“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. 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. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. 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.” (ESV – Read the chapter)
Promises like these in the Old Testament are encouraging almost beyond words. To find ourselves in the midst of a truly difficult season–especially one in which we are reaping the bitter fruits of time spent sowing unrighteousness in our lives and the lives of those around us–and to encounter these kinds of reassurances to a people who were in just that kind of a situation, gives us hope that the mess doesn’t need to be our end either. But in this hope and encouragement that God is for us, these promises were intended to accomplish something even more important. Read the rest…
The Nexus 