What will the Lord find in you?

Be Still . . .
Devotionals for Daily Living

I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve.
(Jeremiah 17:10 (NIV))

When you are searching through a place that you thought you were familiar with, are you ever surprised by what you find?

Perhaps you found an old baseball glove in the back of your closet. Maybe you found a picture from your high school prom. You may have even found a letter from someone whom you thought you could never live without. Each of us have things like this that appear every now and then and completely catch us off guard.

What happens when we go digging through our heart? Do we find things that we thought had been lost only to find that they are still very prominent in our lives? Are we ever surprised by the thoughts that we keep locked away? We think that we have overcome them, but they are always there just below the surface. What reactions do these things bring out of us when they materialize once again in our lives? Are we guilty of trying to hide these things from ourselves so that we don’t have to deal with them?

We may think that we can hide them. We may even be capable of fooling ourselves for a time, but unless we lay them at the foot of the cross, they are still a part of our lives. We choose to hold onto them instead of turning them over to the Lord. If we confess them as sin, we can repent. If we repent, we are making a decision to leave it behind. If we choose to leave our sin behind, then we should focus on Jesus. We should fill our hearts and our minds with the knowledge of the Lord.

Have you found something in your heart or in your mind that you long to be rid of? Lay it at the foot of the cross!

What will the Lord find in you?

Copyright 1998 – 2018 Dennis J. Smock
Daily Living Ministries, Inc.
http://www.dailylivingministries.org
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Why do we refuse to see certain things?

Be Still . . .
Devotionals for Daily Living ^©

He said to the crowd: “When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, `It’s going to rain,’ and it does. And when the south wind blows, you say, `It’s going to be hot,’ and it is. Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don’t know how to interpret this present time?
“Why don’t you judge for yourselves what is right?
(Luke 12:54-57 (NIV))

Why do we refuse to see certain things?

Have you ever been caught completely off guard by an event only to look back upon it with a different perspective? You look back and you see the telltale signs of the impending event that caught you off guard. Let’s face the facts. Human nature is a strange thing. We pay attention to the trivial things in life while we are completely blind sided by the major things.

Take a look at the world in it’s current state. What do we focus on? Is it the price of gasoline and the extra hurt that we feel when we fill up our cars or is it the events of the world where God is unfolding prophecy right before our eyes?

We become so engrossed in our daily lives and what will impact us in the short term, such as the clouds rising in the west, that we fail to see the catastrophic storm that is just beyond the horizon. We fail to judge what we should be paying attention to. We fail to recognize the truth in what we are seeing.

Failing to recognize the truth can be dangerous. We live in a time when people say that truth is relative, but I say that truth is always relevant and unchanging. With the state of the world, we cannot rely upon ourselves to be able to stay true to what is right. We must rely upon God and His Word to guide us. His Word is truth. His Word warns us of these times. We must prepare ourselves for daily life in His Word. We must also prepare ourselves for eternal life in His Word. God gives us insight into what He has planned. We must know God’s timeline of history – the past, the present, and His glorious future.

Can you judge according to God’s Word?

Copyright 1998 – 2016 Dennis J. Smock
Daily Living Ministries, Inc.
http://www.dailylivingministries.org
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