Devotionals from my Bible app: Seeking and Finding God (Jeremiah 29:13) - Part 1

I ended up splitting this into two posts. To go to the actual Bible devotional from my Bible app, please see tomorrow's post.

In my young-adult, seeking years (and even into the beginning of my "saved" years) I received several different verses of encouragement. One was from Joel 2:25 (So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, The crawling locust, The consuming locust, And the chewing locust, My great army which I sent among you. - NKJV); another was from Jeremiah 29:11 (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. - NKJV). 

Now, I do love Jeremiah 29:11 because of its role as a chief piece of encouragement from Scripture. The thoughts that God thinks of you and me, His creation, who He rescued time and time again throughout the Bible, but especially once and for all when Jesus died upon the cross for our sins - wonderful! Sometimes a person's biggest wound is having been hurt by someone who didn't think good thoughts about them, and as such has not known that someone (or even Someone) would think such good thoughts of them! I've been there. My sin is I keep forgetting that God does love me in this way. That He knows all the things that happened to me, that happened to you, and that He cares. I also know the pain all too well of someone knowing what happened and appearing to do nothing (because someone else in fact did do nothing). But what separates God from humanity in this sense is that it is indeed enough that He knows what we go through, and it is indeed enough to remember that He is grieved when we get hurt (and when we hurt others). My new favorite verse/passage is actually highlighted in yesterday's post:

And the Lord restored Job’s losses when he prayed for his friends. Indeed the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. Then all his brothers, all his sisters, and all those who had been his acquaintances before, came to him and ate food with him in his house; and they consoled him and comforted him for all the adversity that the Lord had brought upon him. Each one gave him a piece of silver and each a ring of gold. Job 42:10-11, NKJV

I shared more of my thoughts, reflections, and analyses in yesterday's post, but simply the knowing that God does eventually intervene and make things right even after the worst of circumstances, means we can also count on His thoughts of us, when He does say it, because what He says He will do, He will indeed do. For this reason, I love Jeremiah 29:11.

However, this truth doesn't seem complete without adding verses 12 and 13 as well:

11 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. 12 Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. 13 And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. Jeremiah 29:11-13, NKJV

After all, the Gospel, let alone the totality of all of God's thoughts about you and me, aren't about you or me. It's about Him! This is yet another area I still stumble. I am still prone to rationalizing that, because of the myriad of struggles I have endured all throughout my life, I am owed for the hardships I've endured. But that's not how it works. It's not how it works with God, and it's not even how it works with the world. Fairness is not a Biblical concept, and it's not even a successful worldly concept, either. (The world preaches fairness, but no one in the world ever practices it.) Job did get paid back double all that he had lost, but it's noteworthy that it came only after Job completely repented of every wrong thought He had against God, and only after he prayed for his three friends with whom he contended. The Biblical book may bear Job's name, but it was never about him to begin with. It's about God.

Therefore, looking at verses 12 and 13 from Jeremiah 29, yes, God shares His thoughts of giving us a hope and a future, but it also comes with the understanding that we who believe on Him and love Him will then call on His Name, pray to Him, and seek Him with the entirety of our hearts. His promise is that He will respond and He will bless us when we do these things. But, we must come to Him completely in order for us to then receive blessing... and we also must serve Him only:

Then Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve.’ ” Then the devil left Him, and behold, angels came and ministered to Him. Matthew 4:10-11, NKJV

Just like Job's real friends and family came and ministered to him after he repented and prayed for his friends, angels came to minister to Jesus after He endured the devil (at the end of 40 days and nights of fasting). I don't know about you, but I think there's a bit of a parallel here.

Tomorrow: the devotional titled "Seeking and Finding God," with Jeremiah 29:13 as the focus verse.