All Things Are Possible    Devotion for Friday , May 16, 2008

Previous   Next Scripture tells of many prayers--urgent requests to God for help. In All Things Are Possible, author Daniel Partner tells of devotional meaning in seventy-five of these prayers. Partner's insightful, accessible readings show that no human problem is unique and that God hears believers' prayers. Not only can the answers be miraculous--prayer itself is a miracle. While reading All Things Are Possible, Christians will see their own struggles in the prayers of biblical characters, be encouraged to lift their voices to heaven like the saints of old, and embrace Jesus' promise: "All things are possible to him who believes" (Mark 9:23 NASB). This devotional employs various translations of Scripture. Soft cover from Barbour Publishing, Inc., copyright 2002

"DAY FORTY-SIX"

O Lord, I know that the way of man is
not in himself: it is not in man that
walketh to direct his steps.
O Lord, correct me, but with judgment;
not in thine anger,
lest thou bring me to nothing. - JEREMIAH 10:23-24

Somewhere in the bottom of a box, I have a copy of the front section of the New York Times with a headline announcing the end of Soviet Communism. It was as if a portion of the world had been frozen in ice and was suddenly thawed. This was a major historic event, so I kept the newspaper from that day.

Since then, the world has been in a state of flux as it hasn't been since World War II. National boundaries have changed, and whole new nations have emerged. Though the Soviet Union was terrible and dangerous in many ways, the world we inhabited with it was a familiar place. Now terror and danger come from other places, some of them with unheard-of names, and there is unease among us.

Jeremiah says "the way of man is not in himself" (10:23). That is, human beings do not control their existence. Another prophet explained it this way: "From one ancestor [God] made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live" (Acts 17:26 NRSV).

Like us, Jeremiah faced a changing world, as did all the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem. "Hear, a noise!" he proclaimed. "Listen, it is coming-a great commotion from the land of the north to make the cities of Judah a desolation, a lair of jackals" (Jeremiah 10:22 NRSV). Jerusalem was facing an invasion of the Chaldeans who would soon destroy the city and carry everyone away captive.

While reading the prayer from Jeremiah 10: 23-24, do you notice that Jeremiah didn't ask God to change the world? Instead, he asked God to correct his personal life. This is all he had available. It is all he could offer to God. Such correction is frightening, so Jeremiah asked, "Correct me, but with judgment." He wants God's correction in measure, with moderation, and in wisdom. We can't ask God to never correct us, but, like Jeremiah, we can ask that we would never be corrected through divine anger.

This prayer of Jeremiah teaches us that if we have the courage to ask for God's correction, the world will remain as it is, while our way of living in the world is changed.

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