DAY 311

TRUST ENOUGH TO LISTEN

Jeremiah 37, 38 & 39 and Hebrews 3

“If today your hear his voice, harden not your hearts”

“Harden not your hearts”…this might have been the refrain Jeremiah might have offered for each and every chapter. And yet this hardening is exactly what we again read…a hardened heart of Zedekiah. For some reason Zedekiah cannot trust God enough to listen. In chapter 37 we get some of the details about Egypt engaging the fight and the brief respite for Jerusalem that I mentioned the other day. We also get the details of Jeremiah being imprisoned…quite possibly people might have thought prison would soften Jeremiah’s hard message.

In chapter 38 we read of Jeremiah telling the people that if they stay and fight they are going to die…but if they surrender they will live. Surrender doesn’t seem like a manly thing to do, but buried in chapter 38…verse 5…we read of another surrender. It says the king told the princes to do what they wanted because he, the king, could do nothing against them—the king surrendered to his princes—and Jeremiah ends up at the bottom of a muddy well.

In chapter 39 we get a thumbnail sketch of the fall of Jerusalem (more details coming in 52). And here we read of Zedekiah abandoning his people…he runs from reality…he has been running from reality…the reality brought to him by God’s prophet…he has been running from it his entire life. When you don’t trust God you tend to run away.

So here is the question I am asking myself…where I am running from the reality God is putting before me…where is my heart hard? It might at first be a question I (or you) am scared to ask, but here is the reminder I give myself—God loves me—I need to be secure in His love and be so secure that He wants the best for me, that I can ask myself that question. So as I post this blog, that is what I will be talking with God tonight in prayer – let me suggest you trust Him, trust His love, ask Him to show you and then…respond.