Day 310: The Easy Road

2 Peter 1; Jeremiah 41-42; Psalm 139

The section is titled "Living as the Lord's Followers." It talks about how God made these great promises, "so that his nature would become part of us." Whoa. We could feel and think like God? The Lord wants us to be more like him: more loving, more just, more forgiving. He goes on to say that "then we could escape our evil desires and the corrupt influences of this world." This reminds me of the passage that says "come near to God and he will come near to you" in James 4. The more we can be like Jesus, our Lord and Savior, the less room we have in our hearts and lives for junk and sin.
Peter says to improve our faith and do so by adding "goodness, understanding, self control, patience, devotion to God, concern for others, and love. As believers we should want to be "useful and meaningful" in the eyes of God. How can we be useful unless we have or are growing in these things?

Crazy things happening in Jeremiah. This dude named Ishmael is totally ruthless and kills almost 100 people, cold-blooded. Those who survived in Judah ask Jeremiah to pray to God to give them guidance, and when God answers, he tells them what they don't want to hear, and already knows their hearts are bent on disobeying. When we ask God for direction (as I think many people do, and is great), we need to be prepared to follow his lead. Often times God does ask us to do things that we don't want to--they are more time-consuming, more sacrificial, more uncertain. We can't be followers of The Lord and expect to be able to take the easy road every time.

Psalm 139, the inspiration for the title of this blog. In this psalm it talks about God looking deep into our hearts, knowing who we are because he created us to be that way. He knows our thoughts and watches out for us. Since he is our Creator, we cannot understand his ways or his wisdom. All we can do is pray that this God that put us together will continue to be there for us and with us.