Our hope is not deceptive because the Holy Spirit has already been poured into us. Romans 5:5.

How sweet are Your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! I gain understanding from Your precepts; therefore I hate every wrong path. Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path. Psalm 119:103-105.

We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Ephesians 2:10 NKJV.

I loved this morning in our Friday Retreat that we talked about prayer. Prayer given for one another and prayer listening for God’s words of blessings speaking to our spirit. As we lean into time with Creator God – Father, Son, Spirit, we curl away from ourselves. That theme continued in my devotional, Hearing God by Dallas Willard: “Like Paul, we can learn through experience to recognize the voice of God as it enters into the texture of our souls. Our faith is strengthened by this, and we are able to claim our part in the unified reign of God in His people throughout history on earth and in heaven.” The unified reign of God…how desperately we need Him.

And in our chapter, Jeremiah 19, we see the result from not listening to God for a nation and people determined to turn away from Him. This is what the Lord says: “Go and buy a clay jar from a potter. Take along some of the elders of the people and of the priests and go out to the Valley of Ben Hinnom, near the entrance of the Potsherd Gate. There proclaim the words I tell you, and say, ‘Hear the word of the Lord, you kings of Judah and people of Jerusalem. This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Listen! I am going to bring a disaster on this place that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle. For they have forsaken Me and made this a place of foreign gods; they have burned incense in it to gods that neither they nor their ancestors nor the kings of Judah ever knew, and they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent. They have built the high places of Baal to burn their children in the fire as offerings to Baal – something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter My mind. So beware, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when people will no longer call this place Topheth or the Valley of Ben Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter.’” v. 1-6. In the notes below it said: “The Valley of Ben Hinnom was the garbage dump of Jerusalem and the place where children were sacrificed to the god Molek. It is also mentioned in 7:31, 32. Topheth was located in the valley and means “fireplace.” God declared that the place of sacrifice would become a place of slaughter. The killers of the innocent would be judged by losing their own lives.” “The horrible carnage that Jeremiah predicted happened twice, in 586 B.C. during the Babylonian invasion under Nebuchadnezzar, and in A.D. 70 when Titus destroyed Jerusalem. During the Babylonian siege, food became so scarce that people became cannibals, even eating their own children.” And Jeremiah was told to break the jar while they were watching, and then went to the court of the Lord’s temple to repeat that message to the people there. v. 10-15. Why? Because they refused to listen to God. How different is our life when we choose God. I can’t imagine a siege that lasted so long people became so desperate that they did what was done there. Josephus writes about the siege of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. And yet, when we turn to God, how different our thinking becomes. Jesus came to do His Father’s will. He is our Father, too! Can we lean in and listen to God and find meaning for our lives that is His blessing of love? What does our way bring when we turn away from God? What does turning to Him bring to our understanding? Jesus understood. So can we with His help and guidance. He’s here. Always!