Monday Devo - Call Upon the Lord
“Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.” Jeremiah 33:3
The very first people who followed God were known as “people who called upon the name of the Lord.” That was how the people they lived with described them (see Jim Cymbala’s “Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire”). The literal meaning of the Hebrew word used when people called upon God means to cry out, to implore aid.
Acts 2:21 says “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved”. If you have chosen a life after Jesus, then you and I came to a point in our lives where we realized we needed God. Thanks be to God that He revealed to us our need for salvation. We are desperate without Him. We were a people of NO HOPE without Him. Until He came into our lives, we were destined for eternal damnation. Set before us was neverending separation from God.
Then we saw; our eyes were opened to our depravity. Without belief in Jesus’ death and resurrection, we could not spend eternity in the presence of God Almighty. He loved us so much that He made a way and made that way known to us. Yet it was up to us to receive this free gift. When we become a part of His family, it is because we made the choice to believe what He said is true. That we were covered in sin, needed it to be removed. And it can only be removed when we humble ourselves before Him, crying out for forgiveness of our sin.
We came to God crying out to Him in need.
The Bible says “...continue in what you have learned and firmly believed…” (2 Tim. 3:14) So the question remains, are we continuing in that state of needing Him? Are we going forth crying out to Him in desperate need on a regular basis? If we are still here, then we still need Him. The truth remains we are still dependent on Him because of Who He is and who He says we are.
And why not? Why don’t we cry out to Him? Why do we worry? Fret? Allow our minds to be anxious, when the God of all, who has a personal relationship with us, is simply waiting for us to turn our thoughts and cries to Him?
“If we are still here, then we still need Him.”
My sweet family, please begin this day telling Him you need Him. Be intentional. Take the time to literally cry out to Him. Teach your children to do the same. Gently guide your spouse to fall on their knees before our gracious, kind, compassionate King. And let us do that together.
We hardly have a tenth of our church praying on Sundays before our worship gathering, nevertheless, when we pray…are we crying out to Him? I beg the God of all creation that we will learn the beauty of crying out to Him, in the presence of each other.