AM Devotion - Prayer
Exercise: Boot Camp - Circuit Training
Jeremiah 8:8-9:26; Colossians 3:1-17; Psalm 78:32-55; Proverbs 24:27
Jeremiah 8:8-9:26Amplified Bible (AMP)
8 How can you say, We are wise, and we have the written law of the Lord [and are learned in its language and teachings]? Behold, the truth is, the lying pen of the scribes has made of the law a falsehood (a mere code of ceremonial observances).
9 The wise men shall be put to shame; they shall be dismayed and taken [captive]. Behold, they have rejected the word of the Lord, and what wisdom and broad, full intelligence is in them?
10 Therefore will I give their wives to others and their fields to those who gain possession of them; for everyone, from the least even to the greatest, is given to covetousness (is greedy for unjust gain); from the prophet even to the priest, everyone deals falsely.
11 For they have healed the wound of the daughter of My people only lightly and slightingly, saying, Peace, peace, when there is no peace.
12 They are brought to shame because they have committed abominations (extremely disgusting and shamefully vile things). And yet they were not at all ashamed, nor could they blush. Therefore they shall fall among those who fall; at the time of their punishment they shall be overthrown, says the Lord.
13 I will gather and sweep them away, utterly consuming them, says the Lord. [I will find] no grapes on the vine, nor figs on the fig tree, and even the leaf is withered; and the things that I have given them shall pass away from them [for I have appointed to them those who shall pass over them].
14 [Then say the people to each other] Why do we sit still? Assemble yourselves, and let us enter into the fortified cities and be silent or perish there! For the Lord our God has decreed our ruin and given us bitter and poisonous water to drink, because we have sinned against the Lord.
15 We looked for peace and completeness, but no good came, and for a time of healing, but behold, dismay, trouble, and terror!
16 The snorting of [Nebuchadnezzar’s] horses is heard from Dan [on the northern border of Palestine]. At the sound of the neighing of his strong war-horses the whole land quakes; for they come and devour the land and all that is in it, the city and those who dwell in it.
17 For behold, I am sending among you serpents, adders which cannot be charmed, and they shall bite you, says the Lord.
18 Oh, that I [Jeremiah] could comfort myself against sorrow, [for my grief is beyond healing], my heart is sick and faint within me!
19 Behold [says the prophet, listen to the voice of] the cry of the daughter of my people [for help] because of those who dwell in a far country: Is not the Lord in Zion? Is not her King in her? [But the Lord answers] Why have they provoked Me to anger with their carved images and with foreign idols?
20 The harvest is past, the summer has ended and the gathering of fruit is over, yet we are not saved! [comes again the voice of the people.]
21 For the hurt of the daughter of my people am I [Jeremiah] hurt; I go around mourning; dismay has taken hold on me.
22 Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is not the health of the daughter of my people restored? [Because Zion no longer enjoyed the presence of the Great Physician!]
9 Oh, that my head were waters and my eyes a reservoir of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!
2 Oh, that I had in the wilderness a lodging place (a mere shelter) for wayfaring men, that I might leave my people and go away from them! For they are all adulterers [rendering worship to idols instead of to the Lord, Who has espoused the people to Himself]; they are a gang of treacherous men [faithless even to each other].
3 And they bend their tongue, [which is] their bow for the lies [they shoot]. And not according to faithfulness do they rule and become strong in the land; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they do not know and understand and acknowledge Me, says the Lord.
4 Let everyone beware of his neighbor and put no trust in any brother. For every brother is an utter and complete supplanter (one who takes by the heel and trips up, a deceiver, a Jacob), and every neighbor goes about as a slanderer.
5 And they deceive and mock every one his neighbor and do not speak the truth. They have taught their tongues to speak lies; they weary themselves committing iniquity.
6 Your habitation is in the midst of deceit [oppression upon oppression and deceit upon deceit]; through deceit they refuse to know and understand Me, says the Lord.
7 Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts: Behold, I will melt them [by the process of affliction to remove the dross] and test them, for how else should I deal with the daughter of My people?
8 Their tongue is a murderous arrow; it speaks deceitfully; one speaks peaceably to his neighbor with his mouth, but in his heart he lays snares and waits in ambush for him.
