I admit it. I really like to laugh and be happy. As such I can struggle with being sober-minded. However, that isn’t much of a challenge lately (Titus 2:2). My heart is so heavy with grieving and mourning. What am I so troubled about? The spiritual condition of our nation, churches, and “Christian” families. Jeremiah has been my favorite prophet through the years, and I can relate more and more now. 

When Israel conquered the land, God told them “thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth” (Deuteronomy 20:16). I told Teri the other night when we read that, I couldn’t imagine being a warrior then and having to carry out that command on the young and old. It is beyond my wildest imagination, yet, if God said it, He meant it. It revealed how serious God was about sin and wickedness corrupting His children. 

God commanded it because He didn’t want this to happen: “That they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done unto their gods; so should ye sin against the LORD your God” (Deuteronomy 20:18). When we have the “good life,” we focus more and more on pleasure and forget our God Who said “According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:” (Ephesians 1:4). 

“For when I shall have brought them into the land which I sware unto their fathers, that floweth with milk and honey; and they shall have eaten and filled themselves, and waxen fat; then will they turn unto other gods, and serve them, and provoke me, and break my covenant” (Deuteronomy 31:20). 

Instead of believers reaching the lost world, the world is reaching believers. Instead of the church reaching the world, the world is successfully reaching the church.