As long as everything seemed to be okay the Israelites were fine; they continued living their lives, praying to other Gods and praising them and continued in their evil ways. But when God finally got angry with them and words were given to the prophets by God for the people to turn from their evil ways and turn back to Him they wouldn't listen. Eventually what the Lord had told the prophets to prophesy came true. A lot of this is found in the Book of Jeremiah.
The Israelites would finally turn back to God when all the things came to pass. They would pray to God and give Him praise. But then they would always turn back to their old and evil ways. Then the same thing would happen all over again. When they would call upon the Lord He would forgive them and be with them again and again.
If you look at our world today the very same thing is happening to us. We are acting just like the Israelites did. We have taken the Bible and prayer out of schools and they have been replaced with guns and hostility. They want the Ten Commandments taken from the courthouses, anything to do with God. What are we Christians doing about this? Yes, we get angry and there are some Christians fighting this but what would happen if every Christian would get down on their knees and pray, I mean pray with their entire strength.
When we have a catastrophe happen all of us start praying to God and asking for His protection and guidance. We continue doing this for sometime. When the bombing happened in Oklahoma what was the first thing we did, PRAY. When the Columbine killings happened, what was the first thing we did, PRAY. Then when the planes hit the Twin Towers, what did we do, PRAY. When Katrina hit and the flooding in the Midwest hit, what did we do, PRAY. Do you see where I am going with all of this?
Aren't we acting just like the Israelites? After all of the catastrophes had happened we prayed. But then we, like the Israelites just went back to our old ways. We forgot to keep on praying and praising the Lord. We forgot to ask the Lord to guide us in everything we do in our life. Are we going to do the same thing when another catastrophe happens or have we learned our lesson? I am sure we will do the same things as we have done before. Every one of us should be ashamed.
No, everything doesn't always go the way we want it to but we do have the Lord and we can certainly talk, pray, and praise Him. The Lord wants us to have a relationship with Him and to do so we must love Him, obey Him, talk to Him, praise Him, and make sure He is number one in our life. We need to want to do His will not ours. Life is so much better for us when we have the Lord walking with us. He loves us so very much and has before any of us were ever born. He gave us His Son so that we could have eternal life. Jesus bore our sins, illnesses, hurts, cares, and iniquities if we would just believe in Him. We have a home in heaven because of Him. Whatever we endure here on earth will be worth it when we are home at last.
All we have to do is to remember to pray and keep our relationship with God.
Matthew 19:26; "But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible but with God all things are possible".
Mark 10:27; "And Jesus looking upon them saith, With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible".
We have been told by Jesus there is nothing that God can't do. But we cannot continue in our evil ways and expect God to do what we want Him to do if we are not willing to do what He wants us to do. Are we willing to get down on our knees and pray fervently for God to guide, protect us, and be willing to keep our relationship with the Lord? If we can't do this, why should we expect a Holy and Righteous God to do what He wants to do?
Have a great day and may you always know the love, joy, and peace of the Lord.
3 comments:
God has really been showing me some stuff with the Israelites lately. We humans are so fickle. And you are so right...we are just like the Israelites! When all is well...we don't think or act like we need / want God but just let things go awry and we hit our knees. How sad this must make God! I pray that I will continue to seek God...in the good times...and in the bad.
Thank you for this eye-opening post! I love you, Mama!
Great post. We turn to God in time of need then forget about Him. We need to learn to worship Him in time of need and plenty. Thank you for this reminder.
Deane,
This is a fabulous post, when tragedy hits everyone prays and forgets about Him when everything goes back to some sense of normalcy. This post really hit home because it remidns me so much of my early days in my walk with God, I turned to Him, and wondered why He wasn't doing anything about what was happening, He didn't do anything because He was training me to keep my eyes fixed on Him, always, not just in times of need but in times of plenty as well, these days I couldn't imagine not fellowshiping and worshiping Him everyday. As hard as that time was I am grateful for it now, I couldn't live without Him, ever.
Blessings to you Deane.
Please forgive me, I forget at times you are writing your blog again, and forget to pop over. But I am adding you to sidebar, you have such great wisdom to share and I always enjoyed your posts.
Blessings to you Deane.
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