Living the life God intended

Hi how was your week? Mine was good but not without its challenges. What do we do in situations where it seems everything is going wrong? We feel like we have lost relationships, work, our career, our friends and maybe even had to move. Do we hang on to God and His love for us or do we think that because all this stuff is happening, God has forgotten me.

I am sure some of the Israelites felt like that. Some of them would have served God through many wicked kings and now they were the ones being punished. The Babylonians had come and taken them captive. They were living in a land not their own, in houses and with things not their own and in a country with a strange language and customs. Apart from all of that, the people in this country served foreign gods and there was no place for them to worship God in. God must surely have forgotten them.

Have there been times in your life when you felt like that either physically, in your mind, will and emotions or spiritually. We can all have times like this. But it is at those times, when we need to battle discouragement and hopelessness.

God knows that and right in the midst of the Israelites’ circumstances, God speaks those famous words we all love to hear in Jeremiah 29:11 to 13. “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 pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for me with your whole heart”.

God is breathing His Words of life and hope into a seemingly hopeless situation. He is saying:

* I think about you

* I think thoughts of peace for you

* My heart is I want you to have a future

* I want to breathe hope back into you

* Once you really know that, you will call to me for help, you will go to find My presence and only then can you really communicate with me and listen.

* You will seek me because you know I am good

* You will search for me for you want to know My ways

* You will find me for your heart is in the right place

I nearly cried when I was reading the verses around this scripture of despair and hopelessness, then God breathed and spoke those words over His people. How amazing!!!

I want us to take a moment today and let the impact of those words seep and speak into our hearts.

God always wants our good but He is also a God of justice. He longs for us to just follow after Him because He knows what an amazing life He has for each of us.

This week ponder that scripture and really get it into our hearts – not as a parrot but as a loved son or daughter of God. That scripture to me speaks of the heart of God for me.

Bless you heaps. Have a great week and keep living the life God intended for you.

Bless you

Karen