PLEASE READ THIS FIRST: Ezekiel 15-16
What do you sense the Lord saying to you in this passage?
“You have despised my oath by breaking the covenant. Yet I will remember the covenant I made with you… and I will establish an everlasting covenant with you.” (Ezekiel 16:59-60)
God speaks through Ezekiel within his patriarchal understanding of the world.
Men could have multiple wives – and concubines – but woe to the unfaithful wife.
But these words apply to any spouse who breaks their promise of faithful love.
Faithful love – expressed through an everlasting covenant – is the heart of marriage.
It is also the heart of God’s relationship with us, and ours with God.
God’s faithful love is expressed in how God keeps coming after us, even when we stray.
Jesus shows the full extent of faithful love, even dying to bring us back to God.
Following Jesus is our response to love, our vow to love God and people the same way.
Secure in God’s love, we commit to loving God and people as our faithful love.
Self-serving love breaks this covenant, and undermines our experience of God’s love.
Am I neglecting my vow of loving God and others, by putting my own love first?
Am I forgetting God’s love for me, and seeking other ‘loves’ to make me happy?
A healthy marriage takes two solid vows; God’s is solid, is mine?
PRAYER
Lord, thank you for keeping your marriage promise, and for helping me in my weakness to get back on track with mine. Renew the fire of my first love!
But you trusted in your beauty… you built a mound for yourself and made a lofty shrine in every public square…You will bear the consequences of your lewdness and your detestable practices, declares the Lord.” Ezekiel’s prophecy is very clear – the people had it coming. Yet in the end God says: “Then, when I make atonement for you for all you have done, you will remember and be ashamed” God steps in to punish and He steps in to atone – through Jesus. Do I trust in myself – my own resources “beauty”? It should be a warning to me – kick myself for my own pride and accomplishment – instead recognize I can only do what God enables me! He has brought about atonement for me and because of Jesus I live! Help Lord to be faithful in my commitment and love for you – let nothing stand in the way!
God promises to be our God but we/I all too often have gone our/my own way, forgetting to serve Him in all I do and say. I need to live the JOY principal each and every day. I need to dress myself with His armour so I may produce the fruit of the Spirit. It needs to be God’s way today and every day. His will be done. I need to put God first in all what I do this day and every day. I need to live for Jesus.
Living for Jesus a life that is true,
Striving to please Him in all that I do;
Yielding allegiance, glad-hearted and free,
This is the pathway of blessing for me.