This is the first of our weekly posts that will feature the Scripture Song that we’ll be memorizing for the week. We hope these songs, and the weekly schedule will help to encourage you to memorize God’s Word and store it in your heart and mind. So, let’s begin our journey together!
This week, we’ll be memorizing Jeremiah 29:13 (ESV):
You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.
It’s nice and short, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to memorize. Here’s the video with our song:
Devotional
When you sing this verse, I want you to not just think about the few words contained in said verse, but also what God is trying to tell us through these words. But before we can take a deeper look at this passage and what God is trying to tell us, we need to get some context:
10 “For thus says the Lord: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. 11 For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. 12 Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. 13 You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.
Jeremiah 29:10-14 (ESV)
This verse shows up when Jeremiah is talking to the captives in Babylon. They are being told that they will be in Babylon for 70 years because they have turned away from God, but after that time, they will return to Judah and upon that return they will again seek the Lord. This verse shows that not only will God’s people return to him, but God will show himself to them as well. It is a promise that anyone who earnestly seeks out God will find him.
In practical terms, this can mean that we shouldn’t just pray to God asking for “stuff” or help when we feel stuck, but we need to more earnestly seek him. Earnestness is hard to judge, but if you want to hear what God has to say to you, you should read the words he’s already given to you in the Bible. Also, this verse mentions “heart”. When we put our hearts into things, we become attached to them. We care about them. We should have a true relationship with God, one where we love to spend time with him. When games, or the internet, or TV/movies, or many other things (sinful or not) have more appeal to you than spending time with God, then I dare say that you have not sought him with all of your heart.
I don’t say these things to condemn you. My pastors don’t preach difficult sermons because he wants us all to go to hell. Quite the opposite. We all need to hear these things (including my entire family, and even my pastors) in order for us to realize that God really wants to have a relationship with us, but instead we’re telling him that other things are more important than him, that they are our god. Just like any relationship, it needs lots of time together in order to grow, and this is the most important relationship of all, so it should have the most time invested in it. So go! Grow!
Before I end this post, I want to mention that I didn’t start writing this with the intention of being to blunt/harsh. I was pretty much just going to say that this is a relationship, so we need to put time into it by seeking him with praying and reading the Bible, but also to do more than just half an hour to an hour of it each day, etc. God was convicting me through my own words, though, and I was realizing that I honestly don’t feel like I can say I have a great relationship with him. My pastor just did a sermon yesterday that really helped me to see that I don’t have much faith in the Holy Spirit to do much work in my life. It’s probably because I don’t know him very well.
So let’s pray to God, tell him we’re sorry for giving higher priority and caring to his creations than to him, the creator of the universe. Then let’s turn our lives around, with the help of the Holy Spirit, and make him our highest priority and greatest relationship! God bless.