Not for men, but for God

oh man, it’s been a while since jacqueline and i have blogged on 2tone. when i bumped into pastor christine at church over the weekend, she turned around and said, “you haven’t blogged in a MONTH!” she caught me, haha! yea, i do have to apologize for my lack of commitment. i haven’t actually forgotten about blogging, it’s just always in the back burner. excuses, excuses…i know that won’t cut it. i guess commitment isn’t the easiest thing, it’s often a struggle and a battle. i know that intially 2tone was meant to be part our reflection on God’s word. and blogging is just part our quiet time with God. for those of you who have been punching in and out of 2tone, i’m sure you have a hunch that we’re not doing too well. i have to admit that i’ve been slacking off and i haven’t been totally focused into my quiet time in the past few week. thankfully, we haven’t given up reading and we are well past our half way point of our bible-in-a-year challenge.

even though we haven’t been completely studious and meditative lately, the few times that we’ve come together to reflect, we mentioned how much we are saddened to hear the news in the book of kings. it was just endless accounts wickedness after wickedness that the kings of israel and judah have committed. everytime there was a king who did right in the eye of the Lord, there was so much hope, but the hope quickly dies as the following king reigns. i thought, “stupid israelites, they should have just listened to God when they wanted elect Saul as the king over them. so jacqueline and i were thinking, “what went wrong? king josiah did good in the eyes of the Lord, but why was his son, Jehoahaz, such a bad king? was it lack of discipleship?”

anyway, let’s get to the recent stuff. the book of kings was last month . lately, we’ve been reading the book of jeremiah & matthew. the book of jeremiah can be another depressing book. the countless amount of wrondoings that judah committed led God to give up on them. yup, they really did it this time. but i don’t think God chose to speak through jeremiah without a purpose and perfect plan. when i read chapter 16 today, it hit me hard, because it recalls what jacqueline and i discussed last night. lately, we’ve been ambushed with a lot of social affairs. a lot of these affairs were meant to bring fellowship and glory to God, but i can confess that i haven’t been totally honest to myself. at the end of the week, we felt like we were pleasing men over pleasing God. in fact, jacqueline wrote a whole blog on it on her princesspaupr.com page. when i dropped her off last night, we confessed to each other how exhausted we were in every aspect. now that we’re completely drained, there was only one thing that we wanted… God and His hand on us.

when i read this passage today, i just thought how great God is to show our deepest struggles through His word. the coolest part is how this passage echoes on psalm 1:

This is what the LORD says:
“Cursed is the one who trusts in man,
who depends on flesh for his strength
and whose heart turns away from the LORD.

He will be like a bush in the wastelands;
he will not see prosperity when it comes.
He will dwell in the parched places of the desert,
in a salt land where no one lives.

“But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD,
whose confidence is in him.

He will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit.”

The heart is deceitful above all things
and beyond cure.
Who can understand it? Jeremiah 17:5-9

and v.10 says, “I the LORD search the heart
and examine the mind”

just what we needed