For Reading and Meditation:      Jeremiah 17:5-13We continue focusing on the thought that one of the reasons why we go through the same difficulties and problems year after year is that we never stop to examine ourselves and find out what makes us act the way we do. The psalmist examined himself in the presence of God and discovered that three things had led him astray. First, he saw that he had allowed his heart to rule his head: "When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant" (Psalm 73:21-22). Notice the psychology of this - he put the heart before the head. Many of our troubles are due to the fact that we are governed by the feelings that arise in our hearts rather than the clear thinking that should be going on in our heads. When the heart gets in control, it bludgeons us into believing things that are not true. It makes us stupid. The psalmist thought that his feelings about the ungodly were facts, but this was nothing more than what psychologists call "emotional reasoning" - believing that what you feel is the way things really are. The moment the psalmist's feelings were corrected by the facts, the feelings disappeared. There was no real problem at all. He had "worked himself up", as we say, into a self-induced frenzy. I have done this myself (and so, I am sure, have you) when I have allowed my feelings to dominate me to such an extent that I have begun to believe that molehills were mountains. The real trouble in the psalmist's life was not what was going on in his outer world, but what was going on in his inner world. In other words, the real source of his trouble was himself. Father, I see more clearly every day that most of my problems are the ones I make for myself by my wrong thinking and wrong perceptions. Help me keep my heart under control by biblical thinking. In Jesus' Name I ask it. Amen.<div class="tl-lightgrey mt20 pt20 flexbox-row-wrap jc-around"><div><div class="fs-17 fg-mustard bold center-it">AdditionalVerses</div><ul style="margin-top:0px"><li>Mark 2:1-8</li><li>Hebrews 3:12</li><li>2 Peter 2:14</li></ul></div>

<div><div class="fs-17 fg-mustard bold center-it">Questions to Consider</div><ul style="margin-top:0px"><li>What did the teachers of the law fail to realize?</li><li>What are we to watch out for?</li></ul></div></div>

Let a little light into your soul every day with this wonderful devotional from English pastor Selwyn Hughes.

Every Day Light with Selwyn Hughes

"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?" (v. 9, NKJ)

We should greatly err if we understood this word " blessed' as teaching that the man who trusteth in God will pursue a path of tranquil enjoyment and exemption from sorrow. He is blessed because he is enabled to pursue the path, the only path, that leadeth unto everlasting life. Because the favor of God is his. Because Christ forsaketh him never. Because the Spirit of God dwells in him. Because he has grace to seek the welfare of his fellow-men. And he is blessed because of the peculiar nature of his suffering. His tears are not as others' tears. His agony is not the agony of impious men. His despair even has a dignity and sacredness about it. Jeremiah was a man that trusted in God. But it is evident from the sublime bursts of misery occurring in his prophecies, that he was permitted to sound the depths of human woe. It was his faith in God that separated him from all his country men, deprived him of their sympathies, made him a stranger to their joys, and compelled him to drink the cup of sorrow which they should have drunk. He trusted in God, and therefore he could not hide from them that God was about to pour upon them the vials of destruction, and to surrender them into the hands of a heathen king. They listened with amazement to words that seemed to them nothing less than blasphemy, and denounced him as the enemy of his country, a traitor to the hallowed and God-defended interests of Judea. When, in the freshness of youth, he received his prophetical commission from the Lord, it was distinctly intimated to him that " all should fight against him," the kings, the priests, the people, the bad and the good, not excepting even the God fearing and devout. He was a man ever spoken against; and those that could agree upon no other topic, cordially harmonized upon the one subject of the baseness and treachery of Jeremiah. Other reputed prophets might be true or might be false; but that Jeremiah was a false prophet was something not to be questioned. And it did not please the Lord to give unto his servant that stern indifference that would have lifted him above the reach of these cruel shafts. No, he left him to the native sensitiveness and keen susceptibility to injury that characterized him. His was a nature of exquisite poetic sensibility, and many a piercing cry of anguish escapes him as he meets, remembers and broods upon the opprobrious looks and words addressed to him. At times he loathes his very existence, and abhors the day that gave him birth. " Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth." Is our faith in the goodness of God staggered by the discovery of what he permitted this his chosen servant to suffer? Are we at a loss how to reconcile this inexorable rigor, with the many declarations of the divine pitifulness? Or, on the other hand, do we decide that the prophet's faith must have failed him in those hours of bitterness, and that a deeper reaching glance into the future would have saved his susceptible soul those fearful shocks? No, faith has no alliance with stoicism. It does not make us ignore present things. Faith goes beyond sense and shows us actualities that cannot other wise be discerned; but it does not set aside sense, or separate our soul from the body that is in the world. ― And what be comes of the divine compassion? Why, Jeremiah the sufferer, himself bears unequivocal testimony to the goodness of God. It is he that teaches us to say, " Blessed is the man that trusteth in thee." At long intervals God calls a Job, a Jeremiah to the experience of their aggravated sorrows: but he supports them; and their triumphant faith animates the drooping faith of thousands who are called to tread inferior paths of sorrow. Honor to Jeremiah, who notwithstanding all his excruciation of soul, hath left us this testimony, " Blessed is the man that trusteth in thee!" What believer will refuse to take up the refrain?

A daily devotional written by a Baptist Missionary to India, Reverend George Bowen (1816-1888) over 150 years ago.

Bowen's Daily Meditations

" Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord." ― Jeremiah 17:7. 

I am the Lord … they shall not be ashamed who wait for Me. § Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, and whose hope is the Lord. § You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You. Trust in the Lord forever, for in YAH, the Lord, is everlasting strength. § My soul, wait silently for God alone, for my expectation is from Him. He only is my rock and my salvation; He is my defense; I shall not be moved. § I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed. God, determining to show more abundantly to the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath, that by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us. This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters the Presence behind the veil, where the forerunner has entered for us, even Jesus.

Daily Light on the Daily Path or Daily Light is a Christian daily devotional scripture reading published by Bagster & Sons about 1875. It has been reprinted continually since then. It consists of brief groupings of scripture passages which speak to prominent Biblical themes—two themes (morning and evening) for each day of the year. It appends no commentary, but simply allows scripture to speak for itself.

Morning Daily Light

 Hope does not disappoint. 

Surely the wrath of man shall praise You; with the remainder of wrath You shall gird Yourself. § The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, like the rivers of water; He turns it wherever He wishes. § When a man’s ways please the Lord, He makes even his enemies to be at peace with him. I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in His word I do hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning—yes, more than those who watch for the morning. § I sought the Lord, and He heard me, and delivered me from all my fears. The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms; He will thrust out the enemy from before you, and will say, “Destroy!” § Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, and whose hope is the Lord. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?

 The Lord will be your confidence, and will keep your foot from being caught. 

I will be like the dew to Israel; he shall grow like the lily, and lengthen his roots like Lebanon. His branches shall spread; his beauty shall be like an olive tree, and his fragrance like Lebanon. §  Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, and whose hope is the Lord. For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters, which spreads out its roots by the river, and will not fear when heat comes; but its leaf will be green, and will not be anxious in the year of drought, nor will cease from yielding fruit. I, the Lord, have brought down the high tree and exalted the low tree, dried up the green tree and made the dry tree flourish. The righteous shall flourish like a palm tree, he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon. Those who are planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bear fruit in old age; they shall be fresh and flourishing.

Evening Daily Light

 The trees of the Lord are full of sap. 

7 <poetry>“But blessed is the one who trusts in the <smallCap>Lord</smallCap>, <indent>whose confidence is in him.</indent> </poetry>

“But blessed<cr>1</cr> is the one who trusts<cr>2</cr> in the <smallCap>Lord</smallCap>, <indent>whose confidence is in him.</indent>

Jeremiah 17:7

 7 “But blessed   is the one who trusts   in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. 

From Wikipedia: 

The New International Version (NIV) is an English translation of the Bible first published in 1978 by Biblica (formerly the International Bible Society). The NIV was published to meet the need for a modern translation done by Bible scholars using the earliest, highest quality manuscripts available. Of equal importance was that the Bible be expressed in broadly understood modern English.

The NIV is published by Zondervan in the United States and Hodder & Stoughton in the UK. The NIV was updated in 1984 and 2011 and has become one of the most popular and best-selling modern translations.

OT: Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia; additional sources;
NT: UBS Greek New Testament; Novum Testamentum Graece; additional sources;

New International Version

 “But blessed  is the one who trusts  in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. 

<poetry>“But blessed is the one who trusts in the <smallCap>Lord</smallCap>, <indent>whose confidence is in him.</indent> </poetry>

 “But blessed   is the one who trusts   in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. 

Bible Verse of the Day

December 18, 2017

Jeremiah 17:7 NIV

Verse by Verse Bible Study

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