Monday, November 23, 2009

Don't ask

In Jeremiah 42 Johanan and all the people approached Jeremiah to ask a question
"What should we do?"
And they must have known that asking God questions sometimes means you have to do difficult things and so they say:
6 Whether it is favorable or unfavorable, we will obey the LORD our God, to whom we are sending you, so that it will go well with us, for we will obey the LORD our God.

It wasn't that they didn't know what they were getting themselves into- they KNEW!
And then 10 days later the Word of the Lord came to Jeremiah.
My guess is that Jeremiah probably spent those 10 days praying.
This was direction for a whole COUNTRY. A whole people. I'd guess he dedicated some time to this. That he wasn't out cavorting and having a good time, when suddenly the Word came to him. I'd guess he was seeking it.
And then he tells them the answer:
"Stay"
Well they didn't LIKE the answer and they said that Jeremiah was lying. The answer didn't make sense- the king of Babylon was taking over their country so of course they should go. But God's answers don't always have to make sense. In fact they may more often than not make sense to our human minds. But God doesn't see things the way we see them. So He said "Stay" and they said "No"
Help me, Lord, to be obedient to you even when it looks like your answer is the wrong one.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

The truth

In Jeremiah 40, 41 Johanan tells Gedaliah the truth about a guy named Ishmael.
40:16 But Gedaliah son of Ahikam said to Johanan son of Kareah, "Don't do such a thing! What you are saying about Ishmael is not true."

But it was true.
Sometimes we want things to be a certain way. We want the world to be a certain way, that we disrgard the truth because it doesn't fit with how we want the world to be. But how we want it to be is not always how it is.
It is important to be able to recognize truth.