Jeremiah 29 not 11

I finished Jeremiah today! I regret to say that I put it down midway through the fall semester, but looking back over the book I found a few things that had stuck out to me enough to be underlined. The book of Jeremiah talks about God's inescapable judgment for his unrepentant people, but his mercy also shows through. Maybe it was hard to read Jeremiah because reading about God's wrath and judgment is not usual. It seems we only hear the "God is love/God loves everyone" part of the message sometimes. Anyhow, the things that stuck out to me.

Jeremiah 29:10, 12-4
I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back...Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, and I will bring you back from captivity.

Calling upon God, coming to Him in prayer - that's something I need to do more often. Though God is speaking to Israel here, we are adopted into his family through Christ. God is saying if we make an effort, if we call out to Him, he WILL listen. IF we seek him with all our heart he will be found by us. No more of this half-hearted seeking, where we chase after God for a day or two and then slip back into our idolatrous worship of things and people and time and money. I'm not even going to say "maybe it's just me" because I know it's not - if every Christian were wholeheartedly seeking God he would be found, and if that was the case our "Christian" nation would be radically changed. So the thing is that we aren't calling out to him, we aren't coming before him in prayer or seeking him with all of our heart. I wish that would change for everyone, but I can only change it in my own life. That's what I'll be striving for, over Christmas break and over my life.

One last thing; Jeremiah 30:21
Their leader will be one of their own;their ruler will arise from among them.
I will bring him near and he will come close to me,for who is he who will devote himself to be close to me?'declares the LORD

the last part of this verse really stuck out to me "who is he who will DEVOTE himself to be CLOSE to me?". Since I liked it I (of course) looked it up in the trusty amplified version of the bible;

"I will cause him to draw near and he will approach Me, for who is he who would have the boldness and would dare [on his own initiative] to approach Me?"

None of us would be strong enough to come to God on our own - we can make our half-hearted, feeble attempts to seek him, and he will be found by us. It's truly desiring him, desiring him enough to chase after him, though we fall a million times, it's getting back up and running towards him again. God must cause us to draw near, for of our own initiative we dare not to approach him. We can't even take credit for our God-seeking-ness then. Pretty much we can take credit for nothing. Yup, that's all.