Hypocrites

For you were hypocrites in your hearts when you sent me to the LORD your God, saying, 'Pray for us to the LORD our God, and according to all that the LORD your God says, so declare to us and we will do it.' And I have this day declared it to you, but you have not obeyed the voice of the LORD your God, or anything which He has sent you by me.  – Jeremiah 42.20-21

‘Pray for me’ is something we hear all the time, especially now in the social media age where everyone has immediate access to all their friends all the time.

That is a good thing. Mary and I have greatly expanded our prayer list as we have been made aware of needs around the world that we never would have known about otherwise.

But that ‘pray for me’ is become almost a universal phrase that everyone says kind of like ‘something is wrong.’

I guess that’s okay for the world, but I found something here that makes me mull this whole thing over.

Jeremiah said the people were saying, ‘pray for us’ but at the same time they were disobeying God and weren’t even trying to follow Him.  ‘Pray for me,’ they say, ‘but I’m not going to do anything to change my ways.’

Think about that for a second. We say things like pray about my anger – but then we ignore ‘be angry but don’t sin.’ We say ‘pray about my lust’ but we ignore ‘set no wicked thing before my eyes.’ 

Now I now that we only have success in our battles with God’s help, but still, we can’t just sit back never changing and never working and expect to get it all fixed just by and do nothing. ‘Pray for us, and we will obey God.’ But then we don’t obey.

We need to get serious. Pray, ask God for help, seek His way – but then we have to do something about it.