SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/29/2014
8:53 AM
My Worship Time Focus: The
Unhealthy Patient
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Jeremiah 3:21-25
Message of the
verses: I am following the outline that
is found in Warren Wiersbe’s commentary on the book of Jeremiah and that is
why, for the moment I am skipping to verses 21-25.
“21 A voice is heard on the bare heights, The weeping and
the supplications of the sons of Israel; Because they have perverted their way,
They have forgotten the LORD their God. 22 “Return, O faithless sons, I will heal your faithlessness."
"Behold, we come to You; For You are the LORD our God. 23 “Surely, the
hills are a deception, A tumult on the mountains. Surely in the LORD our God Is
the salvation of Israel. 24 “But
the shameful thing has consumed the labor of our fathers since our youth, their
flocks and their herds, their sons and their daughters. 25 “Let us lie down in
our shame, and let our humiliation cover us; for we have sinned against the LORD our God, we and our
fathers, from our youth even to this day. And we have not obeyed the
voice of the LORD our God.’”
In verse twenty-two we see that the Lord tells the Jewish
people that He will heal their faithlessness, which is a picture of sinfulness
in the metaphor of sin, and this is used in other places of the
Scriptures. Sin is like a sickness, as
we think of being in a store and someone sneezes close to us who has a cold and
the next thing we know is that we too have a cold, and the germs from the
person travels into our air passages and then into our blood stream. Sin is like that for we can be tempted by a
look or a thought and if we do not do something about it at that very moment
sin can travel into our minds and then into some kind of action we take that is
sinful, and the next thing we know is that we have fallen into sinful habits
that are hard to break. I have read that
the sin-nature is what Satan uses to get into our thoughts and he uses is like
a beachhead where he then can move more freely in our being. This of course is an analogy of how an enemy
takes over an island as they first may be bombarded and next they gain a
beachhead, and then they can begin moving troops onto the island to begin to
take over the island. In the Lord ’s
Prayer we read “lead us not into temptation,” and then in Psalm 119:133 we read
“Establish my footsteps in Your word, And do not let any iniquity have dominion
over me.” Jesus told His disciples who
were sleeping while He was praying in the garden as seen in Mark 14:38 “"Keep
watching and praying that you may not come into temptation; the spirit is willing,
but the flesh is weak.’” Paul writes the
following to the believers at Corinth in 1 Cor. 10:13 “No temptation has
overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not
allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will
provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it.” These verses help us when we are tempted, but
the people of Jeremiah’s day had gone far past these precautions and have went
headlong into sin, for they offered the produce that God provide for them along
with their animals and even their children as sacrifices to their “gods.”
I want to close this section of this SD with a story that
Dr. Wiersbe tells in his commentary, a story that can help us to not be
defeated by sin: “A certain church
member was in the habit of closing his public prayers with ‘And, Lord, take the
cobwebs out of my heart!’ One of the
other members became weary of this litany, so one evening, after hearing it
again, he stood and prayed, ‘And Lord, while You’re at it…kill the spider!’ Jeremiah was out to kill the spider and cure
the patient.”
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: Killing the
spider is a difficult thing to accomplish, and that is why I must follow what
the Lord told His disciples when He said to them “Keep watching and praying,
for the Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Watching and praying are also difficult
things to do all of the time, but are necessary if I am to walk worthy of the
calling that the Lord has given to me.
My Steps of Faith for Today:
Keep watching and praying.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Chebar” (Ezekiel 1:1).
Today’s Bible
Question: “Who was with Peter when the
lame man was healed at the temple gate?”
Answer in our next SD.
1/29/2014 9:38 AM
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