Wednesday, August 9, 2023

Jeremiah 29:10-11 -- On Patience and Deliverance

"For thus saith the Lord, That after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to creturn to this place.
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end."
Jeremiah 29:11


This is a comforting scripture that God first spoke to Jeremiah, telling the people in Babylon that he would bring them home in seventy years. The people he was speaking to didn't really listen, and didn't accept the comfort there though, likely because they wanted to be delivered immediately, rather than in seventy years, and their impatience was their downfall.

We sometimes get similar messages in our lives... not ones that we want, but good information and comfort that the Lord is trying to give us anyway. Maybe what we are hoping and praying for right now isn't God's plan, but God is asking us to be patient and telling us that we will still be delivered. He loves us, and he will bring us to our happy ending in time, but we have to have some more patience and wait until it fits God's timetable. It isn't necessarily what we want to hear, but it is still a message of his love and a promise to help and deliver us.

Today, let's not create, reach for, or believe well-meaning lies that tell us that everything is perfect and our deliverance is imminent, but let's gather our courage and wait on the will of the Lord, and his promised peace. Otherwise, we are going to walk into a mess of our own making, as did the people of that day, trusting a false prophet because he told them what they wanted to hear, rather than the truth. If we can have patience and faith and wait for our deliverance with hope, it will come. Whatever is in front of us now is God's will, and if we trust God and call on him for help, he will make our burdens light so that we can "submit cheerfully and with patience" (Mosiah 24:15) to his will until the day of deliverance.

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