Daily Devotion and Meditation on the Word of God on January 29, 2009

Hello My Friend; Good day.

Our reading for today is from Jeremiah chapter 44. This message from the Lord came to Jeremiah in the year 580 B.C. while he was forced to go to Egypt by those Jews who escaped from Jerusalem to Egypt. God had sent several prophets to warn them but they refused to listen(vvs 4-14). The Queen of Heaven who the Jews were worshpping in Egypt was a name for Ishtar, the Mesopotamian goddess of love and war. When the Jews escaped to Egypt, they began again to worship her. They even thought that the reason things went bad for them was because they failed to worship the Queen of Heaven the right way. They failed to recognize that their involvement in worshipping the idol was the root cause of their dispersion from their land. Read up on Jeremiah's response to them in verses 24-30.

The people of Judah never learned any lesson from their past mistakes so they kept on repeating the same over and over again. To fail to learn from a mistake is to guarantee repeated failures. The past should be a school for the future. God swore by His Great Name it will do them no good by seeking His help and blessings. God will watch over them but not for good. He swore to see to it that evil befell them(verses 26-28). These were very powerful statements. God's promises are timeless and subject to contextualization. We may not be living in Jerusalem but if we do the same things as the Jews did, the same curses apply. Let me ask you my friend, what are your idols? What do you hold as the Queen of Heaven? Are you aware that by doing so you are creating enmity between you and your God? DEPART FROM THEM AND RETURN TO YOUR GOD AND BE BLESSED. Halellujah. Amen.

Prayer for today: Dear Lord, we sing in our song:" You are the Lord, that is your Name. You will never share your glory with anyone; you will never share your glory with anybody; Almighty God, that is your Name". You will never share your glory even with the so-called "Queen of Heaven". Help us to put you at the center of our lives so that you bless us with all heavenly blessings. So that you watch over us for good and protect us from all evil. We pray in the Name of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Apostle Ndueso Udoiwod.