Jeremiah 17:9: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?
Jeremiah 29:11: For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.
I don’t know about you, but from the moment my eyes open in the morning to the moment I start snoring at night, I am bombarded with thoughts, emotions, information, data, etc. from many different sources – family, work, friends, the news, and even church. Sadly, very few of these things encourage me to spend more time with God and learn more about God. This is not to say any of these things aren’t important, but more often than not, they are a distraction from my focusing on the most important thing in my life – my relationship with God.
And when I spend less time with God, I feel less connected with Him, and that sets me up to be vulnerable to the truth of Jeremiah 17:9 – the poverty of my heart away from God. I’m sometimes staggered and deeply ashamed by the things that enter my mind or the things I will think of. I’ll just sit there and think to myself, “Where did that come from?”
It is these times I need to remember Jeremiah 29:11 – the truth of God’s thoughts towards me – EVEN when I’m having thoughts that are anything but pleasing to Him. As I get older and get a better understanding of God and how my relationship with Him works, I recognize more and more how faithful He is to me and how much grace He provides me – regardless of whether or not I’m walking with Him closely or when I’m wandering off. The key point I’m making is the difference between these two truths in Jeremiah – despite my actions and inactions that dishonor or must displease Him don’t impede or get in the way of God’s faithfulness towards me and His constant thoughts towards me of love, peace, and hope. This is what I call grace. I encourage you to write down Jeremiah 29:11 and read it at least once per day to help you remember the truth of who God is. If you don’t, I can guaranty you the enemy is going to do what he’s been doing since the Garden of Eden – seeking to deceive you and create lies about the truth of God and try to convince you this verse is a lie.
The second reason I encourage you to remember Jeremiah 29:11 is there are parts of the book of Jeremiah that are pretty heavy – hard to read – God’s people perishing and suffering under enemy attacks, judgment, and being placed into captivity. You will likely be thinking at times, ‘Where is God in this?’ or ‘Why would God allow such a thing to those He loves?’ The vital truth we need to remember was what was happening to them was not God’s choice – it was the people following their desperately wicked hearts and suffering the consequences of their decisions that put them in the situations they were in.
So please read closely and look for the evidence of God’s grace and love for His people – His thoughts are full of peace and hope, and many of the prophecies in the Book of Jeremiah confirm the true character of God. Even Jeremiah, who served God for over 40 years and never witnessed a single convert and watched his fellow countrymen turn from God and go into Babylonian captivity, was able to draw on the truth of who God was despite such difficult times.
If I spend enough time learning the truth, I become much better at recognizing the lies. Jeremiah tells us our hearts are very wicked and that means they’re susceptible to being deceived – they will lie to us. 1 John 3:20 encourages us, “For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and [He] knows all things.” Those things are the thoughts that He thinks towards us, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give us a future and a hope. That’s the truth of who God is. May we all never forget that. Amen?