Are you sitting down? I mean, comfortably? Is everything in order around you—dishwasher running, floors swept, dinner in the oven, finances in order, the right color of throw pillows on your bed, exciting opportunities on the horizon, and peace within and all around you? Sometimes the stars align and all our circumstances seem to be exactly under control. I like to wait for that moment to start writing. Or to sit to read my Bible. I used to feel like I was waiting until I was married to really start living. But now that I am married with a family of my own, there’s always one more piece I determine to be missing from the puzzle—one more excuse to keep me from faithful obedience.
It’s hard to lean in and flourish when you’re waiting for everything to be perfect. Judah was in exile, living in Babylon, with every reason to give up and just spend years sitting angrily with their arms crossed. But Jeremiah calls them to walk in ordinary obedience, to be a blessing to the nation they are in. “Pursue the well-being of the city I have deported you to. Pray to the LORD on its behalf, for when it thrives, you will thrive” (Jeremiah 29:7). They had every reason to hate the Babylonians, but they were deported by the righteous judgment of God, who was now calling them to repent, and walk in ordinary, daily obedience.
Often we want our repentance to be a single extravagant display of remorse. Then, after we think we’ve made a big enough deal about how sorry we are, we want everything to go back to normal: we want to have our own way again, and we want the consequences—the deportations, so to speak—to be reversed. But here we learn much about the true nature of grace and a relationship with God: repentance and forgiveness, obedience and blessing.
First, true repentance isn’t focused on the removal of consequences. It is a return to obedience. Genuine remorse for sin produces a heart that turns away from sin and loves righteousness, no matter the circumstances. Second, God’s forgiveness isn’t really even about circumstances. We can’t judge our position before God simply by how well we seem to be doing on the outside. His forgiveness begins by changing our hearts and our spiritual position before Him. Our temporal circumstances are a secondary matter. Third, God calls us to obedience at all times. Repentance produces obedience, and grace bears the fruit of obedience. Obedience is the right response to every circumstance, whether good or ill. And ordinary, daily obedience—loving our neighbors, being fruitful, making disciples—is to be a continual mark of God’s people.
We are called to be a blessing, even to our captors. Though this runs counter to every human inclination, it should be no surprise. It is, after all, at the heart of God’s covenant promise to Abraham: “All the peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:3), and in Christ’s command to His disciples: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44).
Every judgment of God is a gift of His mercy and grace. Even in a foreign land, God promises His people the grace of His presence: “I will be found by you” (Jeremiah 29:14). As He forgives their iniquities, He gives them Himself, and beckons them to share their knowledge of Him with the nations. This is the call that has gone out since the beginning of the world: repent and believe in the one true God. Be fruitful and multiply. Go and make disciples. For the kingdoms of this world will “become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and he will reign forever and forever” (Revelation 11:15, ESV).
We are all sojourners in a strange land, wanderers like Abraham, like Israel and Judah. Christ calls us to allegiance to a kingdom that is not of this world: to pray to Him and search for Him with all our hearts (Jeremiah 29:12–13). He calls us to remember that whether we are in our own land or in exile, we are ambassadors for His kingdom. The ordinary obedience of believers is perhaps the chief defense to a watching world, the beauty of the gospel pointing to the glory of the kingdom of Christ.
We’ve been using this study for a small group, and had to cancel for the foreseeable future, but today’s reading about seeking Him and he will gather us together again from exile seemed so fitting! I love how God uses text written thousands of years ago, and even months ago when this study was put together to bring us hope and be so relevant when we need it!
Timeless!
How appropriate as we wait in “social distancing” isolation during this health crisis.
God is faithful and we can know what to do with these hours.
Jeremiah called God’s people to make a difference right where they were. In this pandemic crisis, I believe it’s up to us believers to pray for our towns, cities, suburbs, states, country, yes, even world —and those who oversee and lead in government, work in the healthcare industry and medical research, give philanthropically to the effort to stave the spread, make and provide health equipment and masks and gloves, stock our grocery shelves, deliver our mail and pick up our garbage, report real news about this crisis, care for our kids and elders, lead in our churches, work in food pantries, teach, administer and provide food in schools, provide the technology to communicate remotely…and on and on. If every believer unites with others in churches, denominations, cities and prays, even organizes 24-hour prayer times, who knows what a difference that would make in the spread of this deadly virus.
Amen!
I agree! I am praying with you. Blessings
What a timely message considering our current circumstances.
Such a great reminder that repentance of our sins doesn’t mean a reversal of the consequences of that sin, or that life will go back to “normal” just because we’re sorrowful and remorseful.
Instead, true repentance is walking in daily obedience no matter the circumstances, whether God relieves us of some of the consequences of our sin or not. This is a difficult truth for so many of us, myself included. “I said I was sorry, God, and I mean it, Why won’t you remove these painful consequences?”
As someone currently experiencing a “deportation” following a season of disobedience, I needed this reminder that God wants not just our remorse, but our return to consistent daily obedience in ALL circumstances.
Five years ago I began to faithfully read She Reads Truth and started a Read through the Bible app on my phone. Because I like to check off boxes, once I committed to doing it and made the time, I did it every single day. Four years ago, my life came crashing down on me. My husband confessed an affair, my teenage daughter got into a bunch of trouble and eventually moved out to live with her boyfriend, and my son moved across the country to start a new job. Although I have followed Christ for most of my life, without the discipline that I had started a year prior to all of this happening, I know that I would have been completely wrecked. But that discipline kept me in the word throughout the forgiving process, throughout the rebuilding process, throughout the healing process. I held on tightly to the verse, “For I know the plans I have for you”—this is the Lord’s declaration—“plans for your well-being, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. 12 You will call to me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. I trusted God to restore, even though it was so hard, so painful, so long…
I am glad for that discipline, the daily discipline of coming to God and reading His work. It saved me. God was able to speak to me during that time, to comfort me. He is still in the process of restoring, but I know that He holds my future and through Him I can make it through anything.
Thank you for sharing Laura.
Thank you, Laura, for sharing this. What an encouragement!
Thanks Rebecca, your reflection is an encouragement and clear understanding of the courage to believe in difficult times of waiting. Repentance and believing is made visible by transformation of our life through the Spirit producing obedience and faith. Thanks be to God for His unspeakable Gift!
This blessed me today. Solid words on obedience in good or ill circumstances and on the beauty of repentance and forgiveness. Thank you.