be fulfilled, in Jesus name
Father pull down the stronghold of conceited selfishness in our nation and fill our leaders with your wisdom to serve, in Jesus name.
Kommentare