God Waits

God Waits

Reading the Word

“I am the LORD, and I do not change. That is why you descendants of Jacob are not already destroyed. 7 Ever since the days of your ancestors, you have scorned my decrees and failed to obey them. Now return to me, and I will return to you,” says the LORD of Heaven’s Armies. “But you ask, ‘How can we return when we have never gone away?’” (Malachi 3:6–7).

Getting Personal

If you don’t feel very close to God any more, guess who moved. It wasn’t God.

God doesn’t change. He is consistent, faithful, and trustworthy. In fact, that’s why he didn’t destroy Israel (the “descendants of Jacob”) even though they had turned and moved far away from him. But God had promised to keep his promise (the Covenant) to his people.

We move away from God when we stop reading his Word, stop talking to him in prayer, stop applying the Scriptures to our lives, and start living under our own power and direction, only for ourselves. That’s when we rationalize our behavior and fool ourselves into thinking that God has changed, that he doesn’t really care how we live and would never judge us.

But God doesn’t change. And he waits, as our concerned and loving father, for us to return to him and to live close to him again.

Go back to God, “descendant of Jacob” (one of God’s New Covenant people), and he will return to you.

Talking to God

Heavenly Father, I love you and want to be close to you. Help me to never take you for granted.

Adapted from On Eagles Wings by Dave Veerman (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1995), used by permission.