13 You will seek me and find me WHEN YOU SEEK ME WITH ALL YOUR HEART. Jeremiah 29
God spoke these words to His people Israel after He’d sent them into exile. He encouraged them to turn back to Him and PROMISED that they would find Him again when they earnestly sought Him. In physical terms, Babylon was a four month journey from Israel, but God told them to seek and find Him there.
The other interesting thing was that it was the people whom He’d sent out of their land who were the ones who would survive and carry on the purposes of God. Sometimes painful separation is God’s only way of delivering us from bad motives and bad situations! He removes us for our own good but it may seem very painful for a time.
4 How can we sing the songs of the Lord
while in a foreign land?
5 If I forget you, Jerusalem,
may my right hand forget its skill.
6 May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
if I do not remember you,
if I do not consider Jerusalem
my highest joy. Psalm 137
Like the exiles from Jerusalem our hearts may yearn for our former home but God has wrought a separation and moved us on. Babylon was never God’s best for His people but the enemy had gotten such a grip in their own land that He had to take them away from everything they knew and start again, ‘In a Strange Land’. It was an alien culture and they would be under different rulers but God had to break things off them for their own sake and for His purposes.
11 For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Jeremiah 29
Jeremiah 29:11 is a well known verse, God’s encouragement to His people in a totally strange environment. He reassured them that His intentions towards them were only for blessing, but they had to accept their new circumstances and He would continue to bless them as they lived there. That’s Good News, God can and will bless us in every situation where we find ourselves. The enemy may do all in his power to make life difficult, but God’s blessings rest upon His people wherever they may be. Hallelujah
May the Lord bless and keep you today. Immanuel, God is with us.