Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. Mark 12:30.

Blessed are those who have learned to acclaim You, who walk in the light of Your presence, O Lord. Psalm 89:15.

I loved this from My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers: “The majority of people think of themselves as being completely moral, and have no sense of need for the gospel. It is God who creates this sense of need in a human being, but that person remains totally unaware of his need until God makes Himself evident. Jesus said, “Ask, and it will be given to you” (Matthew 7:7). But God cannot give until a man asks. It is not that He wants to withhold something from us, but that is the plan He has established for the way of redemption. Through our asking, God puts His process in motion, creating something in us that was nonexistent until we asked. The inner reality of redemption is that it creates all the time. And as redemption creates the life of God in us, it also creates the things which belong to that life. The only thing that can possibly satisfy the need is what created the need. This is the meaning of redemption – it creates and it satisfies.”

Jeremiah 23 is so important to our understanding. “Woe to the shepherds who are destroying and scattering the sheep of My pasture!” declares the Lord. Therefore this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says to the shepherds who tend My people: “Because you have scattered My flock and driven them away and have not bestowed care on them, I will bestow punishment on you for the evil you have done,” declares the Lord. “I myself will gather the remnant of My flock out of all the countries where I have driven them and will bring them back to their pasture, where they will be fruitful and increase in number. I will place shepherds over them who will tend them, and they will no longer be afraid or terrified, nor will any be missing,” declares the Lord. “The days are coming,” declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land. In His days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. This is the name by which He will be called: The Lord Our Righteous Savior.” v. 1-6. It won’t just be remembered that God brought the Israelites up out of Egypt, but that as surely as the Lord lives, who brought the descendants of Israel up out of the land of the north and out of all the countries where He had banished them, v. 7-8. But now in this time of our chapter, “Both prophet and priest are godless; even in My temple I find their wickedness,” declares the Lord. “Among the prophets of Samaria I saw this repulsive thing: They prophesied by Baal and led My people astray. And among the prophets of Jerusalem I have seen something horrible: They commit adultery and live a lie. They strengthen the hands of evildoers, so that not one of them turns from their wickedness. They are all like Sodom to Me; the people of Jerusalem are like Gomorrah.” v. 11, 13-14. Does that sound familiar to our time? To every age of mankind? A warning lesson for us all: This is what the Lord Almighty says: “Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you; they fill you with false hopes. They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord. They keep saying to those who despise Me, ‘The Lord says: You will have peace.’ And to all who follow the stubbornness of their hearts they say, ‘No harm will come to you.’ But which of them has stood in the council of the Lord to see or to hear His word? Who has listened and heard His word?…But if they had stood in My council, they would have proclaimed My words to My people and would have turned them from their evil ways and from their evil deeds. Am I only a God nearby,” declares the Lord, “and not a God far away? Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them?” declares the Lord. “Do not I fill heaven and earth?” declares the Lord. v. 16-18, 22-24.

How do we filter out the noise? How do we know what God desires for us if we don’t read His words ourselves? How will we ever know what it is to be with Creator God – Father, Son, Spirit, unless we ask Him? His words are life! He is everything!