9 Shall I not punish them for these things? says the Lord. Shall I not avenge Myself on such a nation as this?
10 For the mountains I will take up a weeping and wailing and for the pastures of the wilderness a lament, because they are burned up and desolated, so that no one passes through [them]; neither can men hear [any longer] the lowing of cattle. Both the fowls of the air and the beasts have fled, they are gone!
11 I will make Jerusalem heaps [of ruins], a dwelling place of jackals; and I will make the cities of Judah a desolation, without inhabitant.
12 Who is the wise man who may understand this? To whom has the mouth of the Lord spoken, that he may declare it? Why is the land ruined and laid waste like a wilderness, so that no one passes through it?
13 And the Lord says, Because they have forsaken My law, which I set before them, and have not listened to and obeyed My voice or walked in accordance with it
14 But have walked stubbornly after their own hearts and after the Baals, as their fathers taught them,
15 Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will feed them, even this people, with wormwood and give them bitter and poisonous water to drink.
16 I will scatter them also among nations that neither they nor their fathers have known, and I will send the sword among them and after them until I have consumed them.
17 Thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider and call for the mourning women to come; send for the skillful women to come.
18 Let them make haste and raise a wailing over us and for us, that our eyes may run down with tears and our eyelids gush with water.
19 For a sound of wailing is heard [coming] out of Zion: How we are plundered and ruined! We are greatly confounded and utterly put to shame, because we have forsaken the land, because they have cast down our dwellings [our dwellings that have cast us out].
20 Yet hear the word of the Lord, O you women, and let your ears receive the word of His mouth; teach your daughters a lament, and each one [teach] her neighbor a dirge.
21 For death has come up into our windows; it has entered into our palaces, cutting off the children from outdoors and the young men from the streets.
22 Speak, Thus says the Lord: The dead bodies of men shall fall like dung on the open field and like sheaves [of grain] behind the reaper, and none shall gather them.
23 Thus says the Lord: Let not the wise and skillful person glory and boast in his wisdom and skill; let not the mighty and powerful person glory and boast in his strength and power; let not the person who is rich [in physical gratification and earthly wealth] glory and boast in his [temporal satisfactions and earthly] riches;
24 But let him who glories glory in this: that he understands and knows Me [personally and practically, directly discerning and recognizing My character], that I am the Lord, Who practices loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight, says the Lord.
25 Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will punish all who though circumcised [outwardly, in the flesh] are still uncircumcised [in corresponding inward purity]—
26 Egypt, Judah, Edom, the children of Ammon, Moab [all of whom are related except Egypt], and all who live in the desert and who clip off the corners of their hair and beards; for all these nations are uncircumcised [in heart], and all the house of Israel is uncircumcised in heart.
Colossians 3:1-17
Colossians 3:1-17Amplified Bible (AMP)
3 If then you have been raised with Christ [to a new life, thus sharing His resurrection from the dead], aim at and seek the [rich, eternal treasures] that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
2 And set your minds and keep them set on what is above (the higher things), not on the things that are on the earth.
3 For [as far as this world is concerned] you have died, and your [new, real] life is hidden with Christ in God.
4 When Christ, Who is our life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in [the splendor of His] glory.
5 So kill (deaden, [a]deprive of power) the evil desire lurking in your members [those animal impulses and all that is earthly in you that is employed in sin]: sexual vice, impurity, sensual appetites, unholy desires, and all greed and covetousness, for that is idolatry (the deifying of self and other created things instead of God).
6 It is on account of these [very sins] that the [holy] anger of God is ever coming upon the sons of disobedience (those who are obstinately opposed to the divine will),
7 Among whom you also once walked, when you were living in and addicted to [such practices].
8 But now put away and rid yourselves [completely] of all these things: anger, rage, bad feeling toward others, curses and slander, and foulmouthed abuse and shameful utterances from your lips!
9 Do not lie to one another, for you have stripped off the old (unregenerate) self with its evil practices,
10 And have clothed yourselves with the new [spiritual self], which is [ever in the process of being] renewed and remolded into [fuller and more perfect [b]knowledge upon] knowledge after the image (the likeness) of Him Who created it.
11 [In this new creation all distinctions vanish.] There [c]is no room for and there can be neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, [nor difference between nations whether alien] barbarians or Scythians [[d]who are the most savage of all], nor slave or free man; but Christ is all and in all [[e]everything and everywhere, to all men, without distinction of person].
12 Clothe yourselves therefore, as God’s own chosen ones (His own picked representatives), [who are] purified and holy and well-beloved [by God Himself, by putting on behavior marked by] tenderhearted pity and mercy, kind feeling, a lowly opinion of yourselves, gentle ways, [and] patience [which is tireless and long-suffering, and has the power to endure whatever comes, with good temper].
13 Be gentle and forbearing with one another and, if one has a difference (a grievance or complaint) against another, readily pardoning each other; even as the Lord has [freely] forgiven you, so must you also [forgive].
14 And above all these [put on] love and enfold yourselves with the bond of perfectness [which binds everything together completely in ideal harmony].
15 And let the peace (soul harmony which comes) from Christ rule (act as umpire continually) in your hearts [deciding and settling with finality all questions that arise in your minds, in that peaceful state] to which as [members of Christ’s] one body you were also called [to live]. And be thankful (appreciative), [giving praise to God always].
16 Let the word [spoken by] Christ (the Messiah) have its home [in your hearts and minds] and dwell in you in [all its] richness, as you teach and admonish and train one another in all insight and intelligence and wisdom [in spiritual things, and as you sing] psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, making melody to God with [His] grace in your hearts.
17 And whatever you do [no matter what it is] in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus and in [dependence upon] His Person, giving praise to God the Father through Him.
Footnotes:
Psalm 78:32-55
Psalm 78:32-55Amplified Bible (AMP)
32 In spite of all this, they sinned still more, for they believed not in (relied not on and adhered not to Him for) His wondrous works.
33 Therefore their days He consumed like a breath [in emptiness, falsity, and futility] and their years in terror and sudden haste.
34 When He slew [some of] them, [the remainder] inquired after Him diligently, and they repented and sincerely sought God [for a time].
35 And they [earnestly] remembered that God was their Rock, and the Most High God their Redeemer.
36 Nevertheless they flattered Him with their mouths and lied to Him with their tongues.
37 For their hearts were not right or sincere with Him, neither were they faithful and steadfast to His covenant.
38 But He, full of [merciful] compassion, forgave their iniquity and destroyed them not; yes, many a time He turned His anger away and did not stir up all His wrath and indignation.
39 For He [earnestly] remembered that they were but flesh, a wind that goes and does not return.
40 How often they defied and rebelled against Him in the wilderness and grieved Him in the desert!
41 And time and again they turned back and tempted God, provoking and incensing the Holy One of Israel.
42 They remembered not [seriously the miracles of the working of] His hand, nor the day when He delivered them from the enemy,
43 How He wrought His miracles in Egypt and His wonders in the field of Zoan [where Pharaoh resided]
44 And turned their rivers into blood, and their streams, so that they could not drink from them.
45 He sent swarms of [venomous] flies among them which devoured them, and frogs which destroyed them.
46 He gave also their crops to the caterpillar and [the fruit of] their labor to the locust.
47 He destroyed their vines with hail and their sycamore trees with frost and [great chunks of] ice.
48 He [caused them to shut up their cattle or] gave them up also to the hail and their flocks to hot thunderbolts.
49 He let loose upon them the fierceness of His anger, His wrath and indignation and distress, by sending [a mission of] angels of calamity and woe among them.
50 He leveled and made a straight path for His anger [to give it free course]; He did not spare [the Egyptian families] from death but gave their beasts over to the pestilence and the life [of their eldest] over to the plague.
51 He smote all the firstborn in Egypt, the chief of their strength in the tents [of the land of the sons] of Ham.
52 But [God] led His own people forth like sheep and guided them [with a shepherd’s care] like a flock in the wilderness.
53 And He led them on safely and in confident trust, so that they feared not; but the sea overwhelmed their enemies.
54 And He brought them to His holy border, the border of [Canaan] His sanctuary, even to this mountain [Zion] which His right hand had acquired.
55 He drove out the nations also before [Israel] and allotted their land as a heritage, measured out and partitioned; and He made the tribes of Israel to dwell in the tents of those dispossessed.
Proverbs 24:27Amplified Bible (AMP)
27 [Put first things first.] Prepare your work outside and get it ready for yourself in the field; and afterward build your house and establish a home.
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