Week 2 — Thursday: God Invites Us To Ask Him
Jeremiah 33:1-3
For 23 years we have written a monthly prayer guide for Slovenia in English and Slovenian, which is one year longer than we have been missionaries! Why?
Because the Great Commission is not yet complete.
Slovenia only has 2,000 believers in 40 small churches among 2 million people.
There are thousands of large ethnic groups globally that have no believers, no Bible, no church.
There are tens of thousands of people in Stanislaus County that do not yet know the Lord.
There is much work to be done globally and locally. What are we to do?
In Jeremiah 33, the prophet was shut up in the court of the guard, imprisoned by King Zedekiah who did not like Jeremiah’s prophesies about coming invasions. The Word of the Lord came to Jeremiah in jail: “Thus says the LORD who made the earth, the LORD who formed it to establish it—the LORD is His name.”
Even in this difficult situation, the glorious Creator God, the “I am”, was speaking to him, literally inviting him to ask big questions: “Call to Me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.”
The Lord tells Jeremiah about the horror and the hope in upcoming battles with the Babylonians. It wasn’t the message the king wanted to hear, but it was the message God needed to share with Jeremiah. Jeremiah just needed to ask.
Try it! God may not reveal massive geopolitical answers to you, but He will guide you. He loves to answer, even when the world is spinning out of control.
—CONTRIBUTED BY TODD HUNNICUTT, GLOBAL REACH PARTNER—
brandonp
September 14, 2023 at 12:23 amTodd’s devo, as usual, is full of gems (it makes me wish I could read his 23 years of faithful work of monthly prayer to the Slovenians… but at the same time thankful we get to enjoy some of the fruit of those years of wisdom!!!).
I’m humbled by the thought of places in our world with no Christ, no Christian influence, no light of the Gospel whatsoever, no fellow believers to encourage them, no Bible to enjoy and grow in, no place to worship or people to gather with. Can you imagine for a moment if that were true of Modesto or Ceres? Would you miss it? Would your life, down to your day, be different?
Loss is an interesting thing. Over and over in the Bible we are told to remember…. lest we forget, lest we take for granted, lest we find ourselves missing the very thing we have right now and don’t take advantage of, enjoy, and praise God for.
Take the opportunity you have today to thank God for the good things in your life… good chance, if you’re like me, some of the things you have right now are the very same things you’d once prayed for. God may choose to close doors, to move you, to give and take away, but remember, in all things… God is good, God is in control… and for those who lose…. they also find (Mt 10:39), and what we find surpasses every single thing we ever missed in losing (Phil 3:8).
Christine Pence
September 14, 2023 at 12:31 pmI read that scripture in Jeremiah many times the Lord is answered many of my prayers and I’ve asked him many things his prophecies are trying and true and I believe everything he says and I have been blessed for that and we all should be to believe the Lord’s words and be blessed even when his Spirit speaks to us not just the word PS thank you for fixing this