Jeremiah 6:16: “Thus says the LORD: / ‘Stand in the ways and see, / And ask for the old paths, where the good way is, / And walk in it; / Then you will find rest for your souls.’ / But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.'”

October 5th, 2024 by Pastor Ed in devotional

God was calling His people to stop and consider the path their lives were journeying along. He was encouraging them to look around, to open their eyes, and see if they were walking in the “good way,” meaning His ways, the ways they had been called to walk in as His people long ago. He promised that if they did walk in those ways then there would be rest for their souls. But they were not willing to do it, and so they were taken captive to Babylon. God’s advice to His people in Jeremiah’s day is still perfect for our day: “Ask for the old (ancient) pathways.” Those old days when God was honored, when, “In God we trust” on our coins, really meant something.

The “good way” is being willing and ready to do what God wants us to do, even when we do not know exactly what that is. Whenever we come to a crossroad in our life and we have to make a decision, God tells us that the correct path is the one that believer’s down through the ages have taken. It is a simple call to always “walk in the ways of the Lord,” to be obedient.

Andrew Murray sums it up well in his book With Christ in the School of Obedience:

The true pupil, say of some great musician or painter, yields his master a wholehearted and unhesitating submission. In practicing his scales or mixing the colors, in the slow and patient study of the elements of his art, he knows that it is wisdom simply and fully to obey.

It is this wholehearted surrender to His guidance, this implicit submission to His authority, Christ asks. We come to Him asking Him to teach us the lost art of obeying God as He did . . . The only way of learning to do a thing is to do it. The only way of learning obedience from Christ is to give up your will to Him, and to make the doing of His will the one desire and delight of your heart.

“LORD, we surrender anew to Your will for us this day. Show us which path and we will follow.”