Painful Places of Life

Imagine for a moment that you woke up one day to find that the city where you live has been surrounded by a vast army and announcements are being broadcast that everyone must prepare to evacuate.  With nearly everything of value to you left behind, you are soon herded with everyone else into buses and transported to the nearest port where you board a ship bound for a foreign country.  You cannot believe this is happening.  But there had been a warning... 

When the Majority Is Wrong

Ancient Israel in the time of Jeremiah the prophet was not much different in many ways than our culture today.  Over the years it had been continually evolving.  From a nation that honored God and worshiped Him according to the sacrificial system He gave them through Moses they had descended into all types of idolatry and sexual sins and even practiced sacrificing their children to heathen gods.

In turning away from the one true God they had lost their moral compass, calling good evil and evil good.  Yet, they continued to have a form of religion that had the outward trappings of worshiping God and honoring the temple but without sincerely trusting Him or obeying His laws.

My First Anniversary!

It’s my anniversary!  No, not for my wedding, but for a life-changing event of another kind.  And it’s well worth celebrating…in a very thankful way. 

Don’t Just Sit There!

That’s what God was telling the Israeli exiles through the prophet Jeremiah in Jeremiah 29.  Having just been taken into captivity by the Babylonians, they were told to get a new vision for the future, get busy settling into a new life, build homes and raise kids and grand kids in this godless land.  All the while they were to be praying for their captors and the welfare of the nation where they would be living in exile for the next couple of generations.  By no means were they just to sit around waiting for the storm to pass but, rather, to become involved in the community, seeking its welfare and increasing in number.  How radical was this!