Have you ever stressed over making plans for your future? Have you ever wondered if you had a future? If you had a future would it be a good one? The Israelites were wondering the same thing. In Jeremiah 29:11-14, Jeremiah was used by God to tell the Israelites that He had a future for them. My journal will go a little more in depth into these verses, to indentify the historical content, the meaning of the verses, and what I personally got from the passage.
Jeremiah 29:11-14 has always been a real powerful passage for me. This passage was written by Jeremiah. This passage takes place in Babylon when King Nebuchadnezzar had taken the Israelites captive. The time that the passage took place is unknown, but the book of Jeremiah is said to have taken place between 626B.C and 586B.C. Israel had been in captivity for seventy years at this point. Talk about a time when your faith in a decent future for not only you, but your people would be really low. The whole message behind Jeremiah 29:11-14 is to give a future to the Israelites and us.
I love it when I pull a verse apart and find that a word we use everyday has a meaning that would blow me away. One word like this is ‘future’ from verse 11. In Hebrew, this word is achariyth meaning end, future, and prosperity. Proverbs 23:30 says that we have a future hope and it will not be cut off. In a way, it means we have an end hope, a prosperity hope. Another word that jumped off the page was ‘seek’ in verse 13. Baqash is the Hebrew word and it means to seek, require, desire, exact, and request. What I love about this is that time and time and again God tells us to seek after Him and each time we can replace the word seek with require, desire, exact, and request. God wants to know what we desire for Him to do, what we exactly require and request of Him. The amazing part is that those verses always end with Him saying if you seek me with all of you, you will find me. God wants to give us the desires of our heart, but we must first seek Him. In 2 Chronicles 30: 18-19, God says that those who seek Him will be purified. God longs to do something in our lives!
This passage always gives me something different every time I read it. First of all, they were in captivity and had been for seventy years when God told them that He knew the plans He had for them and they were good plans. Whenever I am going through a trial I can remember that God has plans for me, even during the worst things of my life God has good plans for me. Second, future also means an end. You can take this many ways, but for me personally I see it as my future is an end to my past. The future hopes and plans God has for me will also be an end to my past. Lastly, I have a whole new perspective on the word seek. When we seek God, He wants to know what’s going on in our lives. He wants to know what we desire, what we request. I want to make it a point in my quiet time to tell God all the desires and requests of my heart.
As always with scripture studies, this journal has changed me for the better. God had mighty plans for the Israelites when they were in captivity and God has mighty plans for us through our “captivities.” When just need to remember that every future comes with an end. Remember that when we seek we give our desires and requests to the only one who can really answer them. This journal was an in awesome study of Jeremiah 29:11-14, we looked at the historical content, the meaning of the verses, and how it changed me forever.
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