Above All – He wants our Hearts ❤

And just like that, all of our plans for the next couple of months have changed, been put on hold or canceled.
All of us have had our lives impacted by COVID-19. Our health, jobs, schools and churches.Like many of you, we have been practicing social distancing by staying at home to help flatten the curve. We have been trying to keep things as normal as possible for the boys – playing outside, going for walks and doing fun activites during the day. We are using the extra time that we have to pray and read the Bible together as a family. We are also spending time putting together some ideas that we have for the ministry in Uganda.

At the beginning of the year, I started a study of the book of Jeremiah. One of the things that has stuck out to me is how how the Lord just wanted the hearts of His people Israel. The problem that He had with Judah was that they had forsaken
Him and had built cisterns with their own hands. Although, they would go into the temple to offer their sacrifices to the Lord, their hearts were not really for Him, but for their false gods or idols.  For after, they would leave the temple, they would continue to do their evil deeds.  In chapter 4 of Jeremiah, the Lord calls Israel to return to Himself – if they would put away their abominations – their idols and evil deeds, He would allow them to remain in the land.  God invited Judah and Jerusalem to return to Him from a harden condition. Their hearts were hard, and they were sowing among thorns. Their hearts were like fallowed ground, which is uncultivated farmland, land that was already plowed before but laid dormant for a year or more. It is land that is overrun by weeds and thorns, taking hard work to be useful again. Before Israel could be useful and sow seeds of righteousness, they had to break off their evil ways, repent of their sins and then the good seed of the Word would have room to grow and bear fruit.

There have been times in my own life, where I have allowed the things of this world to choke out the Word of God. Instead of turning to the Lord and trusting Him, I have turned to my own abilities and my own riches for help and after awhile, my heart begins to get hard and it needs a good ploughing of the Word to break up the hard ground, in order that I maybe fruitful for the Kingdom of God.

As we prepare to go serve the people of Uganda, I have been praying that the Lord would break up any hard ground in our own hearts. That We would wholly lean upon Him.

I have been praying that the Lord would allow my own heart to be soft towards His ways – that He would break up the weeds and thorns in my life that keeps me from His Word. That the ministry that we will have in Uganda will bare much fruit.

We don’t know what tomorrow holds, but we know the One that does. So, we look to Him to carry us through these uncertain times.

We know that the Lord did not cause this virus, but He has allowed. And we know that He is using it to wake up His church and to call people to Himself. We pray that you will use this time in your life to open the Bible and to seek Him. We pray that you will allow the Word to penetrate through your heart and that you will know the Prince of peace.