Bible Passages
Ezek 11:19-20 I will give them singleness of heart and put a new spirit within them. I will take away their heart of stone and give them a tender responsive heart, so that they will obey my decrees and regulations. Then they will truly be my people, and I will be their God.
Ezek 12:15-16 And when I scatter them among the nations, they will know that I am the Lord. But I will spare a few of them.. so they can confess all their detestable sins to their captors. Then they will know that I am the Lord…. the cities will be destroyed and their farmland made desolate. They you will know that I am the Lord.
Ezek 12:25 For I am the Lord! If I say it, it WILL HAPPEN.
Ezek 14:4-8 The people of Israel have set up idols in their hearts and fallen into sin… I will give them the kind of answer their great idolatry deserves… I will answer all those who reject me and set up idols in their hearts and so fall into sin. I will turn against such people and make a terrible example of them, eliminating them from among my people. Then you will know that I am the Lord.
Ezk 14:23 When you meet them and see their behavior, you will understand that these things are not being done to Israel without cause. I, the Sovereign Lord, have spoken.
Romans 15:2 We should help others do what is right and build them up in the Lord. For even Christ didn’t live to please himself.
Rom 15:13 I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because YOU TRUST IN HIM. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit
Rom 15:17-18 So I have reason to be enthusiastic about all Christ Jesus has done through me in my service to God. Yet I dare not boast in anything except what Christ has done through me, bringing the Gentiles to God by my message and by the way I worked among you.
Devotional Thoughts
As I read through these major prophets, I am continually amazed at God’s grace and his unending love and devotion to His people. His people were so rebellious that, as God judges His people, and scatters them, he told even the heathen nations, “When you see their deeds, you will understand that these things are not being done without cause!” (Ezek 14:23) Wow! That’s pretty bad. And yet God never gave up on them.
Everything God did was so that His own people would come back to Him. God wanted so much for them to recognize Him through His judgment, turn from their idols and their sin, and come back to Him. He wanted them to truly know Him by experience, because He knows that the more they and we know Him, the greater their and our motivation to follow him will be.
In all that God was going to do in judgment on Israel, he describes his purpose, and his desired outcome in Ezek 11:14-21. This is a promise that He is making to His people. For Israel, the scattering, judgment and destruction of their promised land was to be the impetuous that produced it. Hopefully it doesn’t take that kind of thing in our lives. But I believe this is what God desires in all our lives.
Ezek 11:19-20 I will give them singleness of heart and put a new spirit within them. I will take away their heart of stone and give them a tender responsive heart, so that they will obey my decrees and regulations. Then they will truly be my people, and I will be their God.
In Ezek 12:25 God assures us that what He says, He will do!
In Romans 15:2 we are instructed to, “Help others do what is right and build them up in the Lord.” As believers we should be helping each other to know God more. Unlike Israel who helped each other serve their idols more, we should be encouraging each other to know God, and to find our hope and trust in Him!
Rom 15:13 God is our source of hope. We will find complete joy and peace when we trust in Him completely! Complete trust in Him will produce confident hope in the power of the Holy Spirit.
As we trust in Him, live with joy and peace, and confident hope, it will produce enthusiastic praise as we watch Christ working through us, (Rom 15:17-18) as Paul did as he watched the work God did among the Gentiles through Him.
This is the joy of missions. This is the joy of being involved in the lives of those around us! There’s nothing like seeing God changing lives through you as you make your hands and feet, ears and mouth available to Him to use!
Prayer Outline
My prayers for you today:
- Don’t wait for God to do something drastic to get your attention. Pursue him like Paul describes in Phil 3:7-8. “I count everything as loss compared to the surpassing worth of knowing Christ!”
- Ask God to use your hands and feet and ears and mouth to help others know Him too.
- Choose to be available. That means the giving up of what you want, to pursue what He wants. Ask God to change your desires to become His desires so that what you pursue will be what He desires.
- That you will see and experience the joy of seeing God use you in the lives of others.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.