We Cause Our Own Misery!

Reading:  Jeremiah 2
My Verse:  "Have you not brought this upon yourself
                         by forsaking the LORD you God
                         when He led you in the way?

                    Your own wickedness shall chasten and correct you,
                         and your backslidings and desertion of faith shall reprove you.

                    Know therefore and recognize that this is an evil and bitter thing,
                         [first] you have forsaken the LORD your God;
                         [second] you are indifferent to Me
                            and the fear of Me is not in you,
                            says the LORD of hosts. (Jeremiah 2:17,19 Amplified Bible).

 Wow, LORD God, You are up front with us! It cannot be more clear than this that we need You in our lives!  Pastor at church this morning spoke of how messy we humans are.  He jokingly stated that churches would be perfect if not for the people!  We do know how to mess things up making our lives way too complicated!  You, LORD God want to simplify it.  You want us to drop everything and simply, obediently follow You, give our all to You.  We don't have to be so miserable!

A web site godandscience.org lists all these studies that show a positive correlation between our good health and well-being to that of a faith based life and the activities involved in that.  Here are some quotes from a few of those studies.

     "Found that depressed patients who had a strong intrinsic religious faith recovered over 70% faster from depression that those with less strong faith; among the subgroup of patients whose physical illness was not improving, intrinsically religious patients recovered 100% faster" (American Journal of Psychiatry 155: 536-542).

     "The relationship between religious activities and blood pressure was examined in 6-year prospective study of 4,000 older adults.  Among subjects who attended religious services once a week or more and prayed or studied the Bible once a day or more, the likelihood of diastolic hypertension was 40 percent lower than among those who attended services and prayed less often" (International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine 28: 189-213).

     "Frequent church attendees were more likely to stop smoking, increase exercising, increase social contacts, and stay married; even after these factors were controlled for , however, the mortality difference persisted" (American Journal of Public Health 87: 957-961).

The church I am presently attending has communion every Sunday.  I thought this was a bit much, as I was used to having it once a month.  But I am beginning to like it as I am forced to pause and assess where I am.  Stopping to really focus on You, LORD God and my relationship with You is good.  Thank You for that.  I need to examine where I am in regards to You frequently!  Thank you for telling us to do this as a reminder of You! (Luke 22:19-20)

You call me, LORD God, but I need to respond to Your call.
"Come to me, all you that are weary and burdened . . ." (Matthew 11:29).

You tell me You will clean me up, heal me and enable me to love You but I need to ask You to do that.

"If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9).

"And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you.  And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.  And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in  my statutes and be careful to obey my rules" (Ezekiel 26:36,37).

You do not force anything upon us.  We need to ask, we need to respond to You and then You will lead us on a most incredible journey, a journey with and end that promises to be even more amazing than we can imagine!

A.W. Tower speaks to this in We Travel An Appointed Way!

     "To the child of God, there is no such thing as accident.  He travels an appointed way. . .
     When true faith enters, chance and mischance go out for good.  They have no jurisdiction over them that are born of the Spirit, for such as these are sons of the new creation and special charges of the Most High God. . . 
     The man of true faith may live in the absolute assurance that his steps are ordered by the LORD.  For him, misfortune is outside the bounds of possibility.  He cannot be torn from this earth one hour ahead of the time which God has appointed, and he cannot be detained on earth one moment after God is done with him here.  He is not a waif of the wide world, a foundling of time and space, but a saint of the LORD and the darling of His particular care."

Matthew 5:13-16 states that You, LORD God consecrated us.  You tell us that we ARE salt, we ARE light!  You say it and so it is so.  I need to live that.

We are not to blindly follow what any man says but to look to You LORD God always for truth and understanding.  We are to use that powerful brain You gave us to examine all that we hear.

"Think over what I say, for the LORD will give you understanding in everything" (2 Timothy 2:7).

Thank you for this, LORD God.  We each of us do have that choice, we do not have to live a life of emptiness, miserable in our constant searching for that something to fill the void in our lives.  You offer us so much more!

Ditat Deus - God Enriches